| 1981: | | | American Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, died in Las Vegas, Nevada. |
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| 1961: | | | Russian cosmonaut Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human in outer space. |
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| 1945: | | | U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia. |
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| 1861: | | | Fort Sumter, one of the few military installations in the South still in Federal hands, came under fire from Confederate guns in Charleston, South Carolina, thus initiating the American Civil War. |
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| 1777: | | American statesman Henry Clay was born in Hanover county, Virginia. |
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| 1606: | | The Union Flag, precursor to the Union Jack, was adopted as the national flag of Great Britain. |
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| 1204: | | Alexius V, the last Greek emperor of a united Byzantium, fled Constantinople in the face of the Fourth Crusade. |
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