On This Day: U.N. General Assembly meets for first time

Jan. 10 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1789, the first nationwide U.S. presidential election was conducted. Electors chosen by the voters unanimously picked George Washington as president and John Adams as vice president.

In 1861, Florida seceded from the United States.

In 1878, a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote was introduced into the U.S. Senate. It wasn't until 42 years later that the amendment was enacted.

More than 25,000 women take to New York City's Fifth Avenue on October 23, 1915, advocating for women’s voting rights. File Photo by Library of Congress/UPI

In 1901, oil was discovered at the Spindletop claim near Beaumont, Texas, launching the Southwest oil boom.

In 1920, the League of Nations came into being as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect.

In 1946, the first meeting of the U.N. General Assembly convened in London.

In 1957, Six dynamite blasts heavily damaged four black churches in Montgomery, Ala., and the homes of two ministers. No one was injured.

In 1984, the United States established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican for the first time in 116 years.

UPI File Photo

In 1994, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for cutting off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt. She was found innocent by reason of insanity less than two weeks later.

In 2003, North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the 1979 nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

In 2008, Edmund Hillary, who gained international fame as a member of the first climbing party to scale Mount Everest, died in Auckland, New Zealand, at age 88.

In 2017, a federal jury sentenced self-avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof to death for shooting to death nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C.

In 2019, missing Wisconsin teenager Jayme Close was found alive three months after she was abducted and her parents killed. The 13-year-old escaped her captor, who kept her in his home during her abduction.

File Photo courtesy FBI