TODAY IN HISTORY

1652

Rhode Island became the first American colony to pass a law abolishing African slavery; however, the law was apparently never enforced.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept renounced 58 years later by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

1910

Halley’s Comet passed by Earth, brushing it with its tail.

1927

In America’s deadliest school attack, part of a schoolhouse in Bath Township, Mich., was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a bomb in his truck; the attacks killed 38children and six adults, including Kehoe, who’d earlier killed his wife.

1933

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1980

The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.