On this date...

Ray Kroc

In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, naming it Louisiana.

In 1768, Customs officials tried to board one of John Hancock‘s ships, the Lydia, without a warrant. Hancock refused to let them search and had one officer physically thrown off the ship, starting a legal battle about search and seizure rights.

In 1776, Washington reached New London, Connecticut, at about 1 p.m., as evidenced by an expense account kept by his aide-de-camp, recording payments for ferries, food, baggage handling, and other costs of the journey to New York.  While there, Washington boards the warship Alfred to confer with Commodore Esek Hopkins, whose squadron has recently returned from a raid in the Bahamas. Washington also inspects the coastal defenses being built—preparations against a possible British attack.

In 1784, Great Britain ratified the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War.

In 1859, a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens received his steamboat pilot’s license.

In 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America, signed a treaty of surrender at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War.

In 1866, exactly one year after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House—and decades before police officers would be pulling over speeding cars—the National Intelligencer reports that Ulysses S. Grant, Lieutenant General of the U.S. Army, had been pulled over for speeding in his horse buggy in Washington, D.C.

In 1866, the Civil Rights Bill was passed over President Andrew Johnson's veto.

In 1870, the American Anti-Slavery Society dissolved.

In 1881, after a one-day trial, Billy the Kid was found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico, sheriff and was sentenced to hang.

In 1909, the US Congress passed the Payne-Aldrich bill, raising certain tariffs on goods entering the United States.

In 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize Victoriano Huerta as President of Mexico on the grounds that the dictator had not been elected by the people.

In 1923, in 'Adkins vs Children's Hospital', the US Supreme Court found that the minimum wage law for women and children, adopted by the District of Columbia, was unconstitutional.

In 1925, at the height of his fame, Babe Ruth rushed to the hospital with a mysterious condition labelled “the bellyache heard round the world". Ruth was reported dead by some newspapers. [1]

In 1939, Contralto Marian Anderson gave a concert to an Easter Sunday crowd of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., because she was Black.

In 1942, during World War II, some 75,000 Philippine and American soldiers surrendered to Japanese troops, ending the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines. The prisoners of war were subsequently forced to march 65 miles (105 kilometers) to POW camps in what is now known as the Bataan Death March; thousands died or were killed en route.

In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent 16 Black and white activists on a bus ride through the American South to test a recent Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on interstate bus travel. The so-called Journey of Reconciliation, which lasted two weeks, was an important precursor to the Freedom Rides of the 1960s.

In 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton.

In 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno became the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for her role of Anita in West Side Story (1961).

In 1963, an act of Congress conferred honorary U.S. citizenship on Sir Winston Churchill.

In 1966, the Houston Astros won the first Major League Baseball game ever played indoors, beating the New York Yankees at the newly opened Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

In 1968, funerals, private and public, were held for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and Morehouse College in Atlanta, five days after the civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1969, the Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, pleaded not guilty.

In 1974, San Diego Padres owner Ray Kroc addressed fans, "Ladies and gentlemen, I suffer with you... I've never seen such stupid ball playing in my life!"

In 2001, American Airlines officially completed its acquisition of Trans World Airlines and became the world's largest airline.

In 2003, Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces, several weeks after the start of the Iraq War. U.S. President George W. Bush argued the conflict was necessary so as to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, due to his regime's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorist groups.

In 2018, federal agents raided the office of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, seizing records on matters including a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

In 2018, US Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois became the first senator to give birth while in office.

In 2024, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 1864 law banning all abortions except to save a woman's life [1]