1821 – Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena.
1893 – Panic hit the New York Stock Exchange; by year’s end, the country was in the throes of a severe depression.
1925 – John T. Scopes was arrested in Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
1985 – President Ronald Reagan attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany. The visit drew worldwide condemnation because 49 members of the Waffen SS were buried there.
1961 – Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
