On this date...

Fantasia - 1940 version

In 1775, Continental Army Brigadier General Richard Montgomery captured Montreal, Canada, without opposition.

In 1776, The Continental Navy ship Alfred, commanded by Captain John Paul Jones, along with Continental sloop Providence, commanded by Captain Hoysteed Hacker, capture the British transport Mellish, carrying 10,000 winter uniforms later used by General George Washington’s troops.

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy covering several topics, among them the newly adopted Constitution and the operations of government under it.

In 1851, The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what would become Seattle, Washington.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln pays a late night visit to General George McClellan, who Lincoln had recently named general in chief of the Union army. The general retired to his chambers before speaking with the president.

In 1909, The Ballinger-Pinchot scandal erupts when Colliers magazine accuses Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of shady dealings in Alaskan coal lands. It is, in essence, a conflict rooted in contrasting ideas about how to best use and conserve western natural resources.

In 1909, 259 men and boys were killed when fire erupted inside a coal mine in Cherry, Illinois.

In 1922, George M. Cohan's musical "Little Nellie Kelly" opens at the Liberty Theatre, NYC; runs for 276 performances - Cohan's longest run.

In 1927, The Holland Tunnel connecting Manhattan to Jersey City opens at midnight to thousands of cars waiting to drive through the world’s longest underwater vehicular tunnel. Earlier that day, some 20,000 pedestrians walked the entire 9,250-foot length.

In 1933, First modern sit-down strike by Hormel meatpackers in Austin, Minnesota.

In 1938, America's first saint, Mother Frances Cabrini, beatified.

In 1940, Walt Disney’s groundbreaking animated film "Fantasia" premieres.

In 1946, Scientist Vincent Schaefer produces the first artificial snow by dropping pellets of dry ice from an airplane into a supercooled cloud over Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts.

In 1953, In an example of the lengths to which the “Red Scare” in America is going, Mrs. Thomas J. White of the Indiana Textbook Commission calls for the removal of references to the book Robin Hood from textbooks used by the state’s schools. Mrs. White claimed that there was “a communist directive in education now to stress the story of Robin Hood because he robbed the rich and gave it to the poor.

In 1956, Montgomery bus boycott pushes US Supreme Court to rule Alabama bus segregation illegal.

In 1971, the U.S. space probe Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.

In 1974, a young man shoots and kills his entire family with a 35-caliber Marlin rifle as his parents, two brothers and two sisters apparently sleep. The gruesome murder of the DeFeo family shakes up the sleepy Long Island town of Amityville—and leads to decades of horror storytelling.

In 1974, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood is killed in a car accident near Crescent, Oklahoma, north of Oklahoma City. Silkwood worked as a technician at a plutonium plant operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation, and had been critical of the plant’s health and safety procedures.

In 1980, Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, a biopic about boxer Jake La Motta, had its world premiere and became an American classic, especially known for the Oscar-winning performance of Robert De Niro.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In 1987, Sonny & Cher perform together for the final time, singing "I Got You Babe" on 'Late Night with David Letterman' (NBC).

In 1998, President Bill Clinton agreed to pay Paula Jones $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit.

In 2003, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was thrown off the bench by a judicial ethics panel after refusing to remove a granite Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.

In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to try professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in civilian court in New York City. (The Obama administration later backed off the plan.)