On this date in history:

In 1768, Encyclopedia Britannica was first published.

In 1817, Mississippi joined the United States as the 20th state.

In 1869, the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote.

In 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published.

In 1898, Spain signed a treaty officially ending the Spanish-American War. It gave Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States.

In 1901, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden.

In 1906, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1936, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. His brother succeeded to the throne as King George VI.

In 1941, Japanese troops landed on northern Luzon in the Philippines in the early days of World War II.

In 1950, U.S. diplomat Ralph Joseph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace mediation during the first Arab-Israeli war. He was the first African-American to win the award.

In 1984, the National Science Foundation reported the discovery of the first planet outside the solar system -- 21 million light-years from Earth.

In 1990, communists won a major victory in the first postwar multiparty elections in the Yugoslavian republics of Serbia and Montenegro.

In 2002, the Roman Catholic diocese of Manchester, N.H., admitted responsibility for failing to protect children from abusive priests.

In 2005, Richard Pryor, who pushed the envelope on racial themes and vulgarity in standup and movie comedy, died of cardiac arrest. He was 65.

In 2006, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former president of Chile who seized power in a bloody 1973 coup and ruled the nation for 17 years, died at the age of 91.

In 2009, President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, urging attendees to reach for the world as it ought to be.

In 2010, Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, represented by a portrait and an empty chair, was honored during the Nobel presentations in Oslo, Norway. Liu was in a northeastern China prison serving an 11-year sentence for subversion and his family was forbidden from attending the ceremony.

In 2011, Western countries and the U.N. urged calm in the Democratic Republic of Congo after President Joseph Kabila was declared the winner in disputed elections.

In 2013, Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors, the first woman to head a major automotive company.

In 2017, the Thomas Fire grew to 173,000 acres in Southern California, prompting evacuations in Santa Barbara County. The wildfire, which lasted from Dec. 4 to Jan. 12 ended up destroying 281,893 acres, the largest in modern California history, and 1,063 structures. Twenty-three people died.

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