► In 1733, James Oglethorpe and some 120 English colonists arrived at Charleston, S.C., while en route to settle in present-day Georgia.
► In 1794, President Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. (The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.)
► In 1864, composer Stephen Foster died impoverished in a New York hospital at 37. (In his pocket was a note that read: “Dear friends and gentle hearts.’’)
► In 1898, Emile Zola’s famous defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, “J’accuse,’’ was published in Paris.
► In 1962, comedian Ernie Kovacs died in a car crash in West Los Angeles 10 days before his 43d birthday.
► In 1966, Robert C. Weaver was named secretary of Housing and Urban Development by President Lyndon B. Johnson; Weaver became the first black Cabinet member.
► In 1978, Hubert H. Humphrey, the former vice president, died in Waverly, Minn., at 66.
► In 1982, an Air Florida 737 crashed into Washington’s 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River after taking off in a snowstorm, killing 78 people; four passengers and a flight attendant survived. (Half an hour after the crash, a Washington Metro train derailed in rush hour, killing three passengers.)
► In 1987, West German police arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner. (Although convicted and sentenced to life, Hamadi was paroled by Germany in December 2005; he is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.)
► In 1990, L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the nation’s first elected black governor as he took the oath of office in Richmond.
► In 1992, Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for its soldiers during World War II, citing newly uncovered documents that showed the Japanese Army had had a role in abducting the so-called “comfort women.’’
► In 2001, an earthquake estimated by the US Geological Survey at magnitude 7.7 struck El Salvador; more than 840 people were killed.
► In 2002, the off-Broadway musical “The Fantasticks’’ finished its original run of nearly 42 years and 17,162 shows.
