1818 – Illinois became the 21st state.
1847 – Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper.
1967 – Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, performed the first human heart transplant.
1979 – Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum before a rock concert by The Who.
1984 – Poison gas leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, in the world’s worst chemical disaster. More than 4,000 people died.
1989 – Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.
