On this day in 1800, the Library of Congress, the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
On this day in 1967, the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the first human to die during a spaceflight.
On this day in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in mission STS-31.