TODAY IN HISTORY

1890: Artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auverssur-Oise, France.

1914: Transcontinental telephone service in the U.S. became operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

1965: The Beatles’ second film, “Help!,” had its world premiere in London.

1967: An accidental rocket launch on the deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen. (Among the survivors was future Arizona senator John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who narrowly escaped with his life.)

1968: Pope Paul the Sixth reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against artificial methods of birth control.

1974: Singer Cass Elliot died in a London hotel room at age 32.

1975: President Gerald R. Ford became the first U.S. president to visit the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.

1980: A state funeral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the deposed Shah of Iran, who had died two days earlier at age 60.

1981: Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (The couple divorced in 1996.)

1999: A former day trader, apparently upset over stock losses, opened fire in two Atlanta brokerage offices, killing nine people and wounding 13 before shooting himself to death; authorities said Mark O. Barton had also killed his wife and two children.

2011: Norway began burying the dead, a week after an anti-Muslim extremist killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage.