- In 1540, England's King Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted about six months.)

- In 1759, George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis were married.

- In 1838, Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

- In 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.

- In 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

- In 1942, the Pan American Airways "Pacific Clipper" arrived in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

- In 1945, George Herbert Walker Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.

- In 1967, U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops launched Operation "Deckhouse 5," an offensive in the Mekong River delta.

- In 1982, truck driver William G. Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of being the "freeway killer" who had murdered 14 young men and boys.

- In 1993, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev died in Paris at age 54; jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died in Englewood, N.J., at age 75.

- One year ago: A design consisting of two reflecting pools and a paved stone field was chosen for the World Trade Center memorial in New York.

- Thought for today: "What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism." -- Pauline Kael, American movie critic (1919-2001)