| Year | Event
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| 1865 | General Lee surrenders to General Grant and the U.S. "War Between the States" is effectively over. A detailed history is here.
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| 1866 | The Civil Rights Bill is passed over President Johnson's veto. This is the first presidential veto of any significant legislation.
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| 1923 | Supreme Court holds minimum wage law unconstitutional in Adkins v. Children's Hospital. Case will be reversed in 1937.
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| 1929 | Canadian minister in Washington protested the sinking of the Canadian ship I'm Alone in the Gulf of Mexico by a U.S. Coast Guard Prohibition patrol boat.
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| 1992 | Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega is convicted by a Miami jury of having assisted Colombia's cocaine cartel. Noriega, once in high favor with the former President Bush (R) for his ruthlessness and drug connections, fell into disfavor when he refused to support U.S. invasions of other Central American countries. To capture Noriega, Panama was invaded by the U.S. at a cost of from 400 to 4000 innocent lives, depending on who's counting.
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| 1996 | Power of "line-item" veto given to the President. This law was made necessary because of the dishonest actions of legislators in adding unrelated items to major legislation, often forcing their acceptance. Unfortunately, On June 26, 1998, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down the line-item veto law, declaring it unconstitutional.
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| 2003 | Saddam's regime comes to an end and one of his huge statues is toppled by a U.S. Army tank. What appeared to be a large crowd of appreciative Iraqi citizens turned out to be a staged media event {pdf}. Another opinion here.
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