On this day in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommends that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached and removed from office. The impeachment proceedings resulted from a series of political scandals involving the Nixon administration that came to be collectively known as Watergate.
1794 Maximilien Robespierre is overthrown in a coup in Paris
1866 Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid (1,686 miles long)
1909 Orville Wright sets a world record for staying aloft in an airplane–one hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds.
1941 German army enters Ukraine
1953 North Korea and the United Nations sign armistice to stop fighting and divide Korea at the 38th parallel
1962 Martin Luther King Jr. jailed in Albany, Georgia
1977 John Lennon is granted a green card for permanent residence in US
1992 Nelson Mandela says a general strike will go ahead to protest for the removal of South African President F. W. de Klerk from power and for free elections
1993 Mafia bombs historical buildings in Rome, Milan and Vatican City, 5 killed
2012 Queen Elizabeth II opens the 30th Olympics in London, United Kingdom
2013 100 people are killed and 1,500 injured in a crackdown against protesters in Cairo, Egypt
2013 1,000 inmates escape from a prison in Benghazi, Libya
