On this date:
• In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on his first voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.
• In 1852, in America’s first intercollegiate sporting event, Harvard rowed past Yale to win the first Harvard-Yale Regatta.
• In 1916, Irish-born British diplomat Roger Casement, a strong advocate of independence for Ireland, was hanged for treason.
• In 1936, Jesse Owens of the United States won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he took the 100-meter sprint.
• In 1972, the U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• In 1977, the Tandy Corporation introduced the TRS-80, one of the first widely-available home computers.
• In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, seeking pay and workplace improvements (two days later, President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking union members and barred them from federal employment).
• In 2004, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty opened to visitors for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.
• In 2018, Las Vegas police said they were closing their investigation into the Oct. 1, 2017 shooting that left 58 people dead at a country music festival without a definitive answer for why Stephen Paddock unleashed gunfire from a hotel suite onto the concert crowd.
• In 2021, New York’s state attorney general said an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo found that he had sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees; the report brought increased pressure on Cuomo to resign, including pressure from President Joe Biden and other Democrats. (Cuomo resigned a week later.)
