1776 – Rhode Island became the first North American colony to renounce its allegiance to Britain.
1865 – President Abraham Lincoln was laid to rest in his hometown of Springfield, IL.
1886 – Emile Berliner patented the first practical phonograph, better known as the gramophone.
1932 – Al Capone was jailed in the Atlanta Penitentiary for tax evasion.
1948 – Norman Mailer published his first novel, The Naked and the Dead.
1961 – The first group of “Freedom Riders” left Washington, D.C., to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.
1964 – The Pulitzer Prize jury failed for the first time to award winners in the areas of fiction, drama and music.
1970 – Four students at Kent State University in Ohio were fatally shot by National Guard members during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.
1977 – Former President Richard M. Nixon spoke with interviewer, David Frost in the first of four television interviews.
Chief Writing Wolf 