Today in History

Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American major league umpire.

Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.

Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man to orbit the Earth.

Dr. Jonas Salk’s discovery of a polio vaccine is announced.

Bill Haley records “Rock Around the Clock.”

Scott Turow, writer and attorney.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Spring, Georgia. Harry S. Truman becomes president.

The U.S. Twentieth Air Force is activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.

The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women.

American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parral, Mexico.

Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.

The first catcher’s mask is used in a baseball game.

Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort Pillow, in Tennessee.

Fort Sumter is shelled by the Confederacy, starting America’s Civil War.

John Shaw Billings, American librarian, army physician.

The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.

Francis Preston Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor.

The British navy wins a major naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.

Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser”, American politician and statesman who ran unsuccessfully for president three times.

Parliament repeals the Townshend Acts.

England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.

The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.