On this date...

"The Cow-Pock or the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation" by James Gillray, 1802**

In 1721, With the support of Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Zabdiel Boylston began the first smallpox vaccinations in the American colonies.

In 1832, the Mexicans at Fort Velasco surrendered to Texians in what is considered by many to be the first bloodshed in the struggle for Texas independence.

In 1844, Fifty-four year old widower President John Tyler marries 21-year-old Julia Gardiner. It was his second marriage. At the time, Julia was the youngest first lady in history.

In 1862, At the Battle of Mechanicsville, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia strikes Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, beginning the Seven Days’ Battles.

In 1870, The first section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk opened along the New Jersey beach.

In 1917, During World War I, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops land in France at the port of Saint-Nazaire.

In 1919, the New York Daily News was first published.

In 1925, Charlie Chaplin's comedy "The Gold Rush" premiered in Hollywood.

In 1924, U.S. troops pulled out of the Dominican Republic on June 26, 1924. They had occupied the island since 1916.

In 1942, Ensign J.F. Kennedy Requests Sea Duty on a PT Vessel: "Recommendation Approved"

In 1945, The Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco.

In 1948, the Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin.

In 1950, President Truman authorized the Air Force and Navy to enter the Korean conflict.

In 1956, the U.S. Congress approves the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date.

In 1963, During the Cold War, U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech in West Berlin.

In 1974, At a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum becomes the first grocery item scanned with a Universal Product Code, or UPC.

In 1977, Elvis Presley performed in public for the last time.

In 1990, President George H. W. Bush conceded that tax increases would have to be included in any deficit reduction package. He had campaigned on a pledge of "no new taxes."

In 1993, In retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate former U.S. President George H.W. Bush during his April visit to Kuwait, President Bill Clinton orders U.S. warships to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in downtown Baghdad.

In 1996, in the case of United States v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admission policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. (VMI enrolled its first female cadets the following year.)*

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ sodomy laws, along with similar laws in 13 other states. The decision in Lawrence v. Texas is a landmark one, reaffirming the existence of a “right to privacy” that is not enumerated in the Constitution and effectively legalizing same-sex sexual activity in the United States.

In 2008, The Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as it affirmed, 5-4, an individuals right to gun ownership. The case was known as the District of Columbia vs Hellar.

In 2013, In United States v. Windsor, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the provision in the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage for federal purposes as a legal union between one man and one woman.

In 2015, In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional; writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that “no longer may this liberty be denied.”

*Personal dislike of this as it is ok to have women only and men only things. We as women look hypocritical demanding women only spaces when we invade a man's space like this. There were plenty of other military school options that included women.

** The picture depicted here is not of the 1721 inoculations but instead of the English physician Edward Jenner who developed the first vaccine that used cowpox; this represented a huge improvement over inoculation with the smallpox virus since when humans contact cowpox, it is a far milder disease than smallpox. I used this picture because of the visual affects of a person receiving an inoculation where a small cut was made prior to the insertion of the small pox pus.