On this date....

Sam Steele - New Mexico State University

In 1776, General Washington ordered the cannons firing on Boston to stop as the British began loading their transport ships for evacuation.

In 1783, the last naval battle of the American Revolutionary War was fought near Cape Canaveral. The USS Alliance, a 36-gun sailing frigate, captained by John Barry, defeated the HMS Sybil by sailing directly for the Sybil.

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.

In 1791, John Stone of Concord, Massachusetts, patented a pile driver.

In 1848, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico.

In 1849, Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent (the only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions.

In 1864, the Red River Campaign began in the American Civil War, and it lasted for several months before Confederate troops under General Richard Taylor defeated the Union forces.

In 1864, Local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism.

In 1874, Purdue University (Indiana) admitted its 1st student.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell's “liquid” transmitter design permitted the first transmission of speech by Bell to his assistant, Thomas Watson.

In 1890, Texas's first nursing school opened in Galveston. It had 18 students. The John Sealy Training School for Nurses was absorbed by the University of Texas Medical Branch. 

In 1891, Almon Brown Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patented the Strowger switch, a device that led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.

In 1893, New Mexico State University canceled its 1st graduation ceremony; its only graduate, Sam Steele, was robbed & killed the night before.

In 1902, a United States court of appeals ruled that Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera

In 1913, in Toledo, Ohio, William Knox became the first bowler to make a perfect score of 300 in an American Bowling Congress tournament.

In 1933, Nevada becomes 1st US state to regulate narcotics.

In 1949, American citizen Mildred Gillars, who earned the nickname “Axis Sally” as a radio propagandist for the Nazi government during World War II, was convicted of treason; she served 12 years in prison.

In 1951, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declined the post of baseball commissioner.

In 1962, due to its no black policy, the Phillies left the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel & move to the Rocky Point Motel, 20 miles outside Clearwater, Florida

In 1969, James Earl Ray pled guilty to murdering American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

In 1970, the U.S. Army accused Capt. Ernest Medina and four other soldiers of committing crimes at My Lai (also known as Songmy) in March 1968. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to rape and the “maiming” of a suspect under interrogation. Medina was the company commander of Lt. William Calley and other soldiers charged with murder and numerous crimes at My Lai 4 in Song My village.

In 1980, "Scarsdale Diet" author Dr. Herman Tarnower was shot to death in Purchase, N.Y. (His lover, Jean Harris, was convicted of murder and served nearly 12 years in prison.)

In 1982, the United States placed an embargo on Libyan petroleum imports because they supported terrorist groups

In 2004, Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced in Chesapeake, Va., to life in prison.

In 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered Mars orbit and began searching for signs of water on the planet.

In 2008, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer apologized after allegations surfaced that he had paid thousands of dollars for a high-end call girl, a scandal that eventually led to his resignation.

In 2020, New York governor Andrew Cuomo deployed the national guard to New Rochelle aftera one-mile radius zone was established as 108 cases of COVID-19 were detected.

In 2025, NASA became the first US federal agency to begin firing career employees under President Trump's downsizing directives.