On this date...

Boston Female Medical College

In 1623, Fire at Plymouth, Massachusetts, destroys several buildings.

In 1683, The English crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.

In 1765, The Stamp Act went into effect, marking the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all American colonial commercial and legal papers.

In 1777, the USS Ranger, with a crew of 140 men under the command of John Paul Jones, leaves Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the naval port at Brest, France, where it will stop before heading toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War.

In 1784, Maryland grants citizenship to Lafayette and his descendants.

In 1800, President John Adams, in the last year of his only term as president, moved into the newly constructed President’s House, the original name for what is known today as the White House.

In 1802, Delegates meet at Chillicothe, Ohio, to form a state constitutional convention.

In 1834, First published reference to poker, as a Mississippi riverboat game.

In 1848, Boston Female Medical College opens, becoming the first institution in the US teaching medical subjects to women. The first class had 12 students and 2 teachers.

In 1859, The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina lighthouse is lit for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for 19 miles (30 kilometers).

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln names George Brinton McClellan general in chief of the Union army, replacing the aged and infirm Winfield Scott.

In 1913, Less than a week after the US non-intervention promise, President Woodrow Wilson demands that Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta resign.

In 1921, National Birth Control League & Voluntary Parenthood League merge as American Birth Control League

In 1924, William Tilghman is murdered by a corrupt Prohibition agent who resented Tilghman’s refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Tilghman, one of the famous marshals who enacted law and order in the West, was 71 years old.

In 1938, In a horse race that captured the imagination of Americans during the Great Depression, Seabiscuit defeated War Admiral by four lengths.

In 1945, Chicagoan John H. Johnson published Ebony, the first U.S. mass-market magazine aimed at a Black audience. Ebony promised to talk honestly about race, but also “mirror the happier side of Negro life—the positive, everyday achievements from Harlem to Hollywood.”

In 1946, the New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Huskies in the first NBA game, 68-66. The Knickerbockers are led by guard Leo Gottlieb, who scored 14 points in the game played before 7,090 fans at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

In 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists, members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

In 1952 on an atoll of the Marshall Islands, Edward Teller and other American scientists tested the first thermonuclear bomb, its power resulting from an uncontrolled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

In 1954, US Senate admonishes Joseph McCarthy because of his slander campaigns.

In 1957, Mackinac Straits Bridge, Michigan, the world longest suspension bridge, connecting Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas, opens to traffic.

In 1971, Eisenhower dollar put into circulation.

In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter raises the minimum wage from $2.30 to $3.35 an hour, effective from 1st Jan 1981.

In 1982, the first Japanese car produced in the U.S. rolled off the assembly line at the Honda manufacturing plant in Marysville, Ohio.

In 1991, Clarence Thomas took his place as a justice on the Supreme Court.

In 1994, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched its Wind spacecraft on a mission that would include a “halo orbit” between the Sun and Earth to explore the space environment there.

In 1995, peace talks opened in Dayton, Ohio, with the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia present.

In 2023, The Texas Rangers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks, 4–1, to win the franchise's first World Series.