On this date...

Marquis de Lafayette in battle

In 1586, Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

In 1776, Washington writes to John Hancock about recruitment. He fears officers will have little success in raising men for a new three-year army unless Congress provides stronger incentives. Washington recommends offering the men land. 

In 1776, on Long Island, Nathanael Greene detains four Queens County men trying to slip toward Staten Island. They insist they are not joining the British; they were scared of being drafted into the army. “Never did I see fellows more frighted, they wept like a parcel of Children and appear exceeding sorrowful,” Greene writes.

In 1777, French aristocrat Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, arrived in Philadelphia to volunteer for service in the Continental Army.

On July 27, 1789, Congress created what was then known as the Department of Foreign Affairs—now called the Department of State. It would be changed to the Department of State in September of 1789.

In 1837, the US Mint opens in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 1844, Fire destroys the US Mint at Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 1861, Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac.

In 1866, the first successful underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe was completed.

In 1909, the world’s first military airplane completed one of the final qualifying flights for its sale to the U.S. Army Signal Corps by Wilbur and Orville Wright.

In 1919, the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was ignited after a young Black man was stoned and drowned in Lake Michigan for swimming in an area reserved for whites.

In 1940, Cartoon character Bugs Bunny makes his official debut in “A Wild Hare”; watch here.

In 1940, Billboard magazine published its first “music popularity chart” listing best-selling retail records. In first place was “I’ll Never Smile Again” recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with featured vocalist Frank Sinatra.

In 1947, New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra starts a record 148-game errorless streak.

In 1953, Korean War combat ends with an armistice.

In 1960, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate at the Republican convention in Chicago.

In 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. is jailed in Albany, Georgia.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill requiring cigarette manufacturers to print health warnings about the effects of smoking on all cigarette packages.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of urban rioting, the same day Black militant H. Rap Brown told a press conference in Washington that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommends that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached and removed from office.

In 1981, Adam John Walsh, age 6, is abducted from a mall in Hollywood, Florida, and later found murdered. In the aftermath of the crime, Adam’s father, John Walsh, became a leading victims’ rights activist and host of the long-running television show America’s Most Wanted.

In 1984, Montreal Expos first baseman Pete Rose collected his record 3,503rd career single, passing Ty Cobb with a hit off former Phillies teammate Steve Carlton at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

In 1995, the Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

In 1996, a pipe bomb exploded in Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta, Georgia, killing 1 person and injuring 111 in the first terrorist attack at the Olympics since the 1972 Games in Munich, West Germany.

In 2003, Lance Armstrong won a record-tying fifth straight Tour de France title.

In 2005, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who’d plotted to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium, was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

In 2011, the US Senate, in a 100-0 vote, unanimously approved a request from President Barack Obama to extend FBI Director Robert Mueller’s 10-year term by 2 years.

In 2015, the Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay adult leaders while allowing church-sponsored Scout units to maintain the exclusion for religious reasons.

In 2017, the Boy Scouts of America Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh apologized for politically charged remarks made by President Donald Trump at a rally attended by 30,000 Scouts.

In 2018, the White House announced that North Korea had returned the remains of what were believed to be U.S. service members killed during the Korean War, with a U.S. military plane making a rare trip into North Korea to retrieve 55 cases of remains.

In 2020, the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccine study began, with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping test shots developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc.

In 2020, U.S. Congressman John Lewis became the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

In 2021, American gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of the gymnastics team competition at the Tokyo Olympics to focus on her mental well-being, saying she realized following a shaky vault that she wasn’t in the right headspace to compete.