Today in history

In 1789,

President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Virginia, for his inauguration in New York.

In 1818,

the U.S. Senate ratified the Rush-Bagot Treaty severely limiting the number of American and British military vessels on the Great Lakes.

In 1862,

during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia.

In 1912,

American aviator Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel, leaving Dover, England, and arriving near Calais, France, in 59 minutes.

In 1945,

during World War II, a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed and sank the MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers; it's estimated that up to 7,000 people died.

In 1963,

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which the civil rights activist responded to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests; King defended his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In 1972,

Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon with astronauts John W. Young, Charles M. Duke Jr. and Ken Mattingly on board.

In 2007,

in one of America's worst school attacks, a Korean-born college senior killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech before taking his own life.