TODAY IN HISTORY

1792

President George Washington signed an act creating the United States Post Office Department.

1862

William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.

1905

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, upheld, 7-2, compulsory vaccination laws intended to protect the public’s health.

1907

President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the United States.

1933

Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to repeal Prohibition.

1938

Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

1965

America’s Ranger 8spacecraft crashed on the moon, as planned, after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

1987

A bomb left by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski exploded behind a computer store in Salt Lake City, seriously injuring store owner Gary Wright.

1998

Tara Lipinski of the U.S. won the ladies’ figure skating gold medal at the Nagano (Nah’guh-noh) Olympics; Michelle Kwan won the silver.

2005

Death claimed actor Sandra Dee at age 62; musical actor John Raitt at age 88; and counterculture writer Hunter S. Thompson at age 67.

2020

A poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found more Americans expressing some concern about catching the flu than about catching the coronavirus.

2013

The Obama administration announced a broad new effort to fight the growing theft of American trade secrets following fresh evidence linking cyber-stealing to China’s military. Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-ill., entered a guilty plea in federal court to criminal charges that he’d engaged in a scheme to spend $750,000in campaign funds on personal items; his wife, Sandra Jackson, pleaded guilty to filing false joint federal income tax returns.