TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 4, the 94th day of 2021. There are 271 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 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 hit particularly hard.) Suspected gunman 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.
In 1818, Congress decided the flag of the United States would consist of 13 red and white stripes, and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union.
In 1841, President William Henry Harrison succumbed to pneumonia one month after his inauguration, becoming the first U.S. chief executive to die in office.
In 1850, the city of Los Angeles was incorporated.
In 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.
In 1917, the U.S. Senate voted 82-6 in favor of declaring war against Germany (the House followed suit two days later by a vote of 373-50).
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi concentration camp Ohrdruf in Germany. Hungary was liberated as Soviet forces cleared out remaining German troops.
In 1949, 12 nations, including the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C.
In 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. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque.
In 1983, the space shuttle Challenger roared into orbit on its maiden voyage.
In 1991, Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz’s plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pennsylvania.
In 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.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Recording executive Clive Davis is 89. Author Kitty Kelley is 79. Actor Craig T. Nelson is 77. Actor Christine Lahti is 71. Country singer Steve Gatlin (The Gatlin Brothers) is 70. Actor Phil Morris is 62. Actors Lorraine Toussaint and Hugo Weaving are 61. Rock musician Craig Adams (The Cult) is 59. Talk show host/comic Graham Norton is 58. Actor David Cross is 57. Actor Robert Downey Jr. is 56. Actor Nancy McKeon is 55. Singer Jill Scott and rock musician Magnus Sveningsson (The Cardigans) are 49. Actor James Roday is 45.Actor-singer Jamie Lynn Spears is 30. Actor Aliyah Royale is 21.