On this date...

Early map of Manhattan

In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan.

In 1775, George Washington set out from Mount Vernon in his chariot for a five-day journey to attend the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

In 1776, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first to renounce allegiance to King George III.

In 1776, Washington felt the war stretching in opposite directions. In New York, he manages encampments delayed by cold rain. From the south, General Charles Lee writes from Williamsburg, reporting desperate shortages of arms, medicines, blankets, and men as he prepares to move toward Carolina.

In 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in Boston, with James Bowdoin, John Adams, and Samuel Adams as founding members.

In 1846, the US state of Michigan ended the death penalty.

In 1862, George McClellan halted his troops before Yorktown, VA, as the town is full of armed torpedoes left by CS Brigadier General Gabrial Rains

In 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War, a bloody assault by the Union army in Virginia that failed to disperse the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, continued.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was buried in Springfield, Illinois.

In 1878, Thomas Edison's phonograph was shown for the first time at the Grand Opera House in NYC

In 1886, A peaceful protest by labor protesters in Chicago against police brutality turned deadly when an unidentified individual threw a bomb into the crowd, and police responded with random gunfire. As many as 15 people were killed, including seven police officers, and dozens were injured. What became known as the Haymarket Affair resulted in widespread anger directed against immigrants and labor leaders.

In 1893, Cowboy Bill Pickett, an American cowboy of African descent, invented the technique of bulldogging (steer wrestling).

In 1894, Bird Day was first observed at the initiative of Charles Almanzo Babcock, superintendent of schools in Oil City, Pennsylvania.

In 1904, the US officially took over the construction of the Panama Canal.

In 1927, the first balloon flight over 40,000 feet took place at Scott Field, Illinois.

In 1932, Al Capone entered Atlanta Penitentiary, convicted of income tax evasion

In 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea began during World War II as U.S. forces sought to prevent Japan from capturing the strategic Port Moresby in New Guinea.

In 1956, rockabilly legend Gene Vincent recorded the smoldering early-rock classic “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 1959, the first Grammy Awards ceremony was held.

In 1961, the first Freedom Ride—a political protest against the segregation of interstate bus travel in the South—began as a group of white and Black Americans departed Washington, D.C., on buses bound for New Orleans.

In 1970, an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at Kent State University turned deadly when the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed students and wounded nine others, further turning public opinion against the war.

In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida after his electric chair malfunctioned three times, causing flames to leap from his head. Tafero’s death led to a new debate on humane methods of execution. Several states ceased use of the electric chair and adopted lethal injection as their means of capital punishment.

In 1992, US Army and Marine Corps forces arrived in Los Angeles to end rioting following the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of Rodney King

In 1998, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, California, under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.

In 2006, a federal judge sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, telling the convicted terrorist, “You will die with a whimper.”

In 2011, President Barack Obama said he had decided not to release death photos of Osama bin Laden because their graphic nature could incite violence and create national security risks. Officials told The Associated Press that the Navy SEALs who stormed bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan shot and killed him after they saw him appear to reach for a weapon.

In 2013, Harper Lee filed a lawsuit against a literary agent over the copyright of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

In 2023, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right extremist group were convicted of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election. (Tarrio was later sentenced to 22 years in prison, but was pardoned by Trump on January 20, 2025, the first day of Trump’s second term in office.)

In 2023, Ed Sheeran was found not guilty of copying Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On" for his 2014 single “Thinking Out Loud" by a Manhattan federal jury; copyright infringement suit was filed by the heirs of Gaye's co-writer Ed Townsend [1]