The Republican judge is currently the longest-serving Supreme Court judge currently working, and is generally regarded as one of the most conservative judges right now. He was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and his confirmation process was marked by interviews with his former aide Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment.

In doing so, he became the first U.S. president to ever speak during an Australian Parliament session. He joked about the recent removal of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, saying, “I see this rough tumble that goes like this, and I thank God for the presidential system at home.”

The Kuwaiti government allegedly found an Iraqi assassination plan that targeted ex-president George H.W. Bush during his visit there. Later, two Iraqi individuals confessed to driving a car bomb into the country during that same time.

In repudiation of Democratic President Bill Clinton’s policies, Republicans gained majorities in both bodies of Congress during the 1994 midterm elections. This was the first time that the party had done so since 1952.

With the first Republican majority in both chambers of Congress in decades, Congressional Republicans set to work enacting conservative legislation that often flew in the face of Democratic President Clinton. Much of that was listed in the Contract With America, a legislative agenda that many party members had advocated for during their 1994 Congressional campaigns.

He and his running mate, Jack Kemp, were officially nominated at the San Diego Republican National Convention. However, he ultimately lost to Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.

The South Carolina senator surpassed the previous record of 41 years and 10 months as of May 1997, a record later broken by politicians Daniel Inouye and Robert Byrd. However, he is still the longest-serving Republican Congressman in American history.

Republican House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde oversaw Clinton’s impeachment process following the Monica Lewinsky scandal, sending him 81 questions about his involvement with the young woman. Clinton was later impeached in early 1999.

Hastert served as the U.S. House of Representatives’ 51st Speaker from 1999 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican to ever hold that role. More recently, he became one of the most high-profile politicians to serve a prison sentence, when he admitted past sexual abuse of students and was convicted of financial crimes relating to child molestation cover-ups in 2015.

The 2000 presidential election was a long and bitter process, since a particularly close Florida race meant that determining the winner took weeks. However, the Supreme Court ultimately named Republican nominee George W. Bush the winner, making him the 43rd president after his father, George H.W. Bush, previously served as the 41st president.