April 4
1818 - Congress decided the U.S. flag would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state added to the Union.
1841 - President William Henry Harrison died from pneumonia, one month following his inauguration, becoming the first U.S. president to die in office.
1850 - The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.
1865 - President Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by his son Tad, visited the vanquished Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, where he was greeted by a crowd that included former slaves.
1887 - Susanna Medora Salter became the first woman elected mayor of an American community -- Argonia, Kansas.
1902 - British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will to provide scholarships at Oxford University in England.
1905 - An earthquake in Kangra, India killed more than 20,000 people.
1917 - The U.S. Senate voted 82-6 in favor of declaring war against Germany (the House followed suit two days later on a 373-50 vote).
1945 - The Ohrdruf death camp in Germany was liberated from Nazi occupation.
1945 - Hungary was liberated as Soviet forces cleared out remaining German troops.
1949 - The treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was signed by 12 nations, including the United States.
1968 - Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., age 39, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; his slaying was followed by a wave of rioting (Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago were among cities particularly hard hit). James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming he'd been the victim of a setup.
1973 - The World Trade Center in New York City opened.
1975 - More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crash-landed shortly after takeoff from Saigon.
1975 - Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1979 - Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed by the military.
1981 - Henry Cisneros became mayor of San Antonio, Texas, the first Hispanic mayor of a major U.S. city.
1983 - Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
1988 - The Arizona Senate convicted Gov. Evan Mecham of two charges of official misconduct and removed him from office.
1991 - U.S. Senator John Heinz (R-Pennsylvania) and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz's plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pennsylvania.
2003 - American forces seized Saddam International Airport outside of Baghdad.
2006 - The Iraq Tribunal charged Saddam Hussein and six others, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds.
2007 - Radio host Don Imus made offensive on-air remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He was later fired by CBS Radio and cable network MSNBC.
2011 - Yielding to political opposition, the Obama administration gave up on trying avowed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators in civilian federal courts and said it would prosecute them instead before military commissions.
2012 - A federal judge sentenced five former New Orleans police officers to prison for the deadly Danziger Bridge shootings in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. (The verdicts in the case were later set aside by the judge, who cited prosecutorial misconduct; the officers pleaded guilty in 2016 to reduced charges.)
2015 - In North Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old Black motorist, was shot to death while running away from a traffic stop; Officer Michael Thomas Slager, seen in a cellphone video opening fire at Scott, was charged with murder. (The charge, which lingered after a first state trial ended in a mistrial, was dropped as part of a deal under which Slager pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.)
2017 - A chemical attack on an opposition-held town in northern Syria left about 100 people dead; a joint investigation team made up of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and U.N. experts concluded that the Syrian government was responsible.
2017 - A federal appeals court ruled for the first time that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protected LGBT employees from workplace discrimination; the case involved an Indiana teacher who charged that she wasn’t hired full-time because she was a lesbian.
2021 - Pope Francis, in his traditional Easter Sunday address, denounced as “scandalous” how armed conflicts continued to rage even as the coronavirus pandemic triggered severe social and economic suffering and swelled the ranks of the poor.
Birthdays
22 - Aliyah Royale (actress)
26 - Austin Mahone (singer)
29 - Daniela Bobadilla (actress)
30 - Alexa Nikolas (actress)
31 - Jesse Jo Stark (singer)
31 - Jamie Lynn Spears (actress/singer)
31 - Jessica Serfaty (model)
38 - Carolina Gaitan (actress)
39 - Amanda Righetti (actress)
39 - Eric Andre (actor)
43 - Natasha Lyonne (actress)
46 - James Roday (actor)
48 - Andre Dalyrimple (singer)
49 - Kelly Price (singer)
49 - David Blaine (musician)
50 - Jill Scott (singer)
50 - Lisa Ray (model)
51 - Josh Todd (singer)
51 - Clay Davidson (singer)
52 - Barry Pepper (actor)
56 - Nancy McKeon (actress)
57 - Robert Downey Jr. (actor)
58 - David Cross (actor)
59 - Graham Norton (talk show host/comic)
62 - Hugo Weaving (actor)
62 - Lorraine Toussaint (actress)
63 - Phil Morris (actor)
64 - Constance Shulman (actress)
66 - David E. Kelley (producer)
68 - Mary-Margaret Humes (actress)
71 - Steve Gatlin (singer)
72 - Christine Lahti (actress)
77 - Walter Charles (actor)
78 - Craig T. Nelson (actor)
80 - Kitty Kelley (author)
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Today in Sports History - April 4
1921 - The Ottawa Senators beat the Vancouver Millionaires in the 1921 Stanley Cup Finals. The Senators became the first NHL team to win back-to-back Stanley Cup titles.
1937 - Byron Nelson wins the Masters.
1938 - Henry Picard wins the Masters.
1948 - Connie Mack, age 84, challenges 78-year-old Clark Griffith to a race from home to 1st base; it ends in a tie.
1974 - Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves tied Babe Ruth's career home run record with his 714th in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.
1983 - North Carolina State defeats Houston 54-52 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1986 - Wayne Gretzky set an NHL record with his 213th point of the season.
1987 - Denis Potvin (New York Islanders) became the first defenseman in NHL history to score 1,000 career points. His career total was 1,052.
1988 - Kansas defeats Oklahoma 83-79 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays in his final NBA game.
1989 - Tommy John of the New York Yankees ties record by playing in his 26th season.
1993 - Texas Tech defeats Ohio State 84-82 to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
1994 - Arkansas defeats Duke 76-72 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1996 - The Boston Celtics beat the Orlando Magic 100-98. The loss was the Magic's first loss to an Eastern Conference team at home since April of 1994. The streak was 51 games long.
1996 - Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls) became the fourth player in NBA history to reach 2,000 career steals.
1998 - NFL Europe, formerly known as the World League of American Football, kicks off its season.
1999 - The Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres played the first major league season opener to be held in Mexico. The Rockies beat the Padres 8-2. The game was also the first season opener to be held in a country other than the United States or Canada.
2003 - Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs became the 18th player in major league history to hit 500 career home runs.
2005 - North Carolina defeats Illinois 75-70 to win the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time.
2006 - Maryland defeats Duke 78-75 in overtime to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
2011 - Connecticut defeats Butler 53-41 to win the NCAA Tournament.
2016 - Villanova defeats North Carolina 77-74 to win the NCAA Tournament.
2021 - Stanford defeated Arizona 54-53 to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
1818 - Congress decided the U.S. flag would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state added to the Union.
1841 - President William Henry Harrison died from pneumonia, one month following his inauguration, becoming the first U.S. president to die in office.
1850 - The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.
1865 - President Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by his son Tad, visited the vanquished Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, where he was greeted by a crowd that included former slaves.
1887 - Susanna Medora Salter became the first woman elected mayor of an American community -- Argonia, Kansas.
1902 - British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will to provide scholarships at Oxford University in England.
1905 - An earthquake in Kangra, India killed more than 20,000 people.
1917 - The U.S. Senate voted 82-6 in favor of declaring war against Germany (the House followed suit two days later on a 373-50 vote).
1945 - The Ohrdruf death camp in Germany was liberated from Nazi occupation.
1945 - Hungary was liberated as Soviet forces cleared out remaining German troops.
1949 - The treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was signed by 12 nations, including the United States.
1968 - Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., age 39, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; his slaying was followed by a wave of rioting (Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago were among cities particularly hard hit). James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming he'd been the victim of a setup.
1973 - The World Trade Center in New York City opened.
1975 - More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crash-landed shortly after takeoff from Saigon.
1975 - Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1979 - Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed by the military.
1981 - Henry Cisneros became mayor of San Antonio, Texas, the first Hispanic mayor of a major U.S. city.
1983 - Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
1988 - The Arizona Senate convicted Gov. Evan Mecham of two charges of official misconduct and removed him from office.
1991 - U.S. Senator John Heinz (R-Pennsylvania) and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz's plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pennsylvania.
2003 - American forces seized Saddam International Airport outside of Baghdad.
2006 - The Iraq Tribunal charged Saddam Hussein and six others, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds.
2007 - Radio host Don Imus made offensive on-air remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He was later fired by CBS Radio and cable network MSNBC.
2011 - Yielding to political opposition, the Obama administration gave up on trying avowed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators in civilian federal courts and said it would prosecute them instead before military commissions.
2012 - A federal judge sentenced five former New Orleans police officers to prison for the deadly Danziger Bridge shootings in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. (The verdicts in the case were later set aside by the judge, who cited prosecutorial misconduct; the officers pleaded guilty in 2016 to reduced charges.)
2015 - In North Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old Black motorist, was shot to death while running away from a traffic stop; Officer Michael Thomas Slager, seen in a cellphone video opening fire at Scott, was charged with murder. (The charge, which lingered after a first state trial ended in a mistrial, was dropped as part of a deal under which Slager pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.)
2017 - A chemical attack on an opposition-held town in northern Syria left about 100 people dead; a joint investigation team made up of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and U.N. experts concluded that the Syrian government was responsible.
2017 - A federal appeals court ruled for the first time that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protected LGBT employees from workplace discrimination; the case involved an Indiana teacher who charged that she wasn’t hired full-time because she was a lesbian.
2021 - Pope Francis, in his traditional Easter Sunday address, denounced as “scandalous” how armed conflicts continued to rage even as the coronavirus pandemic triggered severe social and economic suffering and swelled the ranks of the poor.
Birthdays
22 - Aliyah Royale (actress)
26 - Austin Mahone (singer)
29 - Daniela Bobadilla (actress)
30 - Alexa Nikolas (actress)
31 - Jesse Jo Stark (singer)
31 - Jamie Lynn Spears (actress/singer)
31 - Jessica Serfaty (model)
38 - Carolina Gaitan (actress)
39 - Amanda Righetti (actress)
39 - Eric Andre (actor)
43 - Natasha Lyonne (actress)
46 - James Roday (actor)
48 - Andre Dalyrimple (singer)
49 - Kelly Price (singer)
49 - David Blaine (musician)
50 - Jill Scott (singer)
50 - Lisa Ray (model)
51 - Josh Todd (singer)
51 - Clay Davidson (singer)
52 - Barry Pepper (actor)
56 - Nancy McKeon (actress)
57 - Robert Downey Jr. (actor)
58 - David Cross (actor)
59 - Graham Norton (talk show host/comic)
62 - Hugo Weaving (actor)
62 - Lorraine Toussaint (actress)
63 - Phil Morris (actor)
64 - Constance Shulman (actress)
66 - David E. Kelley (producer)
68 - Mary-Margaret Humes (actress)
71 - Steve Gatlin (singer)
72 - Christine Lahti (actress)
77 - Walter Charles (actor)
78 - Craig T. Nelson (actor)
80 - Kitty Kelley (author)
=====================================
Today in Sports History - April 4
1921 - The Ottawa Senators beat the Vancouver Millionaires in the 1921 Stanley Cup Finals. The Senators became the first NHL team to win back-to-back Stanley Cup titles.
1937 - Byron Nelson wins the Masters.
1938 - Henry Picard wins the Masters.
1948 - Connie Mack, age 84, challenges 78-year-old Clark Griffith to a race from home to 1st base; it ends in a tie.
1974 - Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves tied Babe Ruth's career home run record with his 714th in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.
1983 - North Carolina State defeats Houston 54-52 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1986 - Wayne Gretzky set an NHL record with his 213th point of the season.
1987 - Denis Potvin (New York Islanders) became the first defenseman in NHL history to score 1,000 career points. His career total was 1,052.
1988 - Kansas defeats Oklahoma 83-79 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays in his final NBA game.
1989 - Tommy John of the New York Yankees ties record by playing in his 26th season.
1993 - Texas Tech defeats Ohio State 84-82 to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
1994 - Arkansas defeats Duke 76-72 to win the NCAA Tournament.
1996 - The Boston Celtics beat the Orlando Magic 100-98. The loss was the Magic's first loss to an Eastern Conference team at home since April of 1994. The streak was 51 games long.
1996 - Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls) became the fourth player in NBA history to reach 2,000 career steals.
1998 - NFL Europe, formerly known as the World League of American Football, kicks off its season.
1999 - The Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres played the first major league season opener to be held in Mexico. The Rockies beat the Padres 8-2. The game was also the first season opener to be held in a country other than the United States or Canada.
2003 - Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs became the 18th player in major league history to hit 500 career home runs.
2005 - North Carolina defeats Illinois 75-70 to win the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time.
2006 - Maryland defeats Duke 78-75 in overtime to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
2011 - Connecticut defeats Butler 53-41 to win the NCAA Tournament.
2016 - Villanova defeats North Carolina 77-74 to win the NCAA Tournament.
2021 - Stanford defeated Arizona 54-53 to win the NCAA Women's Tournament.
