Also on this date
In 1792,
President George Washington signed an act creating the United States Post Office Department.
In 1862,
William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.
In 1905,
the U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public’s health.
In 1907,
President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the United States.
In 1933,
Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to repeal Prohibition.
In 1938,
Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
In 1987,
a bomb left by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski exploded behind a computer store in Salt Lake City, seriously injuring store owner Gary Wright.
In 2003,
a fire sparked by pyrotechnics broke out during a concert by the group Great White at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, killing 100 people and injuring about 200 others.
Ten years ago:
The Obama administration announced a broad new effort to fight the growing theft of American trade secrets following fresh evidence linking cyber-stealing to China’s military.
Five years ago:
President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to move to ban devices like the rapid-fire bump stocks used in the Las Vegas massacre.
One year ago:
Russia extended military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders after two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s president appealed for a cease-fire. (Russia invaded four days later.)