TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, APRIL 4,

the 94th day of 2017. There are 271 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:

On this date in 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot and killed in Memphis, Tenn.

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.

In 1841,

President William Henry Harrison died one month after his inauguration, becoming the first U.S. chief executive to die in office.

In 1864,

President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Kentucky newspaper editor Albert G. Hodges, wrote: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”

In 1887,

Susanna Madora Salter became the first woman elected mayor of an American community: Argonia, Kan.

In 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).

In 1949,

12 nations, including the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C.

In 1975,

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque.

In 1983,

the space shuttle Challenger began its maiden voyage. (It was destroyed in the disaster of Jan. 28, 1986.)

In 1991,

Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz’s plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pa.