On this date in history:

In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in London. He had been accused of plotting against King James I.

In 1787, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, had its first performance.

In 1901, Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted for the assassination of President William McKinley inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.

In 1923, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, was proclaimed from the capitol city of Ankara.

In 1923, the musical Runnin' Wild, which introduced the Charleston, opened on Broadway.

In 1929, the sale of 16 million shares marked the collapse of the stock market, setting the stage for the Great Depression. This day became known as Black Tuesday.

In 1946, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin responded to United Press questions, saying Winston Churchill is the greatest threat to peace and denying tension growing with America.

In 1956, Israeli forces, in a plan later found to have been coordinated with Britain and France, invade the Sinai Peninsula, pushing Egyptian forces back to the Suez Canal. The Suez Crisis, which lasted just over a week, would keep the waterway closed from Oct. 1956 until March 1957.

In 1969, the first connection on what would become the Internet was made when bits of data flowed between computers at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute.

In 1971, Duane Allman, guitarist and leader of the Allman Brothers band, died in a motorcycle crash in Georgia.

In 1994, a Colorado man was arrested after he sprayed the White House with bullets with an assault rifle. U.S. President Bill Clinton was inside at the time but no one was injured. The gunman was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In 1998, U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, who in 1962 became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery. At 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden, in a videotape to the American people, said he ordered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In 2006, a Boeing 737 crashed near Nigeria's Abuja airport, killing 96 of the 104 people aboard. Officials said the pilot took off after disobeying an air traffic controller and the plane crashed moments later.

In 2012, the storm that began as Hurricane Sandy, which had hit several Caribbean countries, made landfall in New Jersey -- after being reclassified as a still-powerful post-tropical cyclone -- and continued on a destructive path in the Northeast. Differing death tolls were reported in subsequent days. Eventually, the National Hurricane Center reported 72 deaths in the United States, 54 in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, three in the Dominican Republic, two in the Bahamas, two at sea, and one each in Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Canada.

In 2015, China announced it was ending its nearly 40-year one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children without facing punishment.

In 2018, Lion Air Flight JT-610 crashed into the sea 1 minute after it took off from Soekarano-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 189 people. It was the first of two crashes of a Boeing 737 Max 8, calling attention to problems with the aircraft that would lead to a worldwide grounding in 2019.

In 2019, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri abruptly announced his resignation after almost two weeks of widespread protests that cropped services throughout the country. He returned to the post in October 2020.

Copyright 2020 by United Press International