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• On this date:
•  In 1792, France's King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis was convicted, and executed the following month.)
• In 1816, Indiana became the 19th state.
• In 1912, movie producer Carlo Ponti was born in Magenta, Italy.
• In 1928, police in Buenos Aires announced they had thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover.
• In 1936, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson; his brother, Prince Albert, became King George VI.
• In 1937, Italy announced it was withdrawing from the League of Nations.
• In 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; the U.S. responded in kind.
• In 1946, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established.
• In 1961, a U.S. aircraft carrier carrying Army helicopters arrived in Saigon - the first direct American military support for South Vietnam's battle against Communist guerrillas.
• In 1981, the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians at the hands of army troops. The U.N. Security Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar (hah-vee-EHR' PEHR'-ehs day KWAY'-yahr) of Peru to be the fifth secretary-general. Muhammad Ali, 39, fought his final fight, losing by unanimous decision to Trevor Berbick in Nassau, Bahamas.
• In 1997, more than 150 countries agreed at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth's greenhouse gases.
• In 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. (Madoff is serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.)
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• Ten years ago: U.S. health officials reported an early flu outbreak had hit all 50 states and was widespread in 24. A German court freed a Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, saying there was new evidence he did not know about the plot. A new second home for the National Air and Space Museum opened in Chantilly, Va., some 28 miles west of the original's home in Washington, D.C.
• Five years ago: Former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that destroyed thousands of people's life savings and wrecked charities. (Madoff is serving a 150-year federal prison sen

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