On this date...

Augustus O. Bacon, Former U.S. Senator from Georgia

In 1776, Washington was absorbed by the danger on the Hudson. From Fort Montgomery, General George Clinton reports that he has called out neighboring militia after British ships move upriver. Men are leaving their harvest fields with “surprizing alacrity,” but Clinton worries that their absence, just as grain is ready for the sickle, will distress the countryside. 

In 1776, from Boston, Major General Artemas Ward tells Washington that regiments are preparing to march south, though smallpox and inoculation delay some troops.

In 1806, Zebulon Pike, the U.S. Army officer who in 1805 led an exploring party in search of the source of the Mississippi River, set off with a new expedition to explore the American Southwest. Pike was instructed to seek out the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers and to investigate Spanish settlements in New Mexico.

In 1830, Indian tribes Sioux, Sauk, and Fox signed the Fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien, giving the US most of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri,

In 1835, the only bloodshed during the Toledo War, fought between Ohio and Michigan over a disputed border, occurred on this day in a Toledo tavern when an Ohio partisan, Two Stickney, stabbed Michigan Sheriff Joseph Wood with a penknife. (Wood survived.) The “war” ended two years later, with Toledo awarded to Ohio and the resource-rich Upper Peninsula to Michigan.

In 1870, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.

In 1903, the newly formed Ford Motor Company took its first order from Chicago dentist Ernst Pfenning: an $850 two-cylinder Model A automobile with a tonneau (or backseat). The car, produced at Ford’s plant on Mack Street (now Mack Avenue) in Detroit, was delivered to Dr. Pfenning just over a week later.

In 1913, Democrat Augustus Bacon of Georgia became the first person elected to the U.S. Senate under the terms of the recently ratified 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provided for the popular election of senators.

In 1916, The Boeing Company, originally known as Pacific Aero Products Co., was founded in Seattle.

In 1932, US President Herbert Hoover cut his own salary by 15% and reduced the pay of senior federal officials to lower government spending during the Great Depression.

In 1948, John J. Pershing, a military commander whose brilliant career earned him the title General of the Armies of the United States, died. The first general to be awarded the title since George Washington, Pershing was given a hero’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1958, President Eisenhower sent US troops to Lebanon, where they remained for three months.

In 1959, the US steel strike of 1959 began, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) was nominated by the Republican Party to run for president.

In 1965, Mariner 4, an uncrewed space probe launched by NASA in 1964, flew by Mars and returned close-up pictures of its surface. The pictures proved that the planet’s so-called canals were illusions.

In 1971, during a live television and radio broadcast, President Richard Nixon stunned the nation by announcing that he would visit communist China the following year. The statement marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations and a major shift in American foreign policy.

In 1974, American TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck shot herself live on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, becoming the first person to commit suicide in a live broadcast.

In 1975, three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two Soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a mission that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.

In 1976, a 36-hour kidnap ordeal began for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they were abducted near Chowchilla, California, by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)

In 1978, the “Longest Walk”—a 2,800-mile trek for Native American justice that had begun with several hundred marchers in California—ended in Washington, D.C., with thousands of supporters. The event was intended to call attention to issues affecting Native Americans, such as a lack of jobs and housing, and legislation before Congress that could dramatically change their rights.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation via live television to discuss the nation’s energy crisis and accompanying recession.

In 1980, Billy Carter, the brother of US President Jimmy Carter, registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government after it was revealed that the Libyan government had paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 1982, the Olympic Committee reinstated the medals of 1912 American athlete Jim Thorpe that had been stripped in 1913 after he had received a minor pay as a pro baseball player. He had placed in the top 4 in all 10 events, achieving an Olympic record of 8,413 points to win the Decathlon gold medal at the Stockholm Olympics.

In 1988, the thriller Die Hard was first released in U.S. theaters, launching a hugely popular series and helping establish Bruce Willis as an action star.

In 1992, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton claimed the Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s convention in New York City.

In 1996, MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, debuted on cable TV and the Internet.

In 1996, after 2,216 consecutive games at shortstop, MLB's Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken moved to third base.

In 2006, Cofounders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone publicly launched Twitter, and within the following decade, the social media platform had more than 300 million users.

In 2007, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced it was settling clergy sex-abuse cases for $660 million.

In 2007, the Philadelphia Phillies lost for the 10,000th time in franchise history, a 10-2 defeat at the hands of the visiting St. Louis Cardinals.

In 2010, BP stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico after 85 days using a 75-ton cap lowered onto the well earlier in the week.

In 2011, Rupert Murdoch accepted the resignations of The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Les Hinton, and the chief of his British operations, Rebekah Brooks, as the once-defiant media mogul struggled to control an escalating phone-hacking scandal.

In 2019, avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced by a state court to life in prison plus 419 years for killing one and injuring dozens when he deliberately drove his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 2024, Donald Trump picked Ohio Senator JD Vance as his Republican vice-presidential running mate