On this date in history:

In 1868, the ratified 14th Amendment was adopted into the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizenship and all its privileges to African-Americans.

In 1945, the U.S. Senate ratified the United Nations.

In 1976, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Tangshan, China, area, killing more than 240,000 people. It was among the deadliest quakes in recorded history.

In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan opened the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. A Soviet-led bloc of 15 nations, as well as Iran, Libya, Albania and Bolivia, boycotted the Games.

In 1990, the collision of a freighter and two barges spilled 500,000 gallons of oil in the Houston Ship Channel near Galveston, Texas.

In 2003, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, the two largest U.S. banks, agreed to pay nearly $300 million in fines and penalties to settle charges they had aided Enron in deceiving investors.

In 2004, Democrats nominated Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to oppose Republic incumbent George W. Bush in the November presidential election.

In 2008, Iraqi authorities said suicide bombers, including three females, killed 61 people and injured 249 others in ethnic violence in Kirkuk and Baghdad.

In 2010, a plane flying in intense fog and rain to Islamabad, Pakistan, crashed in the Himalayan foothills near its destination, killing all 152 people aboard.

In 2011, a federal judge in Washington threw out a lawsuit seeking to end the Obama administration's funding of embryonic stem cell research into possible cures for deadly diseases.

In 2013, a tour bus carrying people who had visited a Catholic shrine plunged nearly 100 feet down a slope in southern Italy. The death toll was at least 39, with many others injured.

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