Also on this date
In 1862, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Abraham Lincoln’s choice of Edwin M. Stanton to be the new Secretary of War, replacing Simon Cameron.
In 1865, as the Civil War neared its end, Union forces captured Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina, depriving the Confederates of their last major seaport.
In 1892, the original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time.
In 1929, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta.
In 1943, work was completed on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of War (now Defense).
In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.
In 1974, the situation comedy “Happy Days” premiered on ABC.
In 1976, Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford in San Francisco. (Moore was released in 2007.)
In 1993, a historic disarmament ceremony ended in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.
In 2009, US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditched his Airbus 320 in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disabled both engines; all 155 people aboard survived.
In 2014, a bipartisan Senate report declared that the deadly September 2012 assault on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented; the report spread blame among the State Department, the military and U.S. intelligence.
Ten years ago: Several international envoys got a look inside an Iranian nuclear site at the invitation of the Tehran government before a new round of talks on Iran’s atomic activities.
Five years ago: A federal judge rejected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s bid for a new trial and ordered him to pay victims of the deadly attack more than $101 million in restitution.
One year ago: Two U.S. government agencies reported that the decade that had just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on earth.