On this date...

In 1761, James Otis voiced opposition to English colonial rule in a speech before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.

In 1776, Washington authorized regimental commanders to apply for $500 warrants to send trusted officers into the countryside to purchase arms. Only sound muskets, preferably “Kings Musquets” with bayonets, are acceptable. Washington warns officers not to compete with Massachusetts county committees, whose parallel buying could inflate prices.

In 1803, Marbury v. Madison established the principle of judicial review in the US.

In 1831, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, was proclaimed.

In 1836, after sustaining 24 hours of cannon bombardment, William Barret Travis wrote a final letter from the Alamo. In almost poetic language, he called for aid while promising that he and his men would not surrender to the tyrant Antonio López de Santa Anna. 

In 1841, former President John Quincy Adams began to argue the Amistad case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1863, Arizona, formerly part of the Territory of New Mexico, was organized as a separate territory. The U.S. acquired the region under the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. Arizona became the forty-eighth state in 1912.

In 1863, A deserter from a Confederate receiving ship, Selma, gave the following information about submarine experiments and operations being conducted by Horace L. Hunley, James R. McClintock, B. A. Whitney, and others, at Mobile, where the work was transferred following the fall of New Orleans to Rear Admiral Farragut:

In 1864, the first Union inmates began arriving at Andersonville prison, which was still under construction in southern Georgia. Andersonville became synonymous with death as nearly a quarter of its inmates died in captivity.

In 1868, Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, was the first US parade with floats.

In 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 126–47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson, whose Reconstruction policies regarding the South after the Civil War angered Radical Republicans. The move led to his political downfall, though he was acquitted by the Senate.

In 1888, Louisville, Kentucky, becomes 1st government in the US to adopt the Australian ballot (i.e., secret ballot on standard voting forms)

In 1893, the American University was chartered by an act of the Congress of the United States of America.

In 1899, Western Washington University was established.

In 1903, the United States signed its first lease agreement, acquiring naval stations at Guantanamo Bay and Bahia Honda in Cuba.

In 1917, during World War I, British authorities gave Walter H. Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the “Zimmermann Telegram,” a coded message from Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico.

In 1921, the first transcontinental flight in 24 hours of flying time arrived in Florida.

In 1942, the Voice of America made its first broadcast in German to counter the propaganda of Nazi leaders.

In 1945, American soldiers liberated the Philippine capital of Manila from Japanese control during World War II.

In 1961, the first 15 students received their Bachelor of Hamburgerology degree from McDonald's Hamburger U, the "Harvard of Fast Food."

In 1980, the US ice hockey team clinched a gold medal with a 4-2 win over Finland at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics; it came after a 4-3 "Miracle on Ice" victory against the hot favorite Soviet Union

In 1981, a jury in White Plains, New York, found Jean Harris guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of “Scarsdale Diet” author Dr. Herman Tarnower. (Sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, Harris was granted clemency by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in December 1992.)

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan announced a new program of economic and military assistance to the nations of the Caribbean designed to “prevent the overthrow of the governments in the region” by the “brutal and totalitarian” forces of communism.

In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-0 to overturn the $200,000 settlement awarded to the Reverend Jerry Falwell for his emotional distress at being parodied in Hustler, a pornographic magazine.

In 1989, a 150 million year old fossil egg was found in Utah with a fossilized dinosaur embryo inside, the oldest dinosaur egg yet found in the Northern Hemisphere.e

In 1991, U.S. ground operations began in the Persian Gulf War, more than a month after the U.S. launched an air war against Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

In 2006, South Dakota lawmakers approved a ban on nearly all abortions.

In 2011, Discovery, the world’s most traveled spaceship, thundered into orbit for the final time, heading toward the International Space Station on a journey marking the beginning of the end of the shuttle era.

In 2020, American film producer Harvey Weinstein, whose career ended amid numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault, was convicted of rape and a criminal sex act; many viewed the verdict as a victory for the Me Too movement. Though his conviction was overturned in 2024, he was once again convicted of a felony sex crime the following year.