1818 – Congress decides on the US flag: 13 red and white strips and 20 stars.
1902 – Cecil Rhodes scholarship fund forms with $10 million.
1917 – Senate agrees 82-6 to participate in World War I.
1922 – WAAB in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, becomes the first radio station in the radio station with “W” in its call letters.
1932 – Charles G. King of the University of Pittsburgh isolates Vitamin C, using adrenal samples provided by Hungarian Albert Szent-Györgyl.
1940 – Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical “Higher & Higher” premieres in New York City.
1945 – The Holocaust: United States forces liberate the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany. It’s the first camp to be liberated by the US Army.
1960 – 32nd Academy Awards: “Ben-Hur”, Charleston Heston and Simone Signoret win.
1964 – Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” single goes No. 1 & stays there for five weeks.
1968 – Riots break out in over 100 cities in the United States following the assassination of African-American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
1971 – Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” opens at Winter Garden Theater in New York City. It runs for 524 performances and was, at the time, the most expensive Broadway musical.
1973 – World Trade Center, then the world’s tallest building with 110 stories, opens in New York City. It was destroyed in 2001 during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
1974 – Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth’s home-run record by hitting his 714th in Cincinnati, facing Jack Billingham.
1975 – 138 killed as a US Air Force plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes on approach during an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in South Vietnam.
1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
1985 – Tulane University cancels its basketball season amidst scandal.
1991 – Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their plane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania.
1997 – Atlanta Braves officially open Turner Field against the Chicago Cubs.
2008 – Raid on Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints-owned YFZ Ranch in Texas. There were 401 children and 133 women taken into state custody.
2017 – Alibaba becomes the world’s largest retailer, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
2023 – Former President Donald Trump pleads not guilty in a New York court to 34 felony counts of falsifying documents related to 2016 hush money payments to a woman alleging they had an extramarital affair.
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