On this date...

Former Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham

In 1721, John Copson became America’s first insurance agent.

In 1738, a treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ended the Conojocular War through the settlement of a boundary dispute and the exchange of prisoners.

In 1776, Washington was in Philadelphia, attending the Continental Congress for a second consecutive day. He confers with the delegates as a whole about how to meet the growing British military threat, particularly in Canada and New York. By the end of the day, Congress shifts course and appoints a committee—including John Adams and Benjamin Harrison—to work directly with Washington, Horatio Gates, and Thomas Mifflin to “concert a plan of military operations for the ensuing campaign.”

In 1778, Five Hundred British & Hessian soldiers under Lt. Col. James Campbell raided the towns of Warren and Bristol, Rhode Island.

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention began at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia after enough delegates had arrived to form a quorum.

In 1825, the American Unitarian Association was founded.

In 1862, in the first Battle of Winchester, Virginia, Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate forces achieved a major victory.

In 1863, Federal authorities in Tennessee turned over former Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham to the Confederates. President Abraham Lincoln had changed his sentence to banishment from the United States after his conviction of expressing alleged pro-Confederate sentiments.

In 1864, the US Civil War: Battle of New Hope Church, Georgia: Major William T. Sherman’s Union forces launch an attack but suffer heavy losses and are forced to entrench on both sides.

In 1922, Babe Ruth was suspended 1 day and fined $200 for throwing dirt on an umpire.

In 1927, Henry Ford announced that he was ending production of the Model T Ford.

In 1935, American baseball player Babe Ruth hit the 714th and last home run of his career; he retired later that year.

In 1935, American track-and-field standout Jesse Owens set three world records and equaled one other at a meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1943, the Trident Conference ended. Roosevelt and Churchill, and their staffs, reached compromises on all of the significant differences.

In 1945, on Okinawa, the US 4th Marine Regiment eliminated the Japanese casemates and underground positions on Machishi Hill. The US 29th Regiment secures Naha.

In 1951, eighteen U.S. Marines and one U.S. Army infantryman captured during the Chosin/Changjin Reservoir campaign were returned to U.N. control.

In 1953, the first non-commercial educational television station was established in Houston, Texas.

In 1959, the US Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s prohibition on black-white boxing was unconstitutional.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, ordered the Virginia county to reopen its public schools, which officials had closed in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation ruling.

In 1968, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was dedicated.

In 1977, “Star Wars” was released by 20th Century Fox; it would become the highest-grossing film in history at the time.

In 1979, 273 people died when an American Airlines DC-10 crashed just after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

In 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz walked the two blocks from his home to his bus stop in Manhattan. It was his first time walking there alone before school, and it was the last day his parents would ever see him. That’s because someone abducted Etan during that walk. In his parents’ efforts to find him, Etan became one of the first missing children to be featured on milk cartons.

In 1981, Clad in a custom-made Spider-Man suit, stuntman Dan Goodwin (aka “Spider Dan”) free climbs the exterior of Chicago’s Sears Tower—all 110 stories—fighting gusty winds, slippery glass, and firefighters trying to pull him to safety.

In 1986, an estimated 7 million people participated in “Hands Across America,” forming a line across the country to raise money for the nation’s hungry and homeless.

In 1994, the ashes of 71-year-old George Swanson were buried (according to Swanson’s request) in the driver’s seat of his 1984 white Corvette in Irwin, Pennsylvania.

In 1996, President Clinton, honoring the men and women who died in military service, used his weekly radio address to defend America’s global military role, saying it “is making our people safer and the world more secure.”

In 1999, the United States House of Representatives released the Cox Report detailing the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.

In 2006, Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted in Houston of conspiracy and fraud for the company’s downfall. (Skilling faces resentencing after his original 24-year sentence was overturned; Lay died before

In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander arrived on the Red Planet to begin searching for evidence of water; the spacecraft confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site.

In 2011, the last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired; the long-running TV program had helped make Winfrey one of the richest and most influential women in the United States.

In 2011, A judge in Tucson, Ariz., ruled that Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of wounding U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six in a shooting rampage, was mentally incompetent to stand trial.

In 2012, the private company SpaceX made history as its Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.

In 2018, Harvey Weinstein was arrested and charged in New York with rape and another sex felony in the first prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him. (Weinstein would be convicted of two felony counts in 2020, but an appeals court would overturn the conviction in 2024. A retrial on the charges began in April 2025.)

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and pleading that he couldn’t breathe; Floyd’s death, captured on video by a bystander, would lead to worldwide protests, some of which turned violent, and a reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.

In 2023, Stewart Rhodes, a leader of the American militia group the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison following his conviction on charges of seditious conspiracy related to his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. U.S. Pres. Donald Trump commuted Rhodes’s sentence to time served on January 20, 2025.