TODAY IN HISTORY

1836

The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio.

1861

President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, following word of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore.

1870

Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

1903

President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

1942

The first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif., causing little damage.

1954

The first mass inoculation of schoolchildren against polio using the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh as some 5,000 students were vaccinated.