In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a letter expressing condolences to Lydia Bixby, a Boston widow whose five sons supposedly died while fighting in the Civil War. (As it turned out, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s sons had been killed.)

In 1922, Rebecca L. Felton, a Georgia Democrat, was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate; her term, the result of an interim appointment, ended the following day as Walter F. George, the winner of a special election, took office.

In 1927, picketing strikers at the Columbine Mine in northern Colorado were fired on by state police; six miners were killed.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Air Quality Act.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18-1/2- minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

The Associated Press