On this date...

Pat Tillman

In 1526, the first slave revolt in North America occurred at San Miguel de Gualdape, a Spanish settlement now part of South Carolina.

In 1692, Edward Bishop was jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

In 1776, Washington’s mind is fixed on discipline. He issues orders directing that prisoners awaiting general courts-martial be sent to the provost marshal, while lesser offenders remain under regimental guard. Meanwhile, the city’s disorder erupts when the bodies of two soldiers are discovered in Holy Ground, a notoriously lawless district in Manhattan. Enraged soldiers retaliate by tearing apart the building and attacking those they blame. This is what Washington fears—an army slipping into lawlessness in a divided city.

In 1778, late at night, Captain John Paul Jones, taking two small boats from the Ranger, with about 30 men armed with pistols and cutlasses, led a raid on Whitehaven, England.

The two boats rowed 2 miles against the tide for 3 hours to reach the harbor.

 His attack would not occur until the next day, when his boat successfully captured the southern fort.

In 1864, the U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864, which led to “In God We Trust” appearing on U.S. coins. (The phrase was added to all of the country's currency after it was made the official motto of the United States in 1956.)

In 1876, the Boston Red Caps defeated the Philadelphia Athletics in the first National League baseball game.

In 1886, Ohio passed a statute that criminalized seduction by all men over the age of 18 who worked as teachers or instructors of women. The law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from two to 10 years in prison.

In 1889, at high noon, a 1.9 million-acre tract of the Oklahoma Territory was opened for settlement. More than 50,000 people, known as "Boomers," eager to stake a claim on the cheap land, had camped along the border to be in position to grab land. Accusations arose that some had cheated and staked out their claims early; they were known as "Sooners."

In 1898, US President William McKinley ordered the blockade of Cuban harbors.

In 1915, the Imperial German Embassy in Washington issued a notice stating that, because Germany and England were at war, passengers on British ships traveled at their own risk. On May 7, a German U-boat sinks the Lusitania, with the loss of about 1,195 lives.

In 1930, the US, Britain & Japan signed the London Naval Treaty, agreeing to regulate cruiser, destroyer, and submarine tonnage, extending the 1922 Washington Treaty's battleship holiday.

In 1934, the US Division of Investigation (later the FBI) under Melvin Purvis botched an operation to capture the John Dillinger Gang at Little Bohemia Lodge, Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, with 2 dead and 4 injured.

In 1952, the first atomic explosion was shown on network news from the Nevada Test Site.

In 1954, the publicly televised sessions of the Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began.

In 1957, John Irvin Kennedy became the first African American player on the Philadelphia Phillies, fully integrating the National League 10 years after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.

In 1967, a McDonald’s franchisee in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, debuted a double-decker burger that would soon be known around the world as the Big Mac. The price was 45 cents.

In 1976, Barbara Walters became the first female US nightly network news anchor (ABC News).

In 1981, more than $3.3 million was stolen from the First National Bank of Arizona in Tucson in one of the largest US bank robberies in history.

In 1993, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

In 2000, in a dramatic predawn raid, armed immigration agents seized 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of a custody dispute, from his relatives’ home in Miami. Elian was reunited with his father at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

In 2004, Former NFL football player Pat Tillman was killed during the war in Afghanistan. His act of giving up a lucrative career for our country is the very definition of what our Founders envisioned for this country.

In 2005, Zacarias Moussaoui (zak-uh-REE’-uhs moo-SOW’-ee) pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom outside Washington, D.C., to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans. (Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison in May 2006.)

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, operated by BP, sank into the Gulf of Mexico two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.