On this date...

Daniel Morgan

In 1775,  Captain Daniel Morgan and his Virginia riflemen arrive in Cambridge, Massachusetts to support the troops gathered there after Lexington & Concord.

In 1775, The Battle of Gloucester, fought between the British sloop of war HMS Falcon and Gloucester townspeople, resulted in a resounding American victory.

In 1786, US Congress unanimously chooses the dollar as the monetary unit for the United States of America.

In 1814, during the War of 1812, peace talks between the United States and Britain began in Ghent, Belgium.

In 1844, After Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormonism, and his brother, Hyrum, were murdered by an angry mob in an Illinois prison six weeks earlier, Elder Brigham Young is chosen to be the Church’s next leader.

In 1846, The Wilmot Proviso, an attempt to prohibit the extension of slavery to new territories in the United States, was proposed, and, in the debate that followed, the Republican Party was born.

In 1863, In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

In 1876, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric pen—the forerunner of the mimeograph machine.

In 1908, Wilbur Wright makes the Wright Brothers’ first public flying demonstration, at Le Mans racecourse in France.

In 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure raising the number of U.S. representatives from 391 to 433, effective with the next Congress, with a proviso to add two more when New Mexico and Arizona became states.

In 1929, Germany’s Graf Zeppelin, a 776-foot-long dirigible, lifts off from Lakehurst, N.J., on its first round-the-world flight. It returns to Lakehurst three weeks later, having set a record for global circumnavigation.

In 1942, During World War II, six German saboteurs who secretly entered the United States on a mission to attack its civil infrastructure are executed by the United States for spying.

In 1945, The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France signed the London Agreement, which authorized the Nürnberg trials, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter, and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization.

In 1974, Faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation on this day in 1974 and was succeeded by Gerald Ford the following day.

In 1992, The U.S. men's Olympic basketball team—which had been dubbed the “Dream Team” because of an all-star roster of NBA players that included Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird—easily defeated Croatia to win the gold medal at the Barcelona Games.

In 2000, The wreckage of the Hunley, a Confederate submarine that was lost during the American Civil War, was raised from the ocean floor near Sullivans Island, South Carolina; it was the first submarine to sink (1864) an enemy ship (the Union sloop Housatonic).

In 2022, FBI agents executed a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar al Lago in Palm Beach, Florida; over 13,000 government documents, including 103 classified documents, were seized.