In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand.
In 1816, the United States' first savings bank, the Provident Institution for Savings, opened in Boston.
In 1862, an estimated 11,000 northern soldiers were killed or wounded in a battle with Confederate troops outside Fredericksburg, Va.
In 1982, the Sentry armored car company in New York discovered the overnight theft of $11 million from its headquarters. It was the biggest cash theft in U.S. history at the time.
In 1990, the last of the U.S. hostages being held by Iraq, five diplomats in Kuwait, flew to freedom.
In 1992, Ricky Ray, 15, one of three hemophiliac brothers barred from attending a Florida school because they had the AIDS virus, died.
In 1998, in a non-binding referendum giving Puerto Ricans the opportunity to express a political preference, most voters indicated they wished to remain a U.S. commonwealth.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Florida presidential vote recount, in effect giving the presidency to Republican George W. Bush more than a month after the balloting. Winning Florida meant Bush had enough electoral votes to defeat Democrat Al Gore, who won the popular vote.
In 2001, as the extensive manhunt continued for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. government released a tape of the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in which he spoke of the attacks and voiced pleasure and surprise that so many of the enemy had died.
Also in 2001, calling it a Cold War relic, President George W. Bush announced the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, opening the way for the U.S. Defense Department to test and deploy a missile defense system without restraints.