TODAY IN HISTORY
1789: George Washington took the oath of office in New York as the first president of the United States.
1803: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 60 million francs, the equivalent of about $15 million.
1812: Louisiana became the 18th state of the Union. 1900: Engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers.
1945: As Soviet troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day, Eva Braun, killed themselves.
1947: President Harry S. Truman signed a resolution officially confirming the name of Hoover Dam, which had also come to be known as “Boulder Dam.”
1958: Britain’s Life Peerages Act 1958 allowed women to become members of the House of Lords.
1970: President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. was sending troops into Cambodia, an action that sparked widespread protest.
1973: President Richard Nixon announced the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean, who was actually fired.
1975: The Vietnam War ended as the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.
1983: Blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters died in Westmont, Ill., at age 68.
1993: Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany, by a man who described himself as a fan of second-ranked German player Steffi Graf. (The man, convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, was given a suspended sentence.)
2004: Arabs expressed outrage at graphic photographs of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by U.S. military police; President George W. Bush condemned the mistreatment of prisoners, saying “that’s not the way we do things in America.”
2021: Disneyland reopened its gates after a 13-month closure caused by the coronavirus; capacity was limited for the reopening, and only California residents were allowed in.