On this date...

Only known portrait of Thomas Neale

In 1691, Thomas Neale granted an English patent for the American postal service

In 1776, Preparation defines today’s General Orders. Washington directs that every regiment be fully supplied with 24 rounds of ammunition per man, each round accounted for through a chain of signed receipts, with deficiencies fined from a soldier’s pay. 

In 1776. In the first cruise of a Continental Navy squadron, Commodore Esek Hopkins sails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in command of eight ships with orders to destroy British shipping in the Chesapeake Bay and protect merchant shipping off the Carolinas.

In 1776, Congress had authorized printing money totaling $4,000,000 payable in Spanish milled dollars, or the equivalent in gold or silver.

In 1801, the US House of Representatives broke an Electoral College tie to elect Thomas Jefferson president.

In 1815, the Treaty of Ghent was ratified by the US Senate and signed by President James Madison, ending the War of 1812, over a month after it was signed in Europe

In 1864, during the American Civil War, the Confederate Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship when it successfully attacked the USS Housatonic in the waters off Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1865, the soldiers from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army ransacked Columbia, South Carolina, and left a charred city in their wake.

In 1897, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, better known as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), was founded in Washington, D.C., as the National Congress of Mothers.

In 1906, Union leaders Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer and George Pettibone are taken into custody by Idaho authorities and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They are put on a special train in Denver, Colorado, following a secret, direct route to Idaho because the officials had no legal right to arrest the three union executives in Colorado. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), of which Haywood was president, tried in vain to stop the unofficial arrests.

Idaho had resorted to this gambit in an attempt to bring the union leaders to justice for the assassination of former governor Frank Steunenberg.

In 1913, the US State of Oregon becomes second to enact a minimum wage law

In 1943, Dow Chemical and Corning Glass Works formed a joint venture to explore and produce silicon materials, based upon the work of James Franklin Hyde

In 1947, with the words, “Hello! This is New York calling,” the U.S. Voice of America (VOA) began its first radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union. The VOA effort was an important part of America’s propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In 1959, Vanguard 2 launched as the first weather satellite.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state must be roughly equal in population.

In 1972, the Volkswagen Beetle passes Ford Model T to become the world’s bestselling car.

In 1972, US President Richard Nixon left Washington, D.C. for a groundbreaking trip to China.

In 1973, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger met Chinese leader Mao Zedong, where the latter jokingly offered to send 10 million Chinese women to the United States

In 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms for a series of gruesome murders; he was later killed by a fellow prison inmate.

In 1995, Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings; he was later sentenced to 315 years in prison.

In 1996, World chess champion Garry Kasparov triumphed over IBM's Deep Blue computer. The two were competing in a six-round tournament to determine whether a machine could defeat a human in chess. The answer was yes—Kasparov had lost the first game of the tournament, a moment he described as “shattering”—but Kasparov battled back for the overall win, scoring three victories and two draws. “I could figure out its priorities and adjust my play,” he later explained. “It couldn't do the same to me.”

In 2013, Danica Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.

In 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed climate change requires urgent action and that only a small "window of time" remained open.

In 2016, Chief Executive Tim Cook confirmed Apple would contest an FBI order to unlock the phone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.

In 2020, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion to help fight climate change.

In 2021, Texan senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico ,with his family amid a winter disaster in his state, igniting widespread condemnation