• 1620 Great Patent granted to Plymouth Colony.
• 1679 Great panic occurs in Europe over the close approach of a comet.
• 1762 Spain acquires Louisiana.
• 1783 Washington orders the Continental Army disbanded.
• 1793 Stephen A. Austin, Texas colonizer, born.
• 1868 1st black elected to Congress (John Menard, Louisiana).
• 1868 Ulysses S. Grant wins presidential election.
• 1888 Jack the Ripper kills last victim.
• 1896 William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan for President.
• 1908 William Howard Taft elected 27th President.
• 1917 1st class mail now costs 3 cents.
• 1926 Annie Oakley dies.
• 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt wins landslide over Alfred Landon.
• 1949 Larry Holmes, boxer and businessman, born.
• 1952 Roseanne Barr born.
• 1954 Adam Ant, punk rocker, born.
• 1957 USSR launches Sputnik 2 with a dog (Laika), 1st animal in orbit.
• 1964 Lyndon Baines Johnson soundly defeats Barry Goldwater for President.
• 1979 5 mortally wounded during anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration in North Carolina.
• 1979 63 Americans taken hostage at U.S. Embassy (Teheran, Iran).
• 1983 Jesse Jackson launches his 1st campaign for the Presidency.
• 1992 Bill Clinton elected U.S. President.
• 1997 California law ends affirmative action.

• 1492 Christopher Columbus learns of maize (corn) from the Indians of Cuba.
• 1605 Gunpowder Plot; Catholics try to blow up English Parliament; plot uncovered and leader Guy Fawkes hanged.
• 1781 John Hanson elected 1st President of the U.S.
• 1855 Eugene Debs, labor organizer, Socialist presidential candidate, born. 1857 Ida Tarbell, muckraker, born.
• 1873 Susan B. Anthony fined $100 for voting.
• 1885 Will Durant, historian, born.
• 1895 1st U.S. patent granted for auto.
• 1911 Roy Rogers, cowboy/singer, born.
• 1912 Woodrow Wilson beats Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft for the presidency.
• 1913 Vivien Leigh, actress (Gone with the Wind), born.
• 1917 General Pershing and U.S. troops see action on the Western Front for the first time (World War I).
• 1917 Supreme Court decision (Buchanan v. Warley) strikes down Louisiville, KY, ordinance requiring blacks and whites to live in separate areas.
• 1931 Ike Turner, singer, born.
• 1935 Maryland Court of Appeals order University of Maryland to admit a black student (Donald Murray).
• 1935 Parker Brothers launches game of Monopoly.
• 1940 Franklin Roosevelt wins and unprecedented 3rd term.
• 1942 Art Garfunkle, singer/actor, born.
• 1946 John F. Kennedy elected to House of Representatives.
• 1959 AFL announced with 8 teams.
• 1968 Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace for presidency.
• 1974 Ella Grasso elected 1st women U.S. governor not related to previous governor (CT).
• 1974 Walter E. Washington becomes first elected mayor of Washington D.C.
• 1977 Guy Lombardo, orchestra leader, dies at 75.
• 1979 Al Capp, cartoonist, dies.
• 2004 Barach Obama elected President and Joe Biden Vice President.

• 1731 African-American writer/surveyor Benjamin Banneker born.
• 1799 Napoleon becomes dictator of France.
• 1898 African-American singer Paul Robeson born.
• 1904 First airplane flight for over 5 minutes.
• 1924 Miriam (Ma) Ferguson elected first woman governor of Texas.
• 1938 "The Night of the Broken Glass" - Jews attacked in Munich.
• 1953 Poet Dylan Thomas dies.
• 1965 The Great Northeast Blackout, the biggest power failure in U.S. history (30 million people affected).
• 1969 Pepa of Salt 'n' Pepa born.
• 1984 Vietnam Veterans Memorial completed.
• 1989 East Germany opened Berlin Wall and bo4rder.

• 1483 Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, born.
• 1775 U.S. Marine Corps established by Congress.
• 1801 Kentucky outlaws dueling.
• 1864 Austrian Archduke Maximilian became emperor of Mexico.
• 1871 Stanley presumes to meet Livingston in Central Africa.
• 1882 Frances Perkins, 1st woman Cabinet member (Secretary of Labor), born.
• 1891 1st Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting held in Boston.
• 1898 Race riot in Wilmington, NC, (8 blacks killed).
• 1917 41 suffragists are arrested in front of the White House.
• 1928 Hirohito enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
• 1951 1st long distance telephone call without operator assistance.
• 1956 Sinbad, comedian/actor, born.
• 1960 Senate passes landmark Civil Right Bill.
• 1969 "Sesame Street" premieres on PBS TV.
• 1976 Utah Supreme Court OKs execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore (Executioners Song).

• 
  1620 41 pilgrims land in Massachusetts, sign Mayflower Compact.
• 1647 Massachusetts passes 1st U.S. compulsory school attendance law.
• 1744 Abigail Adams, second first lady, born.
• 1821 Fyodor Milchailovich Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, born.
• 1865 Mary Edwar Walker, 1st Army female surgeon, awarded Medal of Honor.
• 1885 George S. Patton, general ("Old Blood and Guts"), born.
• 1889 Washington admitted as the 42nd state.
• 1896 Charles "Lucky" Luciano, mafia gangster, born.
• 1904 Alger Hiss, State Department official and alleged spy, born.
• 1918 Armistice Day - World War I ends at 11 a.m. on Western Front.
• 1921 President Harding dedicates Tomb of Unknown Soldier.
• 1922 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., author, born.
• 1933 "Great Black Blizzard" - 1st great dust storm in the Great Plains (Dust Bowl).
• 1939 Kate Smith 1st sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America."
• 1942 During World War II, Germany completes their occupation of France.
• 1962 Demi Moore, actress, born.
• 1969 Jim Morrison arrested on an airplane by the FBI for drunkenness.
• 1974 Leonardo DiCaprio, actor, born.
• Veterans' Day

• 324 BCE Origin of Era of Alexander
• 1775 General Washington forbids recruiting officers enlisting blacks.
• 1790 Letitia Christian Tyler, 1st wife of President Tyler, born.
• 1815 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist, born.
• 1859 Jules Leotard performs 1st Flying Trapeze circus act (Paris). He also designed the garment that bears his name.
• 1927 Trotsky expelled from the Soviet Union; Stalin becomes undisputed dictator.
• 1933 1st known photo of Loch Ness monster (or whatever) is taken.
• 1933 1st Sunday football game in Philadelphia (previously illegal).
• 1933 Nazis receive 92% of vote in Germany.
• 1934 Charles Manson, criminal/cult leader, born.
• 1945 Neil Young, singer, born.
• 1954 Ellis Island, immigration station in New York Harbor, closed.
• 1977 New Orleans elects 1st black mayor, Ernest Morial.
• 1991 American Airlines flight 587 crashes in New York killing 265.

• 1849 Soviet writer Dostoevsky was sentenced to death.
• 1907 Oklahoma became the 46th state.
• 1917 Federal Reserve System began.
• 1960 Actor Clark Gable dies.
• 1961 Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas dies.
• 1962 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA scored 73 points in one game.
• 1967 Actress Lisa Bonet born.
• 1973 Alaska Pipeline authorized.
• 1981 Luke married Laura on "General Hospital."

• 1558 Elizabeth I ascends English throne upon death of Queen Mary.
• 1734 John Zenger, arrested for libel against New York's colonial government (later acquitted).
• 1800 Congress held 1st session in Washington D.C.
• 1869 Suez Canal opens (Egypt).
• 1913 Panama Canal opens.
• 1925 Rock Hudson, actor, born.
• 1942 Marin Scorsese, director, born.
• 1973 President Nixon told AP "...people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
• 1993 U.S. Congress votes for NAFTA.

• 1307 William Tell shoots apple off his son's head.
• 1497 Bartolomeu Dias discovers Cape of Good Hope.
• 1805 30 women meet at Mrs. Silas Lee's home in Wiscasset, Maine, to organize Female Charitable Society, the first woman's club in America.
• 1820 U.S. Navy Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer discovers Antarctica.
• 1865 Mark Twain publishes "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
• 1886 Chester A. Arthur (21st President) dies at 56.
• 1894 1st newspaper Sunday color comic section published (NY World).
• 1901 George Gallup, public opinion pollster, born.
• 1913 Lincoln Deachey performs 1st airplane loop-the-loop.
• 1928 Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse debuts in New York in "Steamboat Willie."
• 1949 Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers, named NL's MVP.
• 1964 J. Edgar Hoover describes Martin Luther King as "most notorious liar."
• 1969 Joseph P. Kennedy dies at 81.
• 1991 Muslim Shites release hostages Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.

• 1493 Christopher Columbus discovers Puerto Rico on his 2nd voyage.
• 1752 George Rogers Clark, frontier military leader in the Revolution, born.
• 1831 James A. Garfiels, 20th President, born.
• 1863 Lincoln delivers his address in Gettysburg.
• 1874 William "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall (NYC) conveicted of defrauding the city of $6 million, sentenced to 12 years.
• 1887 Emma Lazarus, poet ("Give us your tired and poor"), dies in NY at 38.
• 1905 Tommy Dorsey, orchestra leader, born.
• 1917 Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister, born.
• 1919 U.S. Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations.
• 1921 Roy Campanella, baseball catcher, born.
• 1926 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.S. amboassador to UN, born.
• 1933 Larry King, talk show host, born.
• 1936 Dick Cavett, talk show host, born.
• 1938 Ted Turner, broadcasting mogul, born.
• 1942 Calvin Klein, fashion designer, born.
• 1959 Ford cancels the Edsel.
• 1962 Jodie Foster, actress, born.
• 1969 Apollo 12's Conrad and Bean become 3rd and 4th humans on the Moon.
• 1980 CBS TV bans Calvin Klein's jeans ad featuring Brooke Shields.
• 1985 President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for 1st time.
• Equal Opportunity Day

• 1804 Franklin Pierce, 14th President, born.
• 1859 Billy the Kid (William Bonney), criminal, born.
• 1863 Patent granted for a process of making color photographs.
• 1887 Boris Karloff, horror actor, born.
• 1888 Harpo Marx, actor/comedian, born.
• 1899 1st jukebox(San Francisco) begins playing.
• 1903 Enrico Caruso has his U.S. debut at the Metropolitan Opera (NY).
• 1936 1st issue of Life Magazine published.
• 1942 Coast Guard Woman's Auxiliary (SPARS) authorized.
• 1963 JFK's body, lay in repose in the East Room of the White House.
• 1991 Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, dies of AIDS at 46.

• 1703 1st Lutheran pastor ordained in America..
• 1784 Zachary Taylor, 12th President, born.
• 1832 South Carolina passes Ordinance of Nullification.
• 1859 Charles Darwin publishes "on the Origin of Species."
• 1864 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter, born.
• 1868 Scott Joplin, creator of ragtime, born.
• 1871 National Rifle Association organized.
• 1874 Joseph F. Glidden patents barbed wire.
• 1888 Dale Carnegie, author (How to Win Friends and Influence People), born.
• 1925 William Buckley, right-wing commentator, born.
• 1946 Ted Bundy, serial murderer, born.
• 1947 Un-American Activities Committee finds "Hollywood 10" in contempt because of their refusal to reveal whether they were communists.
• 1954 1st U.S. Presidential airplane christened.
• 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald is shot dead by Jack Ruby.
• 1971 Dan "DB" Cooper parachutes from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000.

• 1715 2st English patent granted to an American for processing corn.
• 1817 1st sword swallower in U.S. performs.
• 1835 Andrew Carnegie, steel industrialist, born.
• 1841 35 Amistad survivors return to Africa.
• 1846 Carrie Nation, scourge of barkeepers and drinkers, born.
• 1867 Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
• 1884 John B. Meyenberg patents evaporated milk.
• 1894 Greenback Party organizes in Indianapolis.
• 1914 Joe DiMaggio, Yankee Clipper, born.
• 1935 Gloria Steinem, feminist/writer, born.
• 1938 Charles Starkwether, serial murderer, born.
• 1960 John F. Kewnnedy, Jr., son of JFK, forn.
• 1963 JFK laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
• 1978 American Airlines DC-10 crashes on takeoff from Chicago, kills 275.
• 1990 Leck Walesa wins in Poland's 1st popular election.

• 1782 Britain recognized U.S. independence.
• 1836 Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain) born.
• 1874 British leader Winston Churchill born.
• 1900 Writer Oscar Wilde dies.
• 1924 Shirley Chisolm, first African-Aerican female Congress member, born.
• 1930 G. Gordon Liddy, Watergate participant/conservative talk show host, born.
• 1936 Radical activist Abbie Hoffman born.
• 1939 The USSR attacked Finland.
• 1954 June Pointer of the Pointer Sisters born.
• 1954 Alabama woman was struck by meteorite.
• 1955 Rocker Billy Idol born.
• 1991 93 car, 11 truck accident in Sanfrancisco killed 17.
• 1993 Brady Bill signed into law requiring 5-day waiting period to buy guns.
• 1996 Singer Tiny Tim died.

• 1804 Emperor Napoleon marries Josephine.
• 1824 House of Representatives begins to end election deadlock between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay - Adams eventually won.
• 1835 Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.
• 1878 First White House telephone installed.
• 1891 James Naismith creates the game of basketball.
• 1896 First certified public accountants receive certificates (NY).
• 1903 "The Great Train Robbery," the first western firlm, released.
• 1913 First drive-up gasoline station opens (Pittsburgh).
• 1913 Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford.
• 1917 Boys Town founded by Father Edward Flanagan.
• 1919 Lady Nancy Astor sworn-in as 1st female member of British Parliament.
• 1921 1st U.S. helium-filled dirigible makes 1st flight.
• 1922 1st skywriting over the U.S. - "Hello USA" - by Captain Turner, RAF.
• 1929 Game of BINGO invented by Edwin S. Lowe.
• 1935 Woody Allen, actor/director, born.
• 1941 Japanese emperor Hirohito signs declaration of war.
• 1942 Gasoline rationed in U.S.
• 1943 Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin agree to D-Day operation.
• 1945 Bette Midler, actress/singer, born.
• 1955 Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus.
• 1957 Sam Cooke and Buddy Holly and Crickets debut on Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1959 The 1st color photograph of Earth received from outer space.
• 1969 U.S. government holds its first draft lottery since World War II.
• 1978 President Carter more than doubles national park system size.
• 1982 Michael Jackson releases "Thriller."
• 1987 Digging begins to link England and France under the English Channel.
• 1988 Benazir Bhutto named 1st female Prime Minister of a Moslem country (Pakistan).
• 1990 British and French workers meet in English Channel's tunnel (Chunnel).
• 1992 Amy Fisher sentenced 3-15 years for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
• 1994 Ernesto Zedillo inaugurated as President of Mexico.

• 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowned 1st emperor of France in Paris by Pope Pius VII.
• 1812 James Madison re-elected President of US.
• 1814 Marquis de Sade, writer, dies at 74.
• 1816 1st savings bank in US opens (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society).
• 1823 President James Monroe declares his "Monroe Doctrine."
• 1840 William H. Harrison elected President of US.
• 1859 John Brown, radical abolitionist, hanged in Charles Town WV at 59.
• 1901 King Camp Gillette begins selling safety razor blades.
• 1927 1st Model A Fords sold for $385.
• 1929 1st skull of Peking man found.
• 1932 "Adventures of Charlie Chan" 1st heard on NBC radio.
• 1933 Fred Astaire's 1st film, "Dancing Lady," is released.
• 1939 New York's La Guardia Airport begins operations.
• 1941 Yamamoto sends his flet to Pearl Harbor.
• 1942 1st controlled nuclear chain reaction.
• 1952 1st human birth televised to public.
• 1954 US Senate censures Joe McCartthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."
• 1957 Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" reaches #1.
• 1961 Fidel Castro declares he's a Marxist and will lead Cuba to Communism.
• 1970 Environmental Protection Agency begins.
• 1980 4 American Maryknoll nuns killed by death squads in El Salvador.
• 1982 1st permanent artifical heart successfully implanted in Barney Clark who lived 112 days.
• 1986 Desi Arnaz, actor, dies of lung cancer at 69.
• 1994 Jury finds Heidi Fleiss guilty of running a call girl ring.

• 1621 Galileo perfects the telescope.
• 1775 1st official U.S. flag raising aboard naval vessel Alfred.
• 1818 Illinois admitted as 21st state.
• 1828 Andrew Jackson elected 7th President of the U.S.
• 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio, 1st truly coeducational college, opens.
• 1847 Frederick Douglass published first issue of his newspaper "north Star."
• 1968 Trial of Jefferson Davis, Confederate President, begins.
• 1910 Neon lights first publically seen (Paris Auto Show).
• 1910 Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, dies.
• 1931 Alka Seltzer goes on sale.
• 1948 1st U.S. woman army officer not in medical corps sworn-in.
• 1948 Ozzy Osbourne, rock vocalist, born.
• 1949 KRLD (now KDFW) TV channel 4 in Dallas-Fort Worth begins.
• 1962 Edith Spurlock Sampson sworn-in as lst U.S. black female judge.
• 1964 Police arrest 800 protesting students at University of California at Berkeley.
• 1967 1st human heart transplant performed (Dr. Christiaan Barnard, South Africa).
• 1979 11 trampled to death at Cincinnati Who concert.
• 1992 UN Security Council votes unanimously for US led forces to enter Somalia.
• Heart Transplant Day.

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