1204 – 4th Crusade occupies & plunders Constantinople. 1606 – The Union Flag, precursor to the Union Jack, was adopted as the national flag of Great Britain. 1811 – 1st US colonists on Pacific coast arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington. 1872 – Jesse James gang robs a bank in Columbia, Kentucky (1 dead/$1,500). 1927 – Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek begins counter revolution in Shanghai. 1961 – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth (Vostok 1). 1981 – NASA launched the first space shuttle, Columbia, which was designed to orbit Earth, transport people and cargo to and from orbiting spacecraft, and glide to a runway landing on its return to Earth. 1983 – Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago, was elected. 2014 – A forest fire swept into the port city of Valparaíso, Chile, destroying several thousand homes and claiming the lives of at least 16 people before it was extinguished several days later.
Births & Deaths: 1947 – American comedian David Letterman, best known as the host of his long-running late-night talk show, was born.
Sport: 1980 – US Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of the Moscow Olympic games.
Music: 1954 -Bill Haley and the Comets record “Rock Around Clock”.
TV & Film: 1932 – “Grand Hotel” directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Greta Garbo and John Barrymore premieres in New York, includes the line “I want to be alone” (Best Picture/Production 1932).
