On this date...

Nicolas Cooke

In 1776, Washington writes to Nicholas Cooke, the governor of Rhode Island, introducing Frederick William, Baron de Woedtke, a Prussian-born former officer who has been driven ashore by bad weather on Cape Cod. Woedtke is traveling from St. Domingo to Philadelphia with the specific purpose of offering his military service to the American cause and delivering letters of introduction to several members of Congress. Washington urges Cooke to extend hospitality and to direct him by the shortest and safest route to Philadelphia.

In 1778, Friedrich Wilhelm Rudolf Gerhard August, Freiherr von Steuben, a Prussian military officer, arrived at General George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge and commenced training soldiers in close-order drill, instilling new confidence and discipline in the demoralized Continental Army.

In 1779, Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark led about 170 men to attack the garrison of Fort Sackville. The plan was to capture British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton.

In 1792, the Humane Society of Massachusetts was incorporated to establish life-saving stations for distressed mariners

In 1813, the first US raw cotton-to-cloth mill was founded in Waltham, Massachusetts.

In 1822, Boston, home to cultural cornerstones such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard University, was granted a charter to become a city

In 1836, the Battle of the Alamo began as Mexican forces under the command of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna surrounded the installation and began a cannon bombardment.

In 1848, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, died at age 80 in Washington, D.C., two days after suffering a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives.

In 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., amid secrecy and tight security. With seven states having already seceded from the Union since Lincoln’s election, the threat of civil war hung in the air.

In 1870, Mississippi was readmitted to the United States following the American Civil War. The state had seceded from the Union in January 1861.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba to lease the area around Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

In 1927, US President Calvin Coolidge creates Federal Radio Commission (FRC)

In 1940, Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote one of his best-known songs, “This Land is Your Land.” It would become one of America's most famous folk songs.

In 1942, the first shelling of the U.S. mainland during World War II occurred as a Japanese submarine fired on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California.

In 1945, six U.S. servicemen raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. The Battle of Iwo Jima, part of the U.S. Pacific campaign against Japan, was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war.

In 1947, US General Eisenhower opened a drive to raise $170M in aid for European Jews

In 1954, a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received the first injections of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.

In 1976, the final meeting between Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and former US President Richard Nixon took place in Beijing, China.

In 1981, People magazine featured the drug ordeal of Mackenzie & Papa John Phillips.

In 1983, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

In 1985, the US Senate confirmed Edwin Meese as the 75th Attorney General.

In 1999, a jury in Jasper, Texas, convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the dragging death of an African-American man, James Byrd Jr.

In 2005, the Slovakia Summit 2005 began; George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin attended - 1st visit of a sitting US President to Slovakia

In 2011, in a major policy reversal, the Obama administration said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.

In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was fatally shot on a residential Georgia street; a white father and son had armed themselves and pursued him after seeing him running through their neighborhood. (Greg and Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted of murder, aggravated assault, and other charges and were sentenced to life in prison.)

In 2023, a federal judge handed singer R. Kelly a 20-year prison sentence for convictions that included producing child sexual abuse materials and federal sex trafficking charges, but said he would serve nearly all of the sentence simultaneously with a 30-year sentence imposed a year earlier on racketeering charges.

In 2023, former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison for rape in Los Angeles, on top of the 23 years he is already serving for sex crimes [1]

In 2024, Flaco, Eurasian eagle-owl, dies in Lower Manhattan nine months after escaping from Central Park Zoo.