On this date in . . .

1755: The Transylvania Land Company bought what is now the State of Kentucky from Cherokee Chief Groundhog Sausage. One source puts the price at $50,000, but it may have been less. Chief Dragging Canoe tried to prevent the sale.

1789: English writer Charlotte Elliott was born. An invalid for 50 years, she wrote 150 hymns, including the popular "Just As I Am."

1010: The Camp Fire Girls organization was formed. It was presented to the public on this day two years later.

1958: The Coasters recorded "Yakety Yak." Composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote the song in ten minutes.

1962: Charlie Drake’s "My Boomerang Won’t Come Back" peaked at #21 on U.S. pop charts. It was Charlie’s biggest hit.

1966: The last Studebaker, a Daytona, was produced in Canada. The company’s U.S. plant already had closed.

1966: A U.S. midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb which had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain.

1967: The cover of Life magazine carried a picture of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

1969: Golda Meir was sworn in as the first woman Prime Minister of Israel. Born in Russia, she grew in Wisconsin and once taught at a Milwaukee high school.

1990: 57-year-old French actress Capucine committed suicide in Lausanne, Switzerland. Thirty years earlier she had starred with John Wayne in "North to Alaska." She also played Mrs. Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther."

1991: In its first dress code change since the 1960s, Brigham Young University announced that students could wear knee-length shorts and go sockless.

1998: 25-year-old Cristian Pavesi was convicted of murder in Brescia, Italy, and sentenced to 18 years under house arrest at his grandmother’s. When the sentence was read, the mother of the victim fainted.

1999: At a restaurant in Schererville, Indiana, an intoxicated man, angered by a slow-flushing toilet, pulled out a pistol and shot it. Several times. Police said no one was injured, but the toilet was destroyed.

1999: A Chinese illegal immigrant was given a year in jail for breaking into a Hong Kong home and eating an expensive pet turtle. Though the normal burglary sentence was three years, the judge assessed a lighter sentence because the defendant pleaded guilty, didn't steal anything else, and claimed he was really hungry. He left two smaller turtles unharmed.

2005: Several major league baseball players told the U.S. Congress steroids were a problem in the sport.

2006: A U.S. appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Administration cannot exempt older power plants and refineries from the Clean Air Act, voting unanimously against the Bush administration's interpretation of the law.