1790 – Rhode Island becomes the last of the original U.S. colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th state.
1848 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th state.
1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in the Atlanta Journal.
1953 – Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1973 – Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1988 – President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
2004 – The National World War II memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington.
