This Day in History

1787: In Shays' Rebellion, a group of poor farmers protesting high taxes march into Springfield, Massachusetts to seize the federal arsenal.
1890: The United Mine Workers of America, a labor union composed mainly of coal miners and coal-mine construction workers, is organized.
1898: The U.S. battleship Maine arrives in Havana, Cuba to protect American lives and property.
1915: Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson complete the first transcontinental telephone call, between New York and San Francisco.
1959: The first transcontinental flight occurs, on an American Airlines 707 nonstop from California to New York .
1971: President Milton Obote of Uganda, attending a conference of Commonwealth leaders in Singapore, is deposed in a coup led by Major General Idi Amin.
1998: John Elway leads the Denver Broncos football team to an upset 31-24 victory in the Super Bowl over the defending champs, the Green Bay Packers.
2002: A U.S. congressional delegation visits the al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and declares their treatment humane.
2003: Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus in the Australian Open and becomes only the fifth woman ever to hold all four professional women's tennis titles at the same time.
2004: Spirit , an unmanned U.S. spacecraft, successfully lands on the planet Mars . It begins transmitting images of its surroundings back to Earth the next day.
2006: Hamas, an Islamist organization, gains a majority in Palestinian parliamentary elections; the surprise win casts doubt on the peace process.