On this date:
In 1822, Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.

In 1836, the siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1847, US troops under General Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican General Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico.

In 1848, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, died of a stroke at age 80.

In 1861, President-elect Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office, an assassination plot having been foiled in Baltimore.

In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

In 1927, President Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

In 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.

In 1965, Stan Laurel -- the "skinny" half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team -- died in Santa Monica, California.

In 1997, scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult mammal, producing a lamb named "Dolly."

Ten years ago: Former Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte died at age 64.

Five years ago: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the four-thousand mark for the first time, ending the day at four-thousand-three-point-33. Administration officials said President Clinton would review dozens of affirmative action programs. Former US President Jimmy Carter arrived in Haiti to help prepare for peaceful elections.

One year ago: A jury in Jasper, Texas, convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the gruesome dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Junior; King was sentenced to death two days later. Serbs agreed in principle to give limited self-rule to majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, thereby avoiding for the time being threatened NATO air strikes, but the two sides failed to conclude a deal for ending their yearlong conflict during talks in Rambouillet, France. The first of two avalanches that claimed 38 lives over two days struck in Austria.

每日格言

"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money."

-- Robert H. Jackson, U-S Supreme Court Justice (1892-1954).