On this date...

Laura Houghtaling Ingalls

In 1635, Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, as a result, he later founded the colony of Rhode Island.

In 1701, The Collegiate School of Connecticut – later Yale University – was chartered in New Haven.

In 1776, A group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco.

In 1779, Siege of Savannah (Georgia) during the American Revolutionary War: Continental Army General Casimir Pulaski is wounded by grapeshot (a type of cluster munition) and dies two days later.

In 1781, Americans under George Washington and the French under Comte de Rochambeau begin bombardment of Yorktown, the last battle of American Revolutionary War.

In 1855, American inventor Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine motor.

In 1855, Joshua Stoddard of Worcester, Massachusetts, patents the first calliope, a steam-powered musical instrument.

In 1863, Battle of Brandy Station, Virginia (Culpeper Court House, Bristoe Station).

In 1864, Battle of Tom's Brook: Confederate cavalry harassing Sheridan's campaign are defeated by General George A. Custer and Merritt's cavalry divisions.

In 1865, First US underground pipeline for carrying oil is laid in Pennsylvania.

In 1877, American Humane Association organizes in Cleveland.

In 1888, Built between 1848 and 1884 and dedicated in 1885, the Washington Monument, a marble-faced granite obelisk that honors the first U.S. president, George Washington, opened to the public in Washington, D.C.

In 1910, a coal dust explosion at the Starkville Mine in Colorado left 56 miners dead.

In 1930, Laura Houghtaling Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif. She was a distant cousin of the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In 1936, The Boulder Dam (later called Hoover Dam), on the Arizona-Nevada border, began generating electricity for such areas as Los Angeles, which celebrated with a parade.

In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a top-secret program that became known as the Manhattan Project.

In 1942, Chicago bootlegger Roger “The Terrible” Touhy escapes from Illinois’ Stateville Prison by climbing the guard’s tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he did not commit. He was recaptured a couple of months later.

In 1949, English ballerina Margot Fonteyn debuts in the US with her performance in Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty" at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York

In 1980, First consumer use of home banking by computer by United American Bank in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In 1985, Strawberry Fields in New York’s Central Park, a memorial to former Beatle John Lennon, was dedicated.

In 1990, David Souter took his seat as a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice.

In 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp is watching television in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole in the rear end of her car, an orange 1980 Chevy Malibu; a matching hole in the gravel driveway underneath the car; and in the hole, the culprit: what looked like an ordinary, bowling-ball–sized rock.

In 2001, The United Service Organizations (USO) appointed entertainer Wayne Newton as its official celebrity front man, replacing Bob Hope, who had served in that capacity since the early 1950s.

In 2001, Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., that later tested positive for anthrax spores were mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

In 2009, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

In 2012, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, to 30 to 60 years in prison following his conviction on 45 counts of sexual abuse of boys.