Colin Luther Powell (April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021)

(Fox News) – Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state, died
Monday at 84 years of age from COVID-related complications,
even though he was fully vaccinated, his family announced.

His death, medical experts say, underscores the need for COVID
-19 vaccine booster shots among older adults and high-risk
populations to shore up protection.

Powell was afflicted with other diseases, including Parkinson’s
and the blood cancer multiple myeloma, which could hamper
recovery from COVID-19 infection, according to reports. His
family didn’t specify when Powell received vaccine, or whether
he had taken a booster shot.

In 1931 Herbert Hoover signed a bill into law officially adopting “The
Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem of the United States 
of America.

Herbert Clark Hoover
(August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964)

Hoover served as the 31st president of the
United States from 1929 to 1933.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901)

On this day in 1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from
Natchez, Mississippi, was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming
the first African American ever to sit in Congress.

During the Civil War, Revels, a college-educated minister, helped
form African American army regiments for the Union cause,
started a school for freed men, and served as a chaplain for the
Union army. Posted to Mississippi, Revels remained in the
former Confederate state after the war and entered into
Reconstruction-era Southern politics.

Hiram Revels taking the oath of office.

MIKE GRACIA

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004)

President Jimmy Carter granting an unconditional pardon to draft
dodgers.

On January 21, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of men who
evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

In total, some 100,000 young Americans went abroad in the
late 1960s and early ’70s to avoid serving in the war. Ninety
percent went to Canada, where after some initial controversy
they were eventually welcomed as immigrants. Still others
hid inside the United States. In addition to those who avoided
the draft, a relatively small number—about 1,000—of deserters
from the U.S. armed forces also headed to Canada.