On Dec. 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward.
In 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting āthe manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquorsā and sent it to the states for ratification.
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson, whose first wife, Ellen, had died the year before, married Edith Bolling Galt, a widow, at her Washington home.
Prohibition came into force at midnight on Jan. 16, 1920, and wouldn't end until the 1933 ratification of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment.
In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line.