TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, JAN. 13, the 13th day of 2017. There are 352 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:

On this date in 1967, the Rolling Stones’ double-A sided single “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” was released in the United Kingdom by Decca Records. (It was released the following day in the United States on the London label).

In 1794, President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. (The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.)

In 1915, a magnitude-7 earthquake centered in Avezzano, Italy, claimed some 30,000 lives.

In 1941, a new law went into effect granting Puerto Ricans U.S. birthright citizenship. Novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland, less than a month before his 59th birthday.

In 1978, former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey died in Waverly, Minn., at age 66.

In 1982, an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm, killing a total of 78 people;

four passengers and a flight attendant survived.

In 1987, West German police arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner. (Although convicted and sentenced to life, Hamadi was paroled by Germany in Dec. 2005; he is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.) In 1997, seven black soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for World War II valor; the lone survivor of the group, former Lt. Vernon Baker, received his medal from President Bill Clinton at the White House. In 2014, a shooting at a Wesley Chapel, Fla., movie theater left Chad Oulson, 43, dead; retired Tampa police captain Curtis Reeves, 71, is accused of killing Oulson during what authorities said was an argument over Oulson’s texting.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: TV personality Nick Clooney and comedian Rip Taylor are 83. Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and rock singer Graham “Suggs” McPherson (Madness) are 56. Country singer Trace Adkins is 55. Actress Penelope Ann Miller is 53. Actor Patrick Dempsey is 51. Actor Keith Coogan and TV producerwriter Shonda Rhimes are 47. Actress Nicole Eggert is 45. Actors Ross McCall and Michael Pena are 41. Actor Orlando Bloom is 40. Meteorologist Ginger Zee (TV: “Good Morning America”) is 36.