Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1818

Congress decided the U.S. flag of the would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state.

1850

The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.

1887

Susanna Medora Salter became the first woman elected mayor of an American community - Argonia, Kan.

1902

British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University in England.

1945

U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.

1949

Twelve nations, including the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty

1968

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.

1974

Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves tied Babe Ruth's career home run record by hitting his 714th round-tripper in Cincinnati.

1975

More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed shortly after takeoff from Saigon.

1979

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the deposed prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged after he was convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.

1981

Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city - San Antonio, Texas.

1995

Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., used a mock Japanese accent to ridicule O.J. Simpson trial judge Lance Ito on a nationally syndicated radio program. He apologized two days later on the Senate floor.

1999

The Colorado Rockies beat the San Diego Padres 8-2 in baseball's first season opener held in Mexico.

1841

President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia one month after his inauguration, becoming the first U.S. president to die in office.

1991

Sen. John Heinz, R-Penn., and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz's plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pa.