On this date...

Sousa and the USMC Band

In 1892, First public appearance of John Philip Sousa's New Marine Band, at Stillman Music Hall in Plainfield, New Jersey

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first US secretary of state.

In 1789, Edmund Randolph becomes the 1st US Attorney General.

In 1905, Albert Einstein publishes paper on the special theory of relativity.

In 1914, The Federal Trade Commission was established.

In 1960, The first in a series of historic televised debates (seen by some 85 to 120 million viewers) between U.S. presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon was broadcast.

In 1969, Last recorded album by The Beatles, "Abbey Road," is released.

In 1972, American Museum of Immigration is dedicated.

In 1980, Lake Placid Olympic Village reopens as a federal correctional facility, fulfilling a Congressional requirement that the site be repurposed following the games. Built with athlete security in mind after the 1972 Olympic terrorist attacks, complex’s design made it uniquely suited for conversion into a prison.

In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet military officer, decided that a computer warning about a U.S. missile strike on the Soviet Union was a false alarm. He was correct, and he was later credited with avoiding an outbreak of nuclear war.

In 1983, The US loses the America’s Cup to a foreign team for the first time since the yacht race’s founding in 1851. The winner is Australia II, which beats its rival by 41 seconds.

In 1986, William H. Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd member.

In 1990, the Motion Picture Association of America announced it had created a new rating, NC-17, to replace the X rating.

In 1991, four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure in Oracle, Arizona, called Biosphere 2; they emerged from Biosphere 2 on this date in 1993.

In 1995, "George" magazine, published by John F. Kennedy Jr., premieres

In 2020, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, to the Supreme Court, to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Barrett would be confirmed the following month.)

In 2022, the NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft rammed an asteroid at roughly 14,000 mph in order to test a method of planetary defense.

In 2024, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region as a category 4 storm. It cut through multiple states in the southeastern U.S. over the following days and was responsible for more than 230 deaths, about half of them in North Carolina.