On this date...

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1776, from Cambridge, Washington drafted detailed instructions to Captain Charles Dyar, sending the schooner Harrison to prowl the sea around Boston: Seize supply ships, gather enemy intelligence from letters and papers, waste no powder, and treat prisoners with humanity.

In 1778, the 1st American military court-martial trial began in Cambridge, Massachusetts

In 1801, U.S. President John Adams nominated John Marshall to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1863, Union General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac began an offensive against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia that quickly bogged down as several days of heavy rain turned the roads of Virginia into a muddy quagmire. The campaign was abandoned a few days later.

In 1868, the Florida constitutional convention met in Tallahassee

In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first woman to testify before the US Congress

In 1870, Hiram R. Revels was elected to fill the unexpired term of Albert Brown as US Senator from Mississippi

In 1892, Several weeks after the chaotic birth of the sport, the first official basketball game—with new rules, many of which have been in place ever since—was played in Springfield, Massachusetts.

In 1905, the US began supervising the Dominican Republic's national and international debts, testing President Theodore Roosevelt's "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine

In 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.

In 1929, the first feature-length talking motion picture taken outdoors was "In Old Arizona."

In 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for an unprecedented fourth term in office.

In 1949, J. Edgar Hoover gave Shirley Temple a tear gas fountain pen

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address to nearly 1 million people. He was the youngest person to have been elected president, and his speech garnered praise from across the world. His address was also marked by the famous phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

In 1980, in a letter to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and a television interview, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proposed that the 1980 Summer Olympics be moved from the planned host city, Moscow, if the Soviet Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within a month.

In 1981, the Iran hostage crisis ended as 52 Americans were released after 444 days.

In 1982, Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a concert in Des Moines, Iowa.

In 1983, American gangster Roy DeMeo was found murdered in his car trunk after disappearing a few days earlier.

In 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed forthe first time.

In 2001, Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1975 had been the youngest US Secretary of Defense at 43 when he served for Gerald Ford, became the oldest Secretary of Defense when he was appointed to the same job 26 years later by George W. Bush.

In 2009, Barack Obama became the first Black president of the US.

In 2011, federal authorities orchestrated one of the biggest Mafia takedowns in FBI history, charging 127 suspected mobsters and associates in the Northeast with murders, extortion, and other crimes spanning decades.

In 2017, after defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

In 2020, following a rapid spread from its origin in Wuhan, China, the first U.S. case of the 2019 novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, was confirmed in a man from Washington State.

In 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as Vice-President of the United States, making her the first woman to serve in that office.

In 2025, Donald Trump was sworn into his second term. Only one other president, Grover Cleveland, has also served non-consecutive terms as president of the United States.