1. Rhode Island became the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the United States Constitution on April 6, 1790. After a long and bitter debate, the state narrowly approved the document by a vote of 34 to 32, paving the way for its adoption and the establishment of a new federal government.
2. The first organized labor strike in Rhode Island occurred on April 6, 1824, when shoemakers in Providence walked off the job to demand higher wages and better working conditions. The strike lasted for several weeks and eventually led to the formation of the first labor union in the state.
3. On April 6, 1863, the USS Montauk, a Union ironclad warship, sank the Confederate gunboat CSS Nashville in a naval battle off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. The Montauk was built at the Providence Navy Yard and was one of the most formidable warships of its time.
4. The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), one of the premier art and design colleges in the country, was founded on April 6, 1877. The school has produced many notable artists and designers, including Shepard Fairey, David Byrne, and Dale Chihuly.
5. The famous American writer and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on April 6, 1892. Millay spent much of her childhood in Camden, Maine, before attending Vassar College and eventually settling in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for her book "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver."
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