TODAY INHISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 1865

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward.

1915

President Woodrow Wilson, whose first wife, Ellen, had died the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt, a widow, at her Washington home.

1917

Congress passed the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibiting “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” and sent it to the states for ratification.

1940

Adolf Hitler signed a secret directive ordering preparations for a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

1944

The U. S. Supreme Court upheld the government’s wartime evacuation of people of Japanese descent fromthe West Coastwhile at the same time ruling that “concededly loyal” Americans of Japanese ancestry could not continue to be detained.

1956

Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

1998

The House debated articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. South Carolina carried out the nation’s 500th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977.

2000

The Electoral College cast its ballots, with Presidentelect George W. Bush receiving the expected 271; Al Gore, however, received 266, one fewer than expected, because of a District of Columbia Democrat who’d left her ballot blank to protest the district’s lack of representation in Congress.

2003

Two federal appeals courts ruled the U. S. military could not indefinitely hold prisoners without access to lawyers or American courts.

2008

W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second- in- command who’d revealed himself as “Deep Throat” three decades after the Watergate scandal, died in Santa Rosa, Calif., at age 95.