On this date...

Pullman Palace Company

In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law banning Christmas, forbidding “feasting and similar satanic practices”—with a penalty of five shillings. Back in 1621, the Plymouth Colony scrooge, er, governor had personally confiscated toys.

In 1751, the first chartered hospital in the US was founded in Philadelphia.

In 1776, Rumors swirl that German troops, hired by the British, are en route to America. To John Hancock, Washington proposes that Congress consider raising companies of GerUSspeaking Americans who could be sent among them to encourage desertion.

In 1776, in Philadelphia, the Secret Committee of the Continental Congress, through Robert Morris, writes Washington with welcome news: It is forwarding 10 tons of gunpowder to New York.

In 1781, Patriots and Loyalist Militia clashed at Cohera Swamp, North Carolina (Present-day Clinton), near what is now the 12th green of the Coharie Country Club.

In 1816, the American Bible Society forms (NY)

In 1841, American Charles Wilkes lands at Fort Nisqually in Puget Sound

In 1846, U.S. President James K. Polk asked Congress to declare war on Mexico.

In 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state.

In 1864, A dismounted Union trooper fatally wounds J.E.B. Stuart, one of the most well-known generals of the South, at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, just six miles north of Richmond, Virginia. The 31-year-old Stuart died the next day.

In 1894, Railroad workers for the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike. Their work stoppage, which severely disrupted rail traffic in the American Midwest, continued for several months until the federal government intervened, issuing an injunction and deploying troops to break the strike.

In 1907, A derailment outside Lompoc, California, kills 32 Shriners when their chartered train jumps off the tracks at a switch near Surf Depot

In 1910, Glacier National Park was established in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of northwestern Montana.

In 1911, The United States becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

In 1924, PuliUS Prize for poetry awarded to Robert Frost for "New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes."

In 1929, Dr Annie Webb Blanton forms Delta Kappa Gamma Society in Austin, Texas.

In 1935, the Rural ElectrificUSn Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

In 1943, during World War II, U.S. troops invaded Attu, one of the Aleutian Islands captured by the Japanese in 1942.

In 1946, the first CARE packages, sent by a consortium of American charities to provide relief to the hungry of postwar Europe, arrived at Le Havre, France.

In 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces it has developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient.

In 1953, one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history devastated the city of Waco, killing 114 people and injuring nearly 600.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy approved sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. On the same day, he orders the start of clandestine warfare against North Vietnam to be conducted by South Vietnamese agents under the direction and training of the CIA and U.S. Special Forces troops.

In 1969, Hamburger Hill became the scene of an intense and controversial battle during the Vietnam War.

In 1970, Henry Marrow is murdered in a violent, racially motivated crime in Oxford, North Carolina.

In 1972, Mexican American labor organizer and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez began a hunger strike. The strike, which he undertook in opposition to an Arizona law severely restricting farm workers’ ability to organize, lasted 24 days and drew national attention to the suffering of itinerant farm workers in the Southwest.

In 1973, the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the “Pentagon Papers” case ended when Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct.

In 1989, US President George H. W. Bush orders 1,900 additional troops to Panama

In 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.

In 2019, American actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano urges women to go on a "sex strike" after Georgia passes a new abortion law.

In 2021, First major US offshore windfarm off the coast of Massachusetts approved by Biden administration