DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Easter Sunday, April 4, the 94th day of 2021. There are 271 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1818: Congress decided the flag of the United States would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union.
1865: President Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by his son Tad, visited the vanquished Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, where he was greeted by a crowd that included former slaves.
1917: The U.S. Senate voted 82-6 in favor of declaring war against Germany (the House followed suit two days later by a vote of 373-50).
1933: The Navy airship USS Akron crashed in severe weather off the New Jersey coast with the loss of 73 lives.
1945: During World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi concentration camp Ohrdruf in Germany. Hungary was liberated as Soviet forces cleared out remaining German troops.
1949: 12 nations, including the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C.
1968: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; his slaying was followed by a wave of rioting (Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago were among cities particularly hard hit.) Suspected gunman James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming he’d been the victim of a setup.
1975: More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S.
Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crash-landed shortly after takeoff from Saigon. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1983: The space shuttle Challenger roared into orbit on its maiden voyage. (It was destroyed in the disaster of January 1986.)
2015: In North Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old Black motorist, was shot to death while running away from a traffic stop; Officer Michael Thomas Slager, seen in a cellphone video opening fire at Scott, was charged with murder. (The charge, which lingered after a first state trial ended in a mistrial, was dropped as part of a deal under which Slager pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.)
Actor Craig T. Nelson is 77. Writerproducer David E. Kelley (“Ally Mcbeal,” “The Practice”) is 65. Talk show host Graham Norton is 58. Comedian David Cross (“Arrested Development,” “Mr. Show”) is 57. Actor Robert Downey Jr. is 56. Singer Josh Todd of Buckcherry is 50. Singer Jill Scott is 49. Magician David Blaine is 48. Actor Natasha Lyonne (“Orange Is the New Black,” “American Pie”) is 42. Actor-comedian Eric Andre (“The Eric Andre Show”) is 38. Actor Amanda Righetti (“The Mentalist”) is 38. Actor-singer Jamie Lynn Spears (“Zoey 101”) is 30. Actor Daniela Bobadilla (“The Middle,” “Anger Management”) is 28. Singer Austin Mahone is 25.