This Day in History

1709: The first number of the Tatler, a journal featuring essays and brief sketches on politics and society, appears in England. It is edited by Sir Richard Steele.
1776: North Carolina became the first colony to instruct its delegates in Congress to vote for independence.
1782: In a three-day naval battle, British Adm. George Rodney decisively defeats a French fleet off Dominica, ending French hopes for supremacy in the West Indies.
1861: In the first major engagement of the Civil War, Confederate troops open fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC.
1934: The strongest wind ever reliably measured on the surface of the earth (225 mph) is recorded on Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
1945: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at age 63 in Warm Springs, GA; Harry S. Truman becomes president.
1955: The development of the polio vaccine by Dr. Jonas Salk is announced.
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin makes the first human orbital flight aboard Vostok 1.
1980: At the request of Pres. Jimmy Carter, the U.S. Olympic Committee votes against U.S. participation in the Moscow Summer Olympics in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
1981: The first space shuttle, Columbia, is launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
1983: Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.
1999: District Judge Susan Webber Wright finds Pres. Bill Clinton in civil contempt of court for testifying falsely about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in a 1998 deposition.