On this date...

Mary Kries - Hatmaker

In 1775, Ben Franklin returned from Great Britain after spending most of the previous two decades as a colonial agent in London.

In 1775, ordered to “convey a parcel of sheep to Boston as provision for the garrison”, HMS Sloop of war Falcon seized two small sloops at [New] Bedford, Massachusetts, to use as transports.

In 1776, Washington confronts a dangerous weakness at the heart of his army. Writing to John Hancock, he again raises the alarming shortage of arms, warning that many regiments are so poorly equipped that their numbers give a false impression of strength. He relays a proposal to borrow thousands of weapons held in Philadelphia. 

In 1778, with General George Washington's recommendation, Congress appointed Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Inspector General of the Continental Army, with the rank and pay of major general.

In 1809, for her technique of weaving straw with silk, Mary Kries became the first woman to receive a U.S. patent; the process was largely used in the creation of hats and other headwear.

In 1814, the British attacked Fort Ontario, Oswego, New York.

In 1816, the American Bible Society was organized in New York.

In 1861, Alexandria, Virginia, Confederate troops abandoned the city.

In 1864, Forces commanded by the generals Ulysses S. Grant of the Union and Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy engaged in the Battle of the Wilderness near Fredericksburg, Virginia, during the Civil War.

In 1865, the first US train robbery occurred at North Bend, Ohio.

In 1868, Martha Jones of Amelia County, Virginia, is believed to be the first Black woman to receive a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that husks and shells corn all in one procedure. The Patent No. 77,494 granted to Jones three years after the Civil War for her “Improvement to the Corn Husker, Sheller” was for a device that pulled off and cut up the corn husk and stripped the kernels off the cob, all at the same time, a key technological step in automating agricultural progress.

In 1877, the Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles.

In 1886, the Bay View Tragedy occurred, as militia fired upon a crowd of protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing seven.

In 1891, Carnegie Hall (then named Music Hall) opened in New York City.

In 1892, Congress extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for 10 years.

In 1893, Panic hit the New York Stock Exchange; by the year's end, the country was in the throes of a severe depression.

In 1904, American baseball pitcher Cy Young registered the first perfect game (no player reaching first base) of the modern era, for the Boston Americans (later Red Sox) against the Philadelphia Athletics.

In 1917, Eugene Bullard gained his pilot's license from Aéro-Club de France and became the 1st African-American military pilot (French Air Service).

In 1920, US President Woodrow Wilson outlawed the Communist Labor Party.

In 1925, high school science teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in one of Tennessee’s public schools.

In 1931, Gunfire broke out during a strike by coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, leaving four dead in what came to be known as the Battle of Evarts. Conflict between workers and mining companies continued throughout the 1930s, resulting in the area becoming known as Bloody Harlan.

In 1945, U.S. soldiers and renegade German troops turned back a Waffen-SS assault on a stronghold in Tirol, Austria, where French prisoners were being held by the Nazis. Known as the Battle for Castle Itter, it is thought to be the only time that Americans and Germans fought as allies during World War II.

In 1945, while on a picnic on Gearhart Mountain, Oregon, six people were killed after a Japanese balloon bomb exploded; they were the only deaths by enemy action to occur in the continental United States during World War II.

In 1947, the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Robert Penn Warren for his novel "All the King's Men."

In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in outer space.

In 1973, American racehorse Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby en route to capturing the U.S. Triple Crown, which also includes the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

In 1978, area residents lined up outside a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, for the grand opening of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany. The visit drew worldwide condemnation because 49 members of the Waffen SS were buried there.

In 1988, Eugene A. Marino was installed as 1st African American Catholic archbishop in Atlanta, Georgia

In 1994, Singapore caned American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by President Bill Clinton.

In 2010, Preliminary plans for a mosque and cultural center near ground zero in New York were unveiled, setting off a national debate over whether the project was disrespectful to 9/11 victims and whether opposition to it exposed anti-Muslim biases.

In 2016, Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of 10 counts of murder in the “Grim Sleeper” serial killings in Los Angeles that targeted poor, young Black women over two decades.

In 2018, an electric cigarette exploded, killing a man in St. Petersburg, Florida, the first death from a vaping product.

In 2021, US President Joe Biden announced that the US would support temporarily lifting patent protection on COVID-19 vaccines with the WHO.