On this date...

Battle of Jones Creek Historical Marker

In 1611, English explorer Henry Hudson—who earlier had tried to discover a short route from Europe to Asia through the Arctic Ocean—was set adrift with his son and seven others in Hudson Bay by mutineers.

In 1775, Congress authorized the issue of $2 million in bills of credit known as Continental Currency.

In 1776, from Philadelphia, John Hancock writes that Congress believes there has been “very gross Misconduct” in the Canada campaign and wants Washington to oversee an inquiry into the conduct of the officers involved. 

In 1776, New York was tense over reports of a Loyalist plot connected to Washington’s own guard. Officials scramble to arrest suspected collaborators, trying to uncover how far the conspiracy reaches.

In 1807, British officers of the H.M.S. Leopard boarded the U.S.S. Chesapeake after she had set sail for the Mediterranean, and demanded the right to search the ship for deserters.

In 1812, upon learning of the Americans’ plans for a surprise attack, Laura Secord walked 32 km to warn British troops, resulting in a British surprise victory at the Battle of Beaver Dams.

In 1813, A British force attempted to take Craney Island; the fort there was one of the key defenses to Norfolk’s inner harbor and was home to the frigate “Constellation”.

In 1818, Boarding parties from the Revenue cutter Dallas seized the privateer Young Spartan, her crew, and the privateer’s prize, the Pastora, off Savannah, Georgia.

In 1824, the Battle of Jones Creek took place in modern-day Brazoria County. Tired of being harassed by the Karankawa Indians, Stephen F. Austin commissioned settlers to retaliate. Both sides suffered casualties, with no clear winner emerging from the fight.

In 1848, the Anti-Slavery Party, the Barnburners, nominated Martin Van Buren for president.

In 1864, Union forces attempted to capture a railroad that had been supplying Petersburg, Virginia, from the south and extend their lines to the Appomattox River. In the Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, the Confederates thwarted the attempt, and the two sides settled into trenches for a nine-month siege.

In 1865, the CSS Shenandoah fired the last shot of the American Civil War in the Bering Strait to indicate surrender.

In 1868, Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.

In 1870, Congress created the Department of Justice.

In 1876, General Alfred Terry sent Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer to the Rosebud and Little Bighorn rivers to search for Indian villages.

In 1894, Legendary magician and escape artist Harry Houdini married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner. When they met, she was performing as one of the Floral Sisters at the Sea Beach Palace, in West Brighton Beach, New York; he was a virtually unknown magician. Partners in work and life for the next thirty-two years, the Houdinis never attempted escape from the bonds of matrimony.

In 1912, the Bull Moose Party was formed when former President Theodore Roosevelt urged his supporters to walk out of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Republican progressives reconvened in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and endorsed the formation of a national progressive party.

In 1934, John Dillinger was informally named America’s first Public Enemy Number One.

In 1938, in a rematch that bore the weight of both geopolitical symbolism and African American representation, American Joe Louis knocked out German Max Schmeling in just two minutes and four seconds to retain his heavyweight boxing title in front of 70,000 spectators at New York’s Yankee Stadium.

In 1942, Japanese submarine I-25 surfaced at the mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon, and fired 17 shells at Fort Stevens, a US Navy installation, causing no serious damage.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the “GI Bill of Rights,” which provided tuition coverage, unemployment support, and low-interest home and business loans to returning veterans.

In 1945, the World War II Battle of Okinawa ended with an Allied victory.

In 1953, after a Brooklyn newsboy receives an unusual nickel in payment, he drops it on the ground only to find it hollowed out, with a tiny photo of coded numbers inside. The discovery led the FBI to a Soviet spy named Rudolf Abel.

In 1955, the animated musical Lady and the Tramp, one of Walt Disney’s most endearing movies, was released in U.S. theaters.

In 1969, in Cleveland, the severely polluted Cuyahoga River caught on fire when an oil slick floating on the surface ignited. However, it was not the first fire on the river; the incident garnered national attention and led to antipollution measures that substantially improved the river’s condition.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that lowered the minimum voting age to 18.

In 1977, John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up.

In 1980, Pope John Paul II beatified Kateri Tekakwitha, making her the first Native American to be beatified.

In 1981, Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to killing rock star and former Beatle John Lennon.

In 1982, the first successful hostage rescue at sea occurred when a combined Coast Guard / FBI boarding party deployed from CGC Alert took control of the 890-foot Liberian-flagged motor tanker Ypapanti.

In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, unanimously ruled that “hate crime” laws that banned cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.

In 1993, A bomb mailed from Sacramento attributed to the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, maimed the University of California—San Francisco geneticist Charles Epstein at his home in Tiburon.

In 1994, President Clinton announced North Korea had confirmed its willingness to freeze its nuclear program.

In 2011, after evading arrest for 16 years, mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was captured in Santa Monica, California.

In 2011, President Barack Obama announced he would pull home 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by the following summer.

In 2012, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted by a jury in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years. (Sandusky would later be sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.)

In 2015, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds in the wake of killings in a Charleston church