On this date...
In 1633, the Charter for Maryland was given to Lord Cecil Baltimore.
In 1675, Abenaki, Massachusetts, Mohegan, and Wampanoag Native Americans formed an anti-English front under Metacom.
In 1775, the Liberty Point Resolves, also known as “The Cumberland Association”, was signed by fifty residents of Cumberland, North Carolina, protesting the actions of Great Britain following the battles of Lexington and Concord.
In 1779, the Battle of Stono Ferry was fought near Charleston, South Carolina (American Revolutionary War)
In 1782, Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States after six years of discussion.
In 1787, Oliver Ellsworth moved at the Federal Convention to call the government the United States.
In 1840, American inventor Samuel Morse received a patent for his telegraph.
In 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state.
In 1863, the National Bank of Davenport, Iowa, was the first bank chartered under the National Banking and Currency Act.
In 1867, US President Andrew Johnson announced the Alaska Purchase.
In 1871, Ku Klux Klan trials began in federal court in Oxford, Mississippi.
In 1875, A skilled practitioner of the frontier art of the tall tale, the mountain man Joe Meek, died on his farm in Oregon. His life was nearly as adventurous as his stories claimed.
In 1893, one of the most sensational murder trials in American history came to a shocking conclusion when a Massachusetts jury acquitted Lizzie Borden of murder—after just over an hour of deliberation.
In 1895, Caroline Willard Baldwin (25), the first woman to earn a PhD in Physics from an American university
She received her degree from Cornell University.
In 1903, American automobile racing driver Barney Oldfield achieved the first mile-a-minute performance in a car at Indianapolis, Indiana.
In 1936, American sprinter Jesse Owens set a 100m world record of 10.2 seconds.
In 1941, after a long and bitter struggle by Henry Ford against cooperation with organized labor unions, Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with the United Automobile Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO).
In 1943, race-related rioting erupted in Detroit; President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent in federal troops to quell the violence that resulted in more than 30 deaths.
In 1947, gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was shot dead at the Beverly Hills, California, home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, likely at the order of mob associates.
In 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed an agreement to establish a hotline between the two superpowers.
In 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating the Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted and was sentenced to five years in prison.
In 1968, Jim Hines becomes 1st person to run 100 meters in under 10 seconds.
In 1972, three days after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, President Richard Nixon met at the White House with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman; the secretly made tape recording of this meeting ended up with a notorious 18 1/2-minute gap.
In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s thriller Jaws was released in theaters and was a huge success, essentially creating the summer blockbuster genre.
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter unveiled 32 solar panels installed on the roof of the White House; his immediate successor had them removed.
In 1994, O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles to the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
In 1997, the tobacco industry agreed to a massive settlement in exchange for relief from mounting lawsuits and legal bills.
In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the imposition of the death penalty in cases involving intellectually disabled defendants violated the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2018, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order ending family separation at the border for illegal immigrants.
In 2019, Oregon Governor Kate Brown authorized police to round up 11 Republican state senators who had gone into hiding to stop a vote on a cap-and-trade emissions bill.
In 2019, shares for messaging site Slack started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, giving it a valuation of $19.5 billion.
In 2020, Donald Trump controversially held his first re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and only 6,200 people attended despite the campaign stating 1 million had registered. A social media campaign organized by teens on TikTok, K-Pop fans, and others claims responsibility for inflating expected attendance.
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