Also on this day
Lead Story
1804
In a duel held in Weehawken, New Jersey, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day.
Alexander Hamilton, born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, came to the American colonies in...
American Revolution
1782
On this day in 1782, British Royal Governor Sir James Wright, along with several civil officials and military officers, flee the city of Savannah, Georgia, and head to Charleston, South Carolina. As part of the British evacuation, a group consisting of British regulars led by General Alured Clarke traveled...
Automotive
1916
On this day in 1916, in a ceremony at the White House, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act. The law established a national policy of federal aid for highways.
From the mid-19th century, the building and maintenance of roads had been seen as a state and local...
Civil War
1861
On this day, Union troops under General George B. McClellan score another major victory in the struggle for western Virginia at the Battle of Rich Mountain. The Yankee success secured the region and ensured the eventual creation of West Virginia.
Western Virginia was a crucial battleground in the early months of...
Cold War
1945
Fulfilling agreements reached at various wartime conferences, the Soviet Union promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in West Berlin. Although the division of Berlin (and of Germany as a whole) into zones of occupation was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, the dividing lines quickly became...
Crime
2010
On this day in 2010, after a two-year manhunt, 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore of Washington state is arrested following a high-speed boat chase in the Bahamas. Harris-Moore was suspected of stealing an airplane in Indiana and crash-landing it in the Bahamas the week before. Nicknamed the “Barefoot Bandit” for going shoeless...
Disaster
1978
On this day in 1978, a truck carrying liquid gas crashes into a campsite, crowded with vacationers, in San Carlos de la Rapita, Spain. The resulting explosion killed more than 200 people; many others suffered severe burns.
Shortly after 3 p.m. on a hot day on the Mediterranean coast of...
General Interest
1656
Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, two Englishwomen, become the first Quakers to immigrate to the American colonies when the ship carrying them lands at Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The pair came from Barbados, where Quakers had established a center for missionary work.The Religious Society of Friends, whose members...
1979
Parts of Skylab, America’s first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured.Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world’s first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the...
1995
Two decades after the fall of Saigon, President Bill Clinton establishes full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, citing Vietnamese cooperation in accounting for the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.Normalization with America’s old enemy began in early 1994, when President Clinton announced the lifting of the 19-year-old...
Hollywood
1922
On this day in 1922, the Hollywood Bowl, one of the world’s largest natural amphitheaters, opens with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since that time, a long, diverse list of performers, including The Beatles, Luciano Pavarotti and Judy Garland, have appeared on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. The...
Literary
1899
On this day in 1899, E.B. White, the author of the popular children’s novels “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little” and “The Trumpet of the Swan,” is born in Mount Vernon, New York. White, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine who was known for his graceful, witty prose, also updated...
Music
1960
Novelty songs have been around for centuries, slipping in and out of popular fashion. But never in modern musical history were novelty songs quite so popular as they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It began in 1958 with David Seville’s “Witch Doctor,” which inspired “Purple People Eater”...
Old West
1869
Tall Bull, a prominent leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldier warrior society, is killed during the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado.
Tall Bull was the most distinguished of several Cheyenne warriors who bore this hereditary name. He was a leader of the Dog Soldiers, a fierce Cheyenne society of warriors...
Presidential
1767
On this day in 1767, John Quincy Adams, son of the second U.S. president, John Adams, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts.
John Quincy Adams inherited his father’s passion for politics. He accompanied his father on diplomatic missions from the time he was 14 and entered the legal profession after completing his...
Vietnam War
1966
A Harris survey taken shortly after the bombing raids on the Hanoi-Haiphong area shows that 62 percent of those interviewed favored the raids, 11 percent were opposed, and 27 percent were undecided. Of those polled, 86 percent felt the raids would hasten the end of the war. The raids under...
1967
In Senate debates about U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) warns against further escalation of the war. Convinced that a military solution to the situation in South Vietnam was impossible, he urged an alternative to expansion of the U.S. effort in Vietnam. His alternative included putting the...
1969
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, in a televised speech, makes a “comprehensive offer” for a political settlement. He challenged the National Liberation Front to participate in free elections organized by a joint electoral commission and supervised by an international body. Following the speech, South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Chanh...
World War I
1918
Even with a deadly influenza epidemic spreading among German troops, the German High Command decides to go ahead with plans for a renewed assault on the Allies on the Western Front in the summer of 1918, making their final plans on July 11.
The so-called Spanish flu, an unusually powerful strain...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler’s headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler’s behest grew, a growing...