On this date...

Jane Toppan

In 1682, The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, landed at what is now Chester, Pa.

In 1775, Four hundred miles from Washington’s Cambridge headquarters, Lund Washington, the general’s cousin and farm manager, writes a detailed letter from Mount Vernon. Lund is doing all he can to safeguard Washington’s papers, land, and debts while planning how to defend Mount Vernon in case of a British attack. He proposes erecting a battery along the Potomac River to stop enemy ships.

In 1777, John Hancock resigned as president of Second Continental Congress. He had served since May 24, 1775 for a total of 890 days. Hancock held this position longer than any other.

In 1792, Mount Hood in Oregon is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton, who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

In 1811, First Ohio River steamboat leaves Pittsburgh for New Orleans

In 1901, Anarchist Leon Czolgosz was executed for the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley.

In 1901, In Amherst, Massachusetts, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.

In 1904, First intercity trucking service (Colorado City and Snyder, Texas)

In 1929, a massive stock sell-off was part of a series of economic events that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.

In 1940, a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number — 158 — from a glass bowl in America’s first peacetime military draft.

In 1942, The Alaska highway is completed.

In 1956, "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered as NBC's nightly TV newscast.

In 1956, Greek-American soprano Maria Callas makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of Bellini's "Norma"

In 1960, a chartered plane carrying the California Polytechnic State University football team crashed on takeoff from Toledo, Ohio, killing 22 of the 48 people on board.

In 1963, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. deeds his family property Fallingwater (1935), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

In 1966, The National Organization for Women was founded.

In 1969, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, successfully send the Stanford Research Institute a first-of-its-kind electronic message on ARPANET, the forerunner of the modern internet.

In 1969, Following several outbursts, the judge orders “Chicago Eight” defendant Bobby Seale gagged and chained to his chair during his trial.

In 1987, following the confirmation defeat of Robert H. Bork to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, President Ronald Reagan announced his next choice of Douglas H. Ginsburg, a nomination that fell apart over revelations of Ginsburg’s previous marijuana use.

In 1994, National Museum of American Indian joins the Smithsonian Institution and moves to the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

In 1998, Sen. John Glenn, at age 77, returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, retracing the trail he had blazed as the first American to orbit the Earth 36 years earlier.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden, in a videotaped statement, directly admitted for the first time that he had ordered the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy slammed ashore in New Jersey and slowly marched inland, devastating coastal communities and causing widespread power outages; the storm and its aftermath were blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S.

In 2015, Paul Ryan (Republican, Wisconsin) is elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives, succeeding John Boehner (Republican, Ohio).