1865, Union forces occupied the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War.
1948, President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which gave over $12 billion in aid to European countries recovering after World War II, before ending in 1952.
1953, TV Guide first appeared on newsstands, selling for 15 cents. The first cover was of Desi Jr., the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
1968, less than 24 hours before he was assassinated, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers.
1968, North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.
1969, Jim Morrison of The Doors surrendered to authorities in Los Angeles to answer to indecent exposure charges filed against him following a Miami concert at which he allegedly showed his genitals.
1975, President Ford said the rest of the world should not regard losses in South Vietnam as a sign that American commitments would not be fulfilled elsewhere.
1979, Jane M. Byrne was elected mayor of Chicago, defeating Republican Wallace D. Johnson.
1985, The landmark Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood closed after 56 years in business.
1987, Stock prices rocketed on Wall Street as the Dow Jones industrial average soared 69.89 points, ending the day at a record 2390.34.
1989, The University Of Michigan Wolverines won the NCAA championship by defeating Seton Hall in overtime, 80-to-79.
1990, A delegation from the rebellious republic of Lithuania met with an adviser to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
1990, Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan died in suburban Los Angeles at age 66.
1991, The U.N. Security Council adopted a Gulf War truce resolution demanding that Iraq abolish weapons of mass destruction, renounce terrorism and pay reparations.
1995, Former United Way Of America President William Aramony was convicted in Alexandria, Virginia, of 25 counts of fraud for stealing nearly $600,000 from the nation’s biggest charity.
1996, An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and American business executives crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.
1996, the FBI raided a cabin near Lincoln, Montana, and arrested former college professor Theodore Kaczynski, accusing him of being the Unabomber, whose mail bombs had killed three people and injured 23 others since the 1970s.
1996, Former Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, the first black man elected mayor of a major U.S. city, died at age 68.
1999, NATO missiles struck downtown Belgrade for the first time, destroying the headquarters of security forces accused of waging a campaign against Kosovo Albanians.
2000, A federal judge in Washington ruled that Microsoft Corporation had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on competitors during the race to link Americans to the Internet.