On this date...

Laura Ingalls Wilder

In 1683, William Penn signed a friendship treaty with the Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania. It became the only treaty “not sworn to, nor broken.”

In 1776, the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to the US Congress.

In 1776, Washington faced two dangers: unreliable weapons and a failing northern campaign. At headquarters in New York, he orders officers to inspect soldiers’ arms and send defective weapons to the armorers. The “Honor and Safety of the army,” he warns, depends on it.

In 1776, To John Hancock, Washington reports grim news from Canada: Brigadier General William Thompson has been repulsed at Trois-Rivières and captured by General John Burgoyne. Washington fears the American army in Canada may be cut off, captured, or forced to retreat.

In 1780, during the American Revolution, the Battle of Springfield was fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey (including Short Hills, formerly of Springfield, now of Millburn Township).

In 1810, John Jacob Astor organized the Pacific Fur Company in Astoria, Oregon.

In 1819, the first editions of “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” by Washington Irving were released, featuring the story “Rip Van Winkle”

In 1819, a provisional government led by James Long declared Texas independence from Spain. By November of that year, Spanish forces had driven Long and his supporters out of Texas.

In 1845, a joint resolution of the Congress of Texas voted in favor of annexation by the United States.

In 1861, the Confederate Navy began the reconstruction of the ex-U.S.S. Merrimack as their ironclad C.S.S. Virginia at Norfolk.

In 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee meets with his corps commanders to plot an attack on General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.

In 1865, the Cherokee chief and Confederate general Stand Watie surrendered at the close of the American Civil War—one of the last Confederate commanders to do so.

In 1868, American inventors Christopher Latham Sholes, Samuel W. Soulé, and Carlos Glidden were granted a patent for the first typewriter.

In 1888, abolitionist Frederick Douglass received one vote from the Kentucky delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago, making him the first Black candidate to have his name placed in nomination for U.S. president.

In 1892, the Democratic convention in Chicago nominated former President Grover Cleveland on the first ballot.

In 1908, the USA suspended diplomatic relationships with Venezuela after the refusal of Cipriano Castro’s government to compensate Americans for injuries suffered in the uprising of 1899.

In 1919, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was incorporated.

In 1926, the first SAT was administered to help elite colleges identify promising high school students.

In 1931, aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field in New York on an around-the-world flight that lasted eight days and 15 hours.

In 1939, Congress created the Coast Guard Reserve, which later became the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

In 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Harry S. Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, designed to limit the power of organized labor.

In 1958, a US Federal judge ruled that race separation must end in 2½ years in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In 1960, the first contraceptive pill was made available for purchase in the United States.

In 1964, at a news conference, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that Henry Cabot Lodge had resigned as ambassador to South Vietnam and that Gen. Maxwell Taylor would be his replacement.

In 1969, Warren E. Burger was sworn in as chief justice of the United States by his predecessor, Earl Warren.

In 1970, Charles Rangel defeated Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in a Democratic U.S. congressional primary in New York City.

In 1972, Title IX was enacted, banning gender discrimination in public education and sports.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s advisor, H.R. Haldeman, told the president to put pressure on the head of the FBI to “stay the hell out of this [Watergate burglary investigation] business.” In essence, Haldeman was telling Nixon to obstruct justice, which is one of the articles for which Congress threatened to impeach Nixon in 1974.

In 1986, Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to allow Republican President Ronald Reagan to address the House.

In 1987, the Iran-Contra hearings resumed with testimony from former CIA employee Glenn A. Robinette, who said he’d installed a $14,000 security system at the home of Lt. Col. Oliver North, then helped make it appear that North had paid for the work.

In 1992, mob boss John Gotti was sentenced to life after being found guilty of murder, racketeering, and other charges. (Gotti would die in prison in 2002.)

In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt chopped off the penis of her sleeping husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, with a kitchen knife. She flees their home, tossing the severed organ from her car window as she drives away.

In 2005, former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi.

In 2005, Reddit was founded by American University of Virginia students Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.

In 2013, 34-year-old aerialist Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

In 2018, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name was removed from the book award by the US Association for Library Service to Children, due to the author’s racist views and language.

In 2020, the Louisville police department fired an officer involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor more than three months earlier, saying Brett Hankison showed “extreme indifference to the value of human life” when he fired 10 rounds into her apartment.

In 2022, amid a major expansion of gun rights, the Supreme Court held that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.