Today in history

1896

Utah was admitted as the 45th state.

1821

The first native-born American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, died in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

1904

The Supreme Court, in Gonzalez v. Williams, ruled that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and could enter the United States freely; however, the court stopped short of declaring them U.S. citizens. (Puerto Ricans received U.S. citizenship in 1917.)

1935

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the handicapped.

1943

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin made the cover of TIME as the magazine’s 1942 “Man of the Year.”

1951

During the Korean War, North Korean and Communist Chinese forces recaptured the city of Seoul (sohl).

1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”

1974

President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

1987

16people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Maryland.

1990

Charles Stuart, who claimed that he’d been wounded and his pregnant wife fatally shot by a robber, leapt to his death off a Massachusetts bridge after he himself came under suspicion.