On this date...
In 1619, the first legislative assembly gathered in Jamestown, Virginia. Twenty-two members of the House of Burgesses were selected from Jamestown’s 11 boroughs.
In 1729, the city of Baltimore was founded.
In 1733, the Society of Freemasons opens its first American lodge in Boston.
In 1739, Caspar Wistar begins glass manufacturing in Allowaystown, New Jersey.
In 1776, Washington faces an enemy already inside New York: bad water. He warns that the city’s pump water is unhealthy. The quartermaster general is to provide canteens quickly and inspect the water stored in casks. Officers must devise a better way to supply fresh water to troops crowded in the city in summer heat.
In 1776, Washington weighs action against the British on Staten Island. Brigadier General Hugh Mercer begins preparing boats, but the plan is faltering. Mercer and the officers with him judge a large attack impracticable.
In 1777, Brigadier General George Clinton takes office as the first elected governor of the independent state of New York. Clinton would go on to become New York’s longest-serving governor, as well as the longest-serving governor in the United States, holding the post until 1795, and again from 1801 to 1804.
In 1863, Indian Wars: Chief Pocatello of the Shoshone tribe signs the Treaty of Box Elder, promising to stop harassing emigrant trails in southern Idaho and northern Utah.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issues an “eye-for-an-eye” order to shoot a rebel prisoner for every Black prisoner shot.
In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Virginia, by exploding a gunpowder-laden mine shaft beneath Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.
In 1866, during the turbulent Reconstruction era after the Civil War, white resistance to African American citizenship turns violent in New Orleans when a white mob kills dozens of African Americans gathering to support a political meeting.
In 1869, the world’s first oil tanker, "The Charles," departs the United States for Europe, carrying 7,000 barrels of oil.
In 1884, Nonpareil Jack Dempsey fights George Fulljames in what is possibly the first middleweight fight with boxing gloves.
In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.
In 1928, George Eastman shows the first amateur color motion pictures to guests at his New York house, including Thomas Edison.
In 1932, United States Vice President Charles Curtis declared, “I proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles, celebrating the tenth Olympiad of the modern era.
In 1942, Frank Sinatra sang with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in his last recording before his solo career.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women’s auxiliary agency in the Navy known as Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES.
In 1945, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine shortly after delivering the internal components of the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In 1952, Ford Frick set a waiver rule to bar inter-league deals until all clubs in the same league get the right to bid.
In 1956, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation making “In God We Trust” the official motto of the United States. The following year, the phrase began appearing on $1 bills, and it was later added to larger denominations.
In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid were established in the US.
In 1970, 30,000 people arrived to attend the Powder Ridge Rock Festival in Middlefield, Connecticut, despite its cancellation due to local residents' opposition.
In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David R. Scott and James B. Irwin landed on the moon.
In 1974, after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Supreme Court, President Richard Nixon released the Watergate tapes to a special prosecutor. Also by this date, the House Judiciary Committee had adopted three articles of impeachment against him.
In 1975, Former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, under mysterious circumstances.
In 1976, Bruce Jenner won the gold medal and set a world record in the Olympic decathlon at the Montreal Summer Games.
In 1990, George Steinbrenner was forced by Commissioner of Baseball Fay Vincent to resign as principal owner of the NY Yankees.
In 2002, expelled from Congress a week earlier, James A. Traficant Jr. was sentenced to eight years behind bars for corruption.
In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the "Sarbanes-Oxley Act" into law, legislation designed to prevent future accounting scandals such as Enron's bankruptcy
In 2013, U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy — the most serious charge she faced — but was convicted of espionage, theft and other charges at Fort Meade, Maryland, more than three years after she’d spilled secrets to WikiLeaks. (The former intelligence analyst was later sentenced to up to 35 years in prison, but the sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in office.)
In 2016, 16 people died when a hot air balloon caught fire and exploded after hitting high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, Texas, about 70 miles northeast of San Antonio.
In 2020, NASA began its Mars 2020 mission with the launch of the rover Perseverance from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
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