The House of Representatives has voted 246 to 183 to jolt the nation's struggling economy with a $787.2 billion stimulus package, designed to provide quick tax relief and create or save some 3.5 million jobs. The Senate passage is expected to take place later today, and President Obama is likely to sign it the following week. It will provide up to thirty-three weeks of additional jobless benefits in high-unemployment states, funds to help the poor and those with disabilities with health care costs, and payments of $250 to retirees, supplemental security income recipients and veterans who get pensions or disability payments. The ARRA is also known as the Stimulus.

The first well-documented U.S. birth of quintuplets was five boys born at Watertown, Wisconsin, to Mrs Edna Beecham Kanouse and her husband Edward. Though the babies appeared normally developed, one was stillborn, three died within minutes of delivery, and the remaining one survived only a few hours. Their total birth weight was 10-lb 2-oz. The doctor, and the father who fetched him arrived after the birth, delayed by heavy snow. The mother had another child several years later, and died a few months thereafter from a contagious disease contracted while caring for a sick friend. Until the 28 May 1934 birth of the famous healthy Dionne quintuplets in Canada, the longest known survival of a quint was 55 days, born in Lisbon, Portugal (1866).