On this day in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most momentous decisions, ruling in Roe v. Wade that a Texas statute criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman's constitutional right of privacy.
| 1998: | | One of the most notorious domestic terrorists in U.S. history, Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, who killed three people and injured 22 in 16 attacks between 1979 and 1995, was sentenced to four terms of life in prison without parole. |
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| 1943: | | All Japanese resistance in Papua, on the island of New Guinea, site of an important Allied base at Port Moresby in World War II, ceased. |
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| 1905: | | On what was later known as Bloody Sunday, Russian workers marching on St. Petersburg were fired on by Russian troops. |
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| 1904: | | | Influential ballet choreographer George Balanchine was born in St. Petersburg. |
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| 1821: | | | Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovered Peter I Island, the first sighting of land within the Antarctic Circle. |
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