TODAY IN HISTORY

On Jan. 13, 1794, President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union.

In 1941, a new law went into effect granting Puerto Ricans U.S. birthright citizenship. novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland, less than a month before his 59th birthday.

an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm,

In 1982,

killing a total of 78 people.

In 1990, L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected Black governor.

In 2011, a funeral was held in Arizona for 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, the youngest victim of a mass shooting that also claimed five other lives and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.