TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1775

The Continental Congress established a Post Office and appointed Benjamin Franklin its Postmaster-General. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1788

New York became the 11th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1847

The western African country of Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, declared its independence.

1908

U.S. Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte ordered creation of a force of special agents that was a forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1945

The Potsdam Declaration warned Imperial Japan to unconditionally surrender, or face “prompt and utter destruction.” Winston Churchill resigned as Britain’s prime minister after his Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Labour Party; Clement Attlee succeeded him.

1990

President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

2002

The Republican-led House voted, 295-132, to create an enormous Homeland Security Department in the biggest government reorganization in decades.

2006

In a dramatic turnaround from her first murder trial, Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a Houston jury in the bathtub drownings of her five children; she was committed to a state mental hospital.

2013

Ariel Castro, the man who’d imprisoned three women in his Cleveland home, subjecting them to a decade of rapes and beatings, pleaded guilty to 937 counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty. (Castro later committed suicide in prison.)