On This Date In History

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In 1643, in the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke. In 1914, Ford Motor Co. increased its daily wage from $2.34 for a 9-hour day to $5.00 for eight hours of work. In 1919, the National Socialist (Nazi) Party was formed in Germany. In 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was sworn in as the first woman governor in the United States. In 1948, the first color newsreel, filmed at the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, Calif., was released on this date by Warner Brothers-Pathe. In 1964, Pope Paul VI and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras met in Jerusalem, the first meeting of a pope and a patriarch in more than five centuries. In 1993, the state of Washington executed multiple child-killer Westley Allan Dodd by hanging in the nation's first gallows execution in 28 years. In 1994, the United States and North Korea agreed, in principle, that the latter would allow inspections of its declared nuclear facilities. Also in 1994, the White House announced the U.S. Justice Department had subpoenaed documents belonging to U.S. President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in connection with the Whitewater investigation. In 1995, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill requiring Congress to comply with its own civil rights and labor laws. The Senate followed suit six days later. In 1996, the longest government shutdown ended after 21 days when the U.S. Congress passed a stopgap spending measure that would allow federal employees to return to work. U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the bill the next day. In 1998, U.S. Rep. Sonny Bono, R-Calif., of Sonny and Cher fame, was killed when he ran into a tree while skiing at South Lake Tahoe, Calif. In 2000, the Clinton administration decided that Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban refugee whose mother drowned while trying to enter the United States, should be returned to his father in Cuba. The next day, hundreds of Cuban-Americans marched in protest in Miami. In 2002, a 15-year-old student pilot, flying alone, was killed when he crashed his single-engine Cessna into the 28th floor of the Bank of America building in Tampa, Fla. No one else was hurt. In 2004, North Korea's insistence on preconditions delayed the second round of talks with the United States on the nuclear stalemate. Also in 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he expected British forces would stay in Iraq for several years. In 2004 sports, Pete Rose, one of major league baseball's greatest stars but barred from the sport for gambling, admitted he had bet on games involving his own team. In 2005, at least 24 people, including policemen, were killed in two car bomb explosions in Iraq in mounting violence ahead of upcoming elections. Also in 2005, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched a $977 million emergency appeal to cover six months of aid for 5 million victims of the Southeast Asia tsunami. In 2006, at least 134 people were killed in two car bombings in Iraq and more than 120 others were wounded in a second day of heavy violence.