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On this date in history:

In 1507, German geographer and mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller
published a book in which he named the newly discovered
continent of the New World "America" after the man he
mistakenly thought had discovered it, Italian navigator
Amerigo Vespucci.

In 1859, ground was broken for the Suez Canal at Port Said,
Egypt.

In 1862, Union forces captured New Orleans during the Civil
War.

In 1898, the U.S. Congress formally declared war on Spain
in the battle over Cuba.

In 1901, the state of New York became the first state to
require license plates on automobiles.

In 1945, delegates of 46 countries gathered in San Francisco
to organize a permanent United Nations.

In 1962, Ranger 4 landed on the moon.

In 1967, the first law legalizing abortion in the United
States was signed into law by Colorado Gov. John Arthur
Love.

In 1982, Israel turned over the final third of the occupied
Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the Camp David peace agreement.

In 1990, Discovery astronauts released the $1.5 billion
Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. The telescope was later
determined to be flawed, prompting another space mission to
repair it.

Also in 1990, Violeta Chamorro assumed the Nicaraguan
presidency, ending more than a decade of leftist Sandinista
rule.

In 1991, the United States announced its first financial
aid to Hanoi since the 1960s: $1 million to make artificial
limbs for Vietnamese disabled during the war.

In 1992, Pentagon officials said an airman was missing and
two others were injured after a U.S. Air Force C-130
drug-interdiction aircraft was fired on by Peruvian jets.

In 1993, an estimated 300,000 people took part in a gay
rights march on the National Mall in Washington.

In 1994, the Japanese Diet elected Tsutomu Hata as prime
minister.

In 1995, regular season play by major league baseball teams
got under way, the first official action since the longest
strike in sports history began in August 1994.

In 1997, a federal district court in Greensboro, N.C.,
ruled the Food and Drug Administration had the power to
regulate the distribution, sale and use of tobacco products.

In 1998, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testified via
videotape for the Little Rock, Ark., grand jury in the
Whitewater land case.

In 2000, the Vermont House of Representatives approved a
measure legalizing "civil unions" among same sex couples.
The governor signed the bill into law, making Vermont the
first state in the nation to give homosexual couples the
same legal status as heterosexual married couples.

In 2001, the Japanese Diet elected Junichiro Koizumi, a
former Health and Welfare minister, as the country's
prime minister.

In 2002, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia presented
President George W. Bush with an Israeli-Palestinian
peace proposal and reportedly warned Bush that the United
States must do more to stop Israeli incursions in
Palestinian territory or lose credibility in the Middle
East.

In 2003, Chinese health officials closed a second hospital
and ordered about 4,000 people in Beijing to stay home as
the number of cases and deaths from severe acute
respiratory syndrome, or SARS, continued to surge in
the country.

Also in 2003, Farouk Hijazi, the former director of
external operations for Iraqi intelligence and a former
ambassador to Tunisia and Turkey, was captured. Hijazi
was believed by the U.S. government to have helped plan
the failed 1993 assassination attempt on former President
George H.W. Bush in Kuwait.

In 2004, hundreds of victims in the North Korea train
explosion were reported being treated in an ill-equipped
hospital lacking both beds and medical equipment. The
United States offered help in the wake of the blast that
killed at least 161 people and injured about 1,300 others.

In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush and Prince
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia met with skyrocketing oil
prices topping the agenda.

Also in 2005, the crash of a Japanese commuter train
near Osaka killed more than 70 people and injured more
than 300 others.