TIME TRAVELING, APRIL 4 1818 The U.S. flag was declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star thereafter being added for each new state. 1841 Only 31 days after assuming office, President William Henry Harrison, at the age of 68, dies of pneumonia at the White House, becoming the first president to die in office. On his inauguration day on March 4, a bitterly cold day, he declined to wear a hat or jacket, made a two-hour speech, and attended three inauguration balls. Soon afterward he developed pneumonia. Vice President John Tyler ascends to the presidency, becoming the first individual in U.S. history to reach the office through the death of a president. 1850 The city of Los Angeles is incorporated. 1865 President Abraham Lincoln visits Richmond, Va., a day after Union forces capture it. 1887 Susanna M. Salter becomes mayor of Argonia, Kansas, making her the first woman mayor in the U.S. 1902 British Financier Cecil Rhodes leaves $10 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans to Oxford University in England. 1905 An earthquake in Kangra, India, kills 370,000 people. 1917 The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on the Allied side. 1932 Professor C.G. King, of the University of Pittsburgh, isolates vitamin C. 1933 A dirigible crashes in New Jersey, killing 73 people in one of the first air disasters in history. The “Akron” was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight two years earlier and had already been involved in two fatal accidents. 1945 During World War II, U.S. forces liberate the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany. 1949 Twelve nations sign a treaty to create The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 1964 The Beatles make music history by holding the top five places in the singles charts with: Cant Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me. 1967 The U.S. loses its 500th plane over Vietnam. 1968 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot at the age of 39 while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He is in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and is preparing to go to dinner when a bullet strikes him in the jaw and severs his spinal cord. A single gunman, James Earl Ray, is eventually arrested in London, convicted of the assassination, and sentenced to 99 years in prison. 1974 Atlanta Braves player Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruths major league baseball career home-run record of 714. 1975 A major U.S. airlift of South Vietnamese orphans begins with disaster when an Air Force cargo jet crashes shortly after departing Saigon, killing 138 passengers, mostly children. All subsequent flights of “Operation Baby Lift” are completed as nearly 2,000 children are carried across the Pacific only 16 days before the fall of Saigon. 1983 The space shuttle Challenger takes off from Cape Canaveral on its first flight. 1991 Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with Heinzs plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pa. 1994 Netscape Communications (Mosaic Communications) is founded.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 06:03:22 +0000
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