| On this date in: |
| 1783 |
Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War. |
| 1789 |
Electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States. |
| 1861 |
Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America. |
| 1913 |
Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Ala. |
| 1938 |
The Thornton Wilder play “Our Town” opened on Broadway. |
| 1941 |
The United Service Organizations (USO) was formed. |
| 1945 |
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta. |
| 1948 |
The island nation of Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth. |
| 1974 |
Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the Symbionese Liberation Army. |
| 1977 |
The album “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac was released. |
| 1983 |
Singer Karen Carpenter died at age 32. |
| 2000 |
A coalition government that included Joerg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party came to power in Austria, triggering European Union sanctions. |
| 2003 |
Yugoslavia was dissolved and replaced with a loose union of its remaining two republics, Serbia and Montenegro. |
| 2004 |
The Massachusetts high court declared that gays were entitled to marry. |
| 2004 |
The social networking website Facebook was launched. |
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| AP Photo/Paul Sakuma |
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