On this date...

Independence Hall

In 1753, the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, was completed.

In 1776, Washington finished a letter to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress. He reports that Dorchester Heights is secured. He relays intelligence from Captain Irvine, a Massachusetts mariner who escaped from Boston, describing British confusion and hurried plans for departure.

In 1778, The 1st warship of the new American Navy, the 24-gun frigate Alfred commanded by Captain Elisha Hinman, was captured.

In 1781, after successfully capturing British positions in Louisiana and Mississippi, Spanish General Bernardo de Galvez, commander of the Spanish forces in North America, turned his attention to the British-occupied city of Pensacola, Florida.

In 1829, President Andrew Jackson defied Washington society matrons when his scandal-plagued appointee, John Eaton, took the oath as his secretary of war.

In 1841, at the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, with only one dissent, that the enslaved Africans who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus were free under American law.

In 1856, Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded in the Johnston Mansion House at the University of Alabama.

In 1860, 1st Japanese ambassador arrived in San Francisco en route to Washington.

In 1862, during the American Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia (formerly Merrimack) battled in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, marking the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.

In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was named Commanding General of the U.S. (Union) Army.

In 1914, US Senator Albert B. Fall demanded the "Cubanization of Mexico."

In 1916, Pancho Villa's men killed more than a dozen in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Though U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson sent an expedition to the area, Villa evaded capture.

In 1933, the US Congress was called into a special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning its "100 days" during which it passed 77 laws.

In 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces firebombed Tokyo, destroying a quarter of the city, killing at least 80,000 civilians, and leaving a million people homeless during WWII to bring the Japanese empire to its knees and help facilitate the end of the war. The war would last until August.

In 1950, Willie Sutton robbed the Manufacturers Bank of $64,000 in NYC.

In 1951, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam submitted a classified paper at the Los Alamos lab, in which they proposed their revolutionary new design, staged implosion, for a practical megaton-range hydrogen bomb

In 1954, President Eisenhower wrote a letter to his friend, Paul Helms, in which he privately criticized Senator Joseph McCarthy’s approach to rooting out communists in the federal government.

In 1959, the Barbie doll debuted at the American International Toy Fair.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, raised the standard for public officials to prove they’d been libeled in their official capacity by news organizations.

In 1970, the U.S. Marines turned over control of the five northernmost provinces in South Vietnam to the U.S. Army. The Marines had been responsible for this area since they first arrived in South Vietnam in 1965.

In 1985, the first-ever Adopt-a-Highway sign was erected on Texas’s Highway 69. The highway was adopted by the Tyler Civitan Club, which committed to picking up trash along a designated two-mile stretch of the road.

In 1988, US President Ronald Reagan presided at the unveiling of the Knute Rockne stamp.

In 1989, the US Senate rejected President George H. W. Bush's nomination of John Tower as Defense Secretary.

In 2011, Space Shuttle Discovery mades final of 39 landings.

In 2015, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat to the US.