On this date...

Juan Cabrillo

In 1492, Christopher Columbus misses Florida when he changes course.

In 1542, Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, on a voyage for Spain, is the first European to discover Catalina Island off the coast of California.

In 1763, King George III of Great Britain issues the 'Proclamation of 1763', closing lands in North America, north and west of the Allegheny Mountains, to English settlement.

In 1765, Stamp Act Congress meeting convened in New York City by representatives of nine of the American colonies to frame resolutions of “rights and grievances” and to petition the king of England and the British Parliament for repeal of the Stamp Act.

In 1777, Americans defeated the British at the 2nd Battle of Saratoga, near Bemis Heights, New York. General John Burgoyne surrendered 5,000 British and Hessian troops.

In 1780, Patriot militia under Colonel William Campbell defeated Loyalist militia at the Battle of King's Mountain in North Carolina.

In 1826, The Granite Railway, the first chartered railroad in the United States, began service.

In 1864, A Confederate attempt to regain ground that had been lost around Richmond, Virginia, is thwarted when Union troops turn back General Robert E. Lee’s assault at Darbytown Road.

In 1868, Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, N.Y.

In 1913, For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis—the automobile’s frame—is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique.

In 1916, On October 7, 1916, Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University, 222-0, in the most lopsided game in college football history. Coached by John Heisman, later namesake of college football's most famous trophy, Georgia Tech takes a 63-0 lead in the first quarter at Grant Field in Atlanta.

In 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 98 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.

In 1954, Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by New York's Metropolitan Opera.

In 1960, In the second of four televised debates, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon turn their attention to foreign policy issues.

In 1985, Lynette Woodard, captain of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic women's basketball team in 1984, becomes the first female player for the Harlem Globetrotters.

In 1992, trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, in the presence of President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In 1996, Fox News Channel, a satellite and cable news network created by Roger Ailes for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, was launched in the United States.

In 2001, Triggered by the September 11 attacks, the Afghanistan War began when U.S. and British warplanes started bombing Taliban targets.

In 2001, Crude oil resumes flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline after workers weld shut a bullet hole that causes 260,000 US gallons of oil to spill out.

In 2003, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, the most populous state in the nation with the world’s fifth-largest economy.

In 2008, The Federal Reserve announced a radical plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt, known as commercial paper, to get credit markets moving again.

In 2015, US President Barack Obama apologizes to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) President and the President of Afghanistan for the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz.