Today is Wednesday, Jan. 13, the 13th day of 2016. There are 353 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Jan. 13, 1966, Robert C. Weaver was nominated to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Lyndon B. Johnson; Weaver became the first black Cabinet member.
On this date:
In 1733, James Oglethorpe and some 120 English colonists arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, while en route to settle in present-day Georgia.
In 1794, President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. (The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.)
In 1864, American songwriter Stephen Foster died in poverty in a New York hospital at age 37.
In 1898, Emile Zola’s famous defense of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, “J’accuse,”) was published in Paris.
In 1915, a magnitude-7 earthquake centered in Avezzano, Italy, claimed some 30,000 lives.
In 1941, a new law went into effect granting Puerto Ricans U.S. birthright citizenship. Novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland, less than a month before his 59th birthday.
In 1962, comedian Ernie Kovacs died in a car crash in west Los Angeles 10 days before his 43rd birthday.
In 1982, an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River while trying to take off during a snowstorm, killing a total of 78 people; four passengers and a flight attendant survived.
In 1990, L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
The Associated Press
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