On this date...

Earl Averill

In 1776, expecting the British to arrive at any moment, Washington directs engineers to press the works forward with “every possible dispatch,” calling for additional men to complete New York’s defenses. The city fills with arriving soldiers from several colonies, swelling the ranks but also heightening concerns about discipline. With no clear distinction between citizen and soldier, enforcing order remains a constant challenge.

In 1787, the first American comedy play, "The Contrast," debuts in NYC.

In 1789, George Washington headed to his first presidential inauguration in New York City from his home at Mt. Vernon in Virginia.

In 1861, US President Abraham Lincoln outlawed business with the Confederate States.

In 1862, President Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, an important step in the long road toward full emancipation and enfranchisement for African Americans.

In 1862, the Confederate Congress approved the conscription act for all white males (18-35 years).

In 1881, on the streets of Dodge City, famous western lawman and gunfighter Bat Masterson fought what was the last documented gun battle of his life.

In 1908, Natural Bridges National Monument was formally established in southeastern Utah.

In 1912, Harriet Quimby was the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

In 1922, Annie Oakley set a women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row.

In 1929, the Cleveland Indians opened the season with numbers on the back of each player’s jersey, the first Major League Baseball team to do so.

In 1929, Cleveland rookie center fielder Earl Averill became the first American League player to hit a HR on 1st at bat; the Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at League Park

In 1935, 40-year-old future Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Babe Ruth debuts in the NL with a HR and single in the Boston Braves' 4-2 win over the NY Giants, in Boston

In 1943, in Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumed LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds.

In 1945, World War II: American troops liberated Colditz Castle, the high-security prisoner of war camp in Saxony, Germany [1]

In 1947, a French-owned ship carrying fertilizer was docked at Texas City when it caught fire and exploded. The blast was heard nearly 200 miles away. At least 576 people are known to have died, but the remains of less than 400 individuals were identified.

In 1947, Multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coined the term “Cold War” to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In 1962, Walter Cronkite became anchor of the CBS Evening News, a position he held for nearly two decades, during which time he became known as “the most trusted man in America.”

In 1963, days after being jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, for a series of anti-segregation protests, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pens a response to his critics on some scraps of paper. This open letter, now known as his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” offered a forceful defense of the protest campaign. It is now regarded as one of the greatest texts of the American civil rights movement.

In 1972, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S. lunar landing missions, was successfully launched on its 238,000-mile journey to the moon.

In 1990, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from retarded man, Dalton Prejean, condemned to death for murdering a Louisiana state trooper in 1977

In 1992, the House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts.

In 1993, a jury reached a guilty verdict in a federal case against police officers (two convicted, two acquitted) who beat Rodney King, but the verdict was not read until April 17th

In 2003, at age 40, Michael Jordan, widely regarded as one of the best players in the history of basketball, played his last game in the National Basketball Association.

In 2007, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, 33 people, including the shooter, were killed on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus of Virginia Tech.

In 2010, the U.S. government accused Wall Street’s most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. had sold mortgage investments without telling buyers the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail. (In July 2010, Goldman agreed to pay $550 million in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it did not admit wrongdoing.)