Today in history–February 6

1740: Lorenzo Corsini, who gave up a successful law practice to join the church and later became Pope Clement XII, dies at Rome.

1756: Aaron Burr, the prominent New York lawyer who would become the only sitting Vice President to be indicted for murder, is born at Newark, New Jersey.

1788: Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1815: The State of New Jersey issues the first charter for a railroad enterprise to John Stevens.

1826: The first 86 African-American emigrants from the United States found the town of Christopolis (later “Monrovia”) in the American Colonization Society’s African colony at “Liberia.”

1840: British officials and Maori chieftains agree to the Treaty of Waitangi, routinely regarded as the formal founding of New Zealand.

1843: The craze for “blackface” music begins when “Dan Emmet’s Virginia Minstrels” play their first “minstrel show” in the Bowery Theater, New York.  By 1860, the city will have twenty full-time resident minstrel companies.

1911: Ronald Wilson Reagan, who will become the first labor union president to be elected President of the United States, is born in Tampico, Illinois.

1914: Actor Thurl Ravenscroft is born at Norfolk, Nebraska.  His greatest role will be the voice of Kellogg’s “Tony the Tiger.”

1959: Texas Instruments’ Jack St. Clair Kilby filees the first patent application for the “integrated circuit.”

1985: The Perrier Company of France introduces its first new product in 123 years: flavored mineral water.

1991: Actor/comedian Danny Thomas, who will create a production company that makes many of TV’s most popular series (Andy Griffith Show, Mod Squad, Dick Van Dyke Show) dies in Los Angeles.

1994: Comic book artist Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzburg), who played a major role in creating many of the stars of the lucrative Marvel Comics empire (Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil) dies at age 76.