On this date...

Betsy Ross House, also known as the American Flag House

In 1637, during the Pequot War, an allied Puritan and Mohegan force under English Captain John Mason attacked a Pequot village in Connecticut, burning or massacring some 500 Native American women, men, and children.

In 1647, Alse Young became the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies when she was hanged in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1647, Massachusetts banned priests from entering the colony.

In 1736, in northwestern Mississippi, British and Chickasaw Indians defeated a combined force of French soldiers and Choctaw Indians at the Battle of Ackia, thus opening the region to English settlement.

In 1776, Washington remained in Philadelphia, where he had been meeting with the Continental Congress. Since it is Sunday, Congress did not convene. Major General Philip Schuyler writes from Fort George with more bad news from Canada—shortages of men, boats, and provisions.

In 1776, on top of mounting military concerns, Washington must contend with rumors of betrayal within the ranks. Mark Hopkins, a Massachusetts lawyer and militia colonel, reports that earlier suspicions about Schuyler’s loyalty are unfounded.

In 1783, the town of North Stratford, Connecticut, held “A Great Jubilee Day,” one of the first commemorations of the end of the Revolutionary War.

In 1790, the Territory South of the River Ohio was created by Congress.

In 1805, Lewis and Clark first saw the Rocky Mountains.

In 1819, the first steam-propelled vessel to attempt a trans-Atlantic crossing, the 350-ton Savannah, departed from Savannah, Ga., on May 26 and arrived in Liverpool, England, on June 20.

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.

In 1853, Major Jacob Zeilin (in charge of Marines) arrived with Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s squadron at Okinawa.

In 1857, US slave Dred Scott and family were freed by their owner, Henry Taylor Blow, only 3 months after US courts ruled against them in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

In 1859, Captain James Simpson and his party, looking for the shortest route across Nevada, crossed the Hickison Summit into Big Smoky Valley. Their path was later followed by the Pony Express (1860) and the Overland Mail and Stage (1861).

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory.

In 1865, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, surrendered, one of the last Confederate generals to capitulate. Kirby Smith, who had become commander of the area in January 1863, was charged with keeping the Mississippi River open to the Southerners. Yet he was more interested in recapturing Arkansas and Missouri, largely because of the influence of Arkansans in the Confederate Congress who helped to secure his appointment.

In 1868, the impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson—who had been accused of, among other things, bringing “into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach the Congress of the United States”—ended with his acquittal in the Senate.

In 1869, Boston University was chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In 1896, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began with 12 stocks.

In 1906, the Archaeological Institute of America was formed.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924 into law. Among other things, it established the Border Patrol and limited immigration to two percent of the number of residents of any given nation already living in the United States as of the 1890 census.

In 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan.

In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was created, with Martin Dies, Jr., as its chairman; it investigated alleged communist activities, and perhaps its most celebrated case was that of Alger Hiss.

In 1940, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt made known the dire straits of Belgian and French civilians suffering the fallout of the British-German battle to reach the northern coast of France. He appealed for support for the Red Cross.

In 1941, the American Flag House (Betsy Ross’ Home) was given to the city of Philadelphia.

In 1948, the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 80-557, which permanently established the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors.

In 1969, Apollo 10 returned to Earth after a mission that served as a dress rehearsal for the first moon landing.

In 1972, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever.

In 1978, the first legal casino in the United States outside Nevada opened on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida.

In 1984, US President Ronald Reagan ruled out US military intervention in the Iran-Iraq War.

In 1993, in Major League Baseball, Carlos Martinez famously hit a ball off Jose Canseco’s head for a home run.

In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that Ellis Island, a historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in New Jersey, not New York.

In 2004, Terry Nichols was found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

In 2004, The New York Times published an admission of journalistic failings, claiming its flawed reporting and lack of skepticism during the buildup to the 2003 Iraq War helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

In 2009, California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.)

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2011, Congress passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers contained in the Patriot Act to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists.

In 2011, the United States House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly against funding the involvement of ground troops in Libya.

In 2021, President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to intensify efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19.