On this date...

In 1779, The Battle of Fort Freeland clears out the Wyoming Valley for a second time in two years. The Wyoming Valley is part of northeastern and north central Pennsylvania containing the Susquehanna River. At the time of the American Revolution, this was the frontier, containing the furthest western settlements of Pennsylvania.

In 1779, Before dawn the Penobscot Expedition landed their attack while their ships fired on the British fort in their first day of fighting.

In 1863, Confederate John Mosby begins a series of attacks against General George Meade‘s Army of the Potomac.

In 1868, The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the Civil War—entered into force.

In 1898, Spain, through the offices of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., requests peace terms in its war with the United States.

In 1932, The first feature-length zombie film, White Zombie—inspired by the book and by a stage play called Zombie—was released in New York City; it starred Bela Lugosi.

In 1932, During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army under General Douglas MacArthur to evict by force the Bonus Marchers from the nation’s capital.

In 1945, A United States military plane crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14 people. The freak accident was caused by heavy fog.

In 1954, The classic film On the Waterfront—directed by Elia Kazan and featuring one of Marlon Brando's most iconic performances—was released in the United States.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam, from the present 75,000 to 125,000. Johnson also said that he would order additional increases if necessary. He pointed out that to fill the increase in military manpower needs, the monthly draft calls would be raised from 17,000 to 35,000. At the same time, Johnson reaffirmed U.S. readiness to seek a negotiated end to the war, and appealed to the United Nations and any of its member states to help further this goal.

In 1968, several hundred Native Americans in Minneapolis, Minnesota attend a meeting, organized by community activists George Mitchell, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, to discuss issues facing their local Indigenous community. This event marks the start of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a primary proponent of the Red Power movement.

In 1975, the grizzly bear—once the undisputed king of the western wilderness—is given federal protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

In 1984, the Los Angeles Summer Olympics opened; 14 Eastern Bloc countries, led by the Soviet Union, boycotted the Games.

In 1990, A fire at an electrical substation causes a blackout in Chicago. Some 40,000 people were without power for up to three days.

In 1995, a jury in Union, South Carolina, rejected the death penalty for Susan Smith, sentencing her to life in prison for drowning her two young sons (Smith will be eligible for parole in November 2024).

In 1996, Two men at a Washington state park stumble on a skull, part of a skeleton later found to be over 9,000 years old—one of the oldest in N. America. “Kennewick Man” is reburied 21 years later, in Native American rites.

In 1998, Bell Atlantic and GTE announced a $52 billion merger that created Verizon.

In 2002, Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset, Pa., were rescued after 77 hours underground.

In 2004, The Democratic National Convention in Boston nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for president.

In 2009, The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court.

In 2015, it was announced that Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Naval intelligence analyst who had spent nearly three decades in prison for spying for Israel, had been granted parole.

In 2016, Ninety-five years after women were first granted the right to vote, former Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton makes history by accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president, becoming the first woman to lead a major U.S. political party.

In 2018, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the emeritus archbishop of Washington, D.C., following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy.

In 2019, a gunman opened fire at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy, California, killing three people, including a six-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, and wounding 17 others before taking his own life.