On this date...

Leon Thrasher

In 1774, Britain passed the second Coercive Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, which revoked the Massachusetts colonial charter and removed certain democratic elements of the government.

In 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza, one of the great western pathfinders of the 18th century, arrived at the future site of San Francisco with 247 colonists.

In 1776, Washington reflected on the British departure from Boston in a letter to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed. General William Howe, he writes, has either executed “a grand Manouvre…or…an inglorious retreat.” 

In 1776, Washington also reports that several regiments are already marching for New York—in three or four days, he expects to follow himself. In a rare moment of celebration, Washington joins Massachusetts leaders and his generals for a public dinner in Boston to celebrate the town’s deliverance.

In 1797, Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patented a washing machine.

In 1834, President Andrew Jackson was censured by Congress for refusing to turn over documents. Jackson was the first president to suffer this formal disapproval from Congress.

In 1862, Union forces stopped the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory when they turned the Rebels back at Glorieta Pass.

In 1881, "Greatest Show On Earth" was formed by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey.

In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled 6-2 that Wong, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen. It was the first Supreme Court decision to rule on the citizenship status of a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents.

In 1915, the first American citizen was killed in the eight-month-old European conflict that would become known as the First World War. Leon Thrasher, a 31-year-old mining engineer and native of Massachusetts, drowned when a German submarine, the U-28, torpedoed the cargo-passenger ship Falaba, on its way from Liverpool to West Africa, off the coast of England.

In 1920, American motion-picture actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were wed.

In 1935, Robert Goddard used gyroscopes to control a rocket

In 1960, the first permanent star was laid in the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the intersection of Hollywood and Gower. It honors film producer and director Stanley Kramer.

In 1961, A U.S. national intelligence estimate prepared for President John F. Kennedy declared that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the Republic of Vietnam were facing an extremely critical situation.

In 1979, at 4:00 a.m., an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.

In 1990, US President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.

In 2001, President George W. Bush publicly rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate, a pact never ratified by the Senate.

In 2006, Duke University officials suspended the men’s lacrosse team for two games following allegations that team members sexually assaulted a stripper hired to perform at a party.

In 2009, the first cases of H1N1 swine flu in the United States occurred in two people in California.

In 2017, US President Donald Trump signed the Energy Independence executive order undoing Obama's climate-control measures.

In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act (commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law), which includes the prohibition of classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in some grade levels in Florida schools.

In 2024, FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges related to the collapse of the exchange.