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Jan. 1865; the amendment was ratified and adopted in Dec. 1865.)
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• On this date:
• In 1820, the Venus de Milo statue was discovered by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos.
• In 1904, Longacre Square in Manhattan was renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
• In 1911, an explosion at the Banner Coal Mine in Littleton, Ala., claimed the lives of 128 men, most of them convicts loaned out from prisons.
• In 1913, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for popular election of United States senators (as opposed to appointment by state legislatures), was ratified. President Woodrow Wilson became the first chief executive since John Adams to address Congress in person as he asked lawmakers to enact tariff reform. The Republic of China's first parliament convened.
• In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which provided money for programs such as the Works Progress Administration.
• In 1946, the League of Nations assembled in Geneva for its final session.
• In 1952, President Harry S. Truman seized the American steel industry to avert a nationwide strike. (The Supreme Court later ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority, opening the way for a seven-week strike by steelworkers.)
• In 1961, a suspected bomb exploded aboard the passenger liner MV Dara in the Persian Gulf, causing it to sink; 238 of the 819 people aboard were killed.
• In 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
• In 1988, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart resigned from the Assemblies of God after he was defrocked for rejecting an order from the church's national leaders to stop preaching for a year amid reports he'd consorted with a prostitute.
• In 1994, Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.
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• Ten years ago: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the September 11 commission "there was no silver bullet" that could have prevented the deadly terror attacks. Iraqi insurgents released a videotape of three Japanese captives, threatening to burn them alive if Japan did not withdraw its troops from Iraq. (The hostages were later released unharmed.) Fred Olivi, who copiloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, died in Lemont, Ill., at age 82.

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