TODAY IN HISTORY

1836

The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

1861

President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.

1903

President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

1945

During World War II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they raised two American flags. The second flagraising was captured in the iconic Associated Press photograph.

1954

The first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.

2007

A Mississippi grand jury refused to bring any new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, the Black teenager who was beaten and shot after being accused of whistling at a white woman, declining to indict the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, for manslaughter.

Birthdays

Country-rock musician Rusty Young is 75. Rock musician Brad Whitford (Aerosmith) is 69. Country singer Dusty Drake is 57. Actor Kristin Davis is 56.