In 1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.

In 1805, a British fleet commanded by Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed.

In 1879, Thomas Edison perfected a workable electric light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen.

In 1945, women in France were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time.

In 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.

In 1967, the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli crew members were lost. Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters began two days of demonstrations in Washington.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Both nominees were confirmed.)

In 2001, Washington postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. died of inhalation anthrax as officials began testing thousands of postal employees.

In 2011, President Barack Obama declared that America’s long and deeply unpopular war in Iraq would be over by the end of 2011 and that all U.S. troops “will definitely be home for the holidays.”

In 2012, former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, 90, died in Sioux Falls, S.D.

In 2014, North Korea abruptly freed Jeffrey Fowle, an American, nearly six months after he was arrested for leaving a Bible in a nightclub.

Former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, 93, died in Washington.

In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not be a candidate in the 2016 White House campaign, solidifying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s status as the Democratic front-runner.

In 2016, cyberattacks on server farms of a key internet firm repeatedly disrupted access to major websites and online services including Twitter, Netflix and PayPal across the United States.

In 2020, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, told CNN that he had voted in the Nov. 3 election, but not for Donald Trump.