Today

1800 ÷ Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.

1869 ÷ The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.

1970 ÷ The Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod 1.

Tomorrow

1928 ÷ The first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon, Walt Disney's Î'Steamboat Willie,'' starring Mickey Mouse, premiered in New York.

1966 ÷ U.S. Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays.

1999 ÷ Twelve people were killed when a bonfire under construction at Texas A&M University collapsed.

Wednesday

1863 ÷ President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

1990 ÷ The pop duo Milli Vanilli was stripped of its Grammy Award after it was revealed that neither performer sang on the group's records.

1977 ÷ Iowa seamstress Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to four boys and three girls ÷ only the second set of septuplets known to be born alive.

Thursday

1925 ÷ Robert F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass.

1945 ÷ Twenty-four Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

1947 ÷ Britain's future queen, Princess Elizabeth, married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, in a ceremony broadcast worldwide from Westminster Abbey in London.

Friday

1877 ÷ Inventor Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of the phonograph.

1980 ÷ A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas killed 87 people.

2001 ÷ Ottilie Lundgren, a 94-year-old resident of Oxford, Conn., died of inhalation anthrax.