Today is Thursday, Jan. 13, the 13th day of 2011. There are 352 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On Jan. 13, 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.)
On this date:
In 1733, James Oglethorpe and some 120 English colonists arrived at Charleston, S.C., while en route to settle in present-day Georgia.
In 1864, composer Stephen Foster died impoverished in a New York hospital at age 37. (In his pocket: a note which read, “Dear friends and gentle hearts.”)
In 1898, Emile Zola’s famous defense of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, “J’accuse,” was published in Paris.
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 1945, during World War II, Soviet forces began a huge, successful offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.
In 1962, comedian Ernie Kovacs died in a car crash in west Los Angeles 10 days before his 43rd birthday.
In 1966, Robert C. Weaver was named Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Lyndon B. Johnson; Weaver became the first black Cabinet member.
In 1978, former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey died in Waverly, Minn., at age 66.
In 1982, an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge after takeoff during a snowstorm and fell into the Potomac River, killing a total of 78 people.
Associated Press
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