TODAY IN HISTORY

ALSO ON THIS DATE

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT August 18, 1963

James Meredith became the first black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1587

Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born in present-day America, on what is now Roanoke Island in North Carolina.

1862

Dakota Indians began an uprising in Minnesota.

1894

Congress established the Bureau of Immigration.

1914

President Woodrow Wilson issued his Proclamation of Neutrality, aimed at keeping the U.S. out of World War I.

1920

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing all American women’s right to vote, was ratified as Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.

1969

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, wound to a close after three nights with a mid-morning set by Jimi Hendrix.

1976

Two U.S. Army officers were killed in Korea’s demilitarized zone as a group of North Korean soldiers wielding axes and metal pikes attacked U.S. and South Korean soldiers.

1983

Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Texas coast, leaving 21 dead and causing more than a billion dollars’ worth of damage.

1993

A judge in Sarasota, Fla., ruled that Kimberly Mays, the 14-year-old girl who had been switched at birth with another baby, need never again see her biological parents, Ernest and Regina Twigg, in accordance with her wishes.

1995

Shannon Faulkner, who’d won a 2 1⁄2-year legal battle to become the first female cadet at The Citadel, quit the South Carolina military college after less than a week, most of it spent in the infirmary.