Associated Press

On Dec. 10, 1817, Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state of the Union.

In 1898, a treaty was signed in Paris officially ending the Spanish-American War.

In 1958, the first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the U.S. as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York to Miami in about 2 1/2 hours.

In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. received his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, saying he accepted it “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.”

In 1994, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize, pledging to pursue their mission of healing the anguished Middle East.

In 2005, actor-comedian Richard Pryor died in Encino, California, at age 65.

In 2006, former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet died at age 91.