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• In 1846, the United States declared that a state of war already existed with Mexico.
• In 1917, three shepherd children near Fatima, Portugal, reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary.
• In 1918, the first U.S. airmail stamps, featuring a picture of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, were issued to the public. (On a few of the stamps, the biplane was inadvertently printed upside-down, making them collector's items.)
• In 1940, Britain's new prime minister, Winston Churchill, told Parliament: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
• In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Act. The musical play "The Pajama Game" opened on Broadway.
• In 1958, Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were spat upon and their limousine battered by rocks thrown by anti-U.S. demonstrators in Caracas, Venezuela.
• In 1968, a one-day general strike took place in France in support of student protesters.
• In 1973, in tennis' first so-called "Battle of the Sexes," Bobby Riggs defeated Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1 in Ramona, California. (Riggs had his standing challenge to female players accepted by Billie Jean King, who soundly defeated Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in September.)
• In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca (MEH'-met AH'-lee AH'-juh).
• In 1985, a confrontation between Philadelphia authorities and the radical group MOVE ended as police dropped a bomb onto the group's row house; 11 people died in the resulting fire that destroyed 61 homes.
• In 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated federal appeals Judge Stephen G. Breyer to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
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• Ten years ago: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the Abu Ghraib (grayb) prison camp in Iraq, where he insisted the Pentagon did not try to cover up abuses there. During a campaign swing in West Virginia, President George W. Bush said he felt "disgraced" by the images of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners but reminded his listeners that actions of a handful of Americans should not sully the nation's military. TV anchorman Floyd Kalber died in Burr Ridge, Illinois, at age 79. The multiple Emmy-winning NBC sitcom "Frasier" bowed out with an hour-long finale.
• Five years ago: A judge in West Palm Beach sentenced two men to death for

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