Today in history

On this day in 1861, the Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

In 1606, England's King James I decreed the design of the original Union Flag, which combined the flags of England and Scotland.

In 1776, North Carolina's Fourth Provincial Congress authorized the colony's delegates to the Continental Congress to support independence from Britain.

In 1934, “Tender Is the Night,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published in book form after being serialized in Scribner’s Magazine.

In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at 63; he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.

In 1955, the Salk vaccine for

polio was declared safe and effective.

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space, orbiting the earth once before making a safe landing.

In 1963, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, charged with contempt of court and parading without a permit.

In 1975, singer, dancer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker, 68, died in Paris.

In 1983, Chicagoans went to the polls to elect Harold Washington the city’s first black mayor.

In 1985, Sen. Jake Garn, RUtah, became the first sitting member of Congress to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off.

In 1988, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Harvard University for a genetically engineered mouse, the first time a patent was granted for an animal life form.

In 1990, in its first meeting, East Germany's first democratically elected parliament acknowledged responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust, and asked the forgiveness of Jews and others who had suffered.