On this date...

Thomas Peterson-Mundy

In 1774, the Boston Port Act was passed by the British Parliament, demanding repayment for the tea destroyed four months earlier during the Boston Tea Party. It was the first of what the British themselves called the Coercive Acts (in America, the Intolerable Acts), intended to bring the 13 colonies to heel.

In 1776, in a letter, Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, urging him and the other members of the Continental Congress not to forget about the nation’s women when fighting for America’s independence from Great Britain.

In 1776, Washington sat down at Cambridge to write an unusually candid, eight-page letter to John Augustine Washington, his younger brother. He vividly recounts the maneuver that forced General William Howe to abandon Boston and confesses the army’s desperate condition, revealing that at times his soldiers had “not 30 rounds of Musket Cartridges a Man” while facing 22 British regiments. Washington admits he hid these shortages from both friend and foe to avoid exposing weakness. He’s pleased to hear, however, that his reputation still “stands fair.”

In 1870, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1917, the U.S. took formal possession of the Danish West Indies. Renamed the Virgin Islands, this chain consists of St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John, and about fifty other small islands, most of which are uninhabited.

In 1918, the US made its first switch to daylight saving time.

In 1931, Notre Dame college football coach Knute Rockne, 43, was killed in the crash of a TWA plane near Bazaar, Kansas.

In 1943, Oklahoma! debuted on Broadway. The first of 11 musicals written by the iconic team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, Oklahoma! launched a golden age of American musical comedy that lasted through the 1950s.

In 1968, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ended a televised speech about the Vietnam War by announcing that he would not seek reelection, stunning viewers.

In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter deregulated the banking industry

In 1985, the first-ever Wrestlemania was held at Madison Square Garden, a nine-match event headlined by Mr. T and Hulk Hogan smacking down Rowdy Piper and Mr. Wonderful. Also there: Muhammad Ali as a referee and Liberace as a timekeeper.

In 1992, the USS Missouri—site of the Japanese surrender in 1945, formally ending World War II—was decommissioned for a second and final time; it was the last U.S. battleship still in service.

In 1993, actor Brandon Lee, 28, was accidentally shot to death during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, North Carolina, when he was hit by a bullet fragment that had become lodged inside a prop gun.

In 1995, Pop star Selena was murdered in Corpus Christi, Texas, shot dead by the president of her fan club. The tragic death prompts an immediate outpouring of grief from fans.

In 2021, New York state legalized the recreational use of marijuana in legislation signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo (sales not legal for 18 months).

In 2021, US President Joe Biden overturned Trump's restrictions on transgender people serving in the armed forces.

In 2021, US President Joe Biden unveiled the "American Jobs Plan," one of the largest infrastructure plans in US history, worth $2 trillion