On this date:
In 1777, the Congress of the United States -- forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces -- moved to York, Pennsylvania.
In 1791, Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute" premiered in Vienna, Austria.
In 1846, dentist William Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on a patient in his Boston office.
In 1927, Babe Ruth hit his 60th homer of the season to break his own major-league record.
In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders decided to appease Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
In 1946, an international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.
In 1954, the first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine "Nautilus," was commissioned by the Navy.
In 1962, black student James Meredith succeeded on his fourth try in registering for classes at the University of Mississippi.
In 1988, Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up.
Ten years ago: President Bush and congressional leaders forged a $500 billion five-year compromise package of tax increases and spending cuts.
Five years ago: US envoy Richard Holbrooke, trying to negotiate a Bosnian cease-fire, ended inconclusive talks with the Sarajevo government and headed for Belgrade to try his luck with the Serbs.
One year ago: Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered a top-level investigation of accounts of mass killings of Korean civilians by US soldiers at No Gun Ri in 1950. A major leak at a uranium-processing plant in northeastern Japan exposed dozens of people to radiation. German novelist Guenter Grass wins the Nobel Prize in literature. The San Francisco Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last baseball game at Candlestick Park (3Com Park); the Dodgers won, 9-to-4.
"Nothing you can't spell will ever work."
-- Will Rogers, American humorist (1879-1935).