On this date in history:

In 1565, the city of Rio de Janeiro was established.

In 1692, the notorious witch hunt began in the Salem village of the Massachusetts Bay colony (eventually resulting in the executions of 19 men and women).

In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish slavery.

In 1781, the American colonies adopted the Articles of Confederation, paving the way for a federal union.

In 1803, Ohio was admitted to the union as the 17th state.

In 1867, Nebraska was admitted to the union as the 37th state.

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established by an act of Congress. It was the first area in the world to be designated a national park.

In 1932, aviator Charles Lindbergh's son was kidnapped. (The boy's body was found May 12. Bruno Hauptmann was convicted of the kidnapping and murder and executed in 1936.)

In 1954, Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress.

In 1961, an executive order from U.S. President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps.

In 1971, a bomb exploded in a restroom in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol, causing $300,000 damage but no injuries. The Weather Underground, a leftist radical group that opposed the Vietnam War, claimed responsibility.

In 1991, after 23 years of insurgency in Colombia, the Popular Liberation Army put down its arms in exchange for two seats in the National Assembly.

In 2003, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, was captured in Pakistan.

In 2004, an interim government took over in Haiti one day after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile.following a monthlong insurrection

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution of juvenile offenders is unconstitutional.

In 2007, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who served as an adviser in the Kennedy administration, died at age 89.

In 2011, the U.S. Interior Department approved the first deep-water drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico since a BP offshore explosion and massive oil spill in April 2010.

In 2013, U.S. authorities said smugglers were using air-powered cannons in Mexico to blast drugs over the border into the United States.

In 2014, black-clad, knife-wielding attackers, including two women, killed at least 30 people and wounded about 130 at a railway station in the southwest Chinese city of Kumning. Four of the assailants were killed by police and four others were arrested and charged with murder.

Copyright 2015 by United Press International