Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Thursday, April 4, the 94th day of 2002 with 271 to follow. The moon is in its last quarter. Advertisement The morning star is Mercury. The evening stars are Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include social reformer Dorothea Dix in 1802; inventor Linus Yale, developer of the cylinder lock, in 1821; dance school founder Arthur Murray in 1895; baseball Hall-of-Famer Tristram Speaker in 1888; author/playwright Robert E. Sherwood in 1896; broadcast news commentator John Cameron Swayze in 1906; blues musician Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, in 1915; author Maya Angelou in 1928 (age 74); actor Anthony Perkins in 1932; baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1938; South African musician Hugh Masekela in 1939 (age 63); author Kitty Kelley in 1942 (age 60); and actors Craig T. Nelson in 1946 (age 56), Christine Lahti in 1950 (age 52) and Robert Downey Jr. in 1965 (age 37). Advertisement On this date in history: In 1818, Congress approved the first flag of the United States. In 1841, President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia after serving for one month. He was the ninth U.S. president and the first to die in office. In 1887, Susanna Medora Salter was elected as the first woman mayor in the United States, serving for one year as head of the municipal government of Argonia, Kan. In 1896, the Yukon gold rush began with the announcement of a strike in the Northwest Territory of Canada. In 1949, representatives of 11 nations gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the NATO alliance. In 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. In 1969, CBS canceled "The Smothers Brothers." The popular hour-long comedy series had often been at odds with network censors. In 1983, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off on its inaugural mission. In 1991, Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., and four others were killed when their chartered airplane collided with a helicopter over a schoolyard near Philadelphia. In 1992, small-town billionaire Sam Moore Walton, whose Wal-Mart retail store chain helped make him one of the world's richest men, died. Advertisement In 1993, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended their two-day summit in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, with a larger than expected U.S. aid pledge of $1.62 billion. Also in 1993, ceremonies were held in Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace, and in Memphis, the city where he died, to mark the 25th anniversary of the civil rights leader's assassination. In 1995, a Colorado man was convicted of trying to assassinate President Clinton in Oct. 1994. In 1999, several NATO countries announced they would take in refugees being forced out of Kosovo by Serbian forces. In 2000, the NASDAQ plunged 574 points (more than 13 percent) but then rose 500 points in one of the wildest days ever on Wall Street. In 2001, former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, ousted in January during a popular uprising, was indicted on charges he took millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks. A thought for the day: Plato said, "At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."
