Today:
1. 1789: George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States.
2. 1803: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in the Louisiana Purchase, effectively doubling the size of the nation.
3. 1812: Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state of the United States.
4. 1900: Hawaii was organized as an official U.S. territory.
5. 1939: The New York World’s Fair opened, which was billed as a look at “the world of tomorrow.”
6. 1945: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin as Allied forces closed in on the city.
7. 1975: The Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, leading to the unification of Vietnam under communist control.
8. 1980: Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated, and her daughter Beatrix became queen.
9. 1993: The World Wide Web went public when CERN put the software in the public domain.
10. 2004: The United States admitted there was no WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq, marking a significant turn in the Iraq War narrative.