On this date...

Washington Upon Arrival in Cambridge

In 1775, George Washington leaves Philadelphia and heads to Cambridge, MA to take command of the ragtag Continental Army.

In 1780, The Battle of Springfield NJ occurred and was an attempt to draw out and defeat Washington’s army. 6000 British and Hessian troops against 1,500 Americans supported by NJ Militia.

In 1845, a joint resolution of the Congress of Texas voted in favor of annexation by the United States. The leaders of the republic first voted for annexation in 1836, soon after gaining independence from Mexico, but the U.S. Congress was unwilling to admit another state that permitted slavery at that time.

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 inventor Christopher Latham Sholes and two others were granted a patent for a typewriter. It is known as the QWERTY typewriter, revolutionizing communication. Sholes first version was cobbled together using an old table, a circular piece of glass, a telegraph key and piano wire.

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

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 1969, Warren E. Burger was sworn in as chief justice of the United States by the man he was succeeding, Earl Warren.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s advisor, H.R. Haldeman, tells 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 Congress threatened to impeach Nixon for in 1974.

In 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex.

In 1992, Mafia boss John Gotti, aka “Teflon Don,” sentenced to life

In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt chops 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 Mississippi slayings of three civil rights workers.

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

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