TODAY IN HISTORY

1792: The French National Convention voted to abolish the monarchy.

1912: Magician Harry Houdini first publicly performed his “Water Torture Cell” trick at the Circus Busch in Berlin.

1938: A hurricane struck parts of New York and New England, causing widespread damage and claiming some 700 lives.

1961: The first Boeing CH-47 Chinook military helicopter made its first hovering flight.

1981: The Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice on the Supreme Court.

1982: Amin Gemayel, brother of Lebanon’s assassinated president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, was himself elected president. National Football League players began a 57-day strike, their first regular-season walkout ever.

1985: In North Korea and South Korea, family members who had been separated for decades were allowed to visit each other as both countries opened their borders in an unprecedented family-reunion program.

1987: NFL players called a strike, mainly over the issue of free agency. (The 24-day walkout prompted owners to hire replacement players.)

1989: Hurricane Hugo crashed into Charleston, S.C. (the storm was blamed for 56 deaths in the Caribbean and 29 in the United States). Twenty-one students in Alton, Texas, died when their school bus, hit by a soft-drink delivery truck, careened into a water-filled pit.

2001: Congress again opened the federal coffers to those harmed by terrorism, providing $15 billion to the airline industry, which was suffering mounting economic losses since the Sept. 11 attacks.

2008: Baseball said farewell to the original Yankee Stadium as the Bronx Bombers defeated the Baltimore Orioles 7-3.

2020: President Donald Trump met at the White House with Amy Coney Barrett, as the conservative judge emerged as an early favorite for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. An enormous wildfire in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles was one of more than two dozen major fires burning across California, including five of the largest wildfires in state history.