Today in History: April 4

2000: The government of South Korea ordered some 85 percent of the country's livestock markets closed in an attempt to end an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that had struck Asian livestock.

1985: A coup in Sudan ousts President Nimeiry and replaces him with General Dahab.

1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.

1974: Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth's home-run record.

1968: On this day in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader of the American civil rights movement who was in Memphis, Tennessee, to support a strike by the city's sanitation workers, was assassinated by James Earl Ray.

1959: In West Africa the Mali Federation, a short-lived union between the autonomous territories of the Sudanese Republic and Senegal, led by Léopold Senghor, came into being.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed, the founding member nations of this military alliance being Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

1941: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel captures the British held town of Benghazi in North Africa.

1918: The Battle of the Somme ends.

1917: The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.

1915: Muddy Waters, an American blues guitarist and singer who played a major role in creating the modern rhythm-and-blues style, was born.

1862: In the American Civil War, Union forces under George B. McClellan began the unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

1850: With a population totaling about 1,600, Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city.

1841: President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.

1818: The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.

1812: The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.

1785: Bettina von Arnim, one of the outstanding women writers in modern German literature, was born in Frankfurt am Main.

1581: Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.

527: In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.