1502 – Christopher Columbus landed at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
1609 – Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shot and killed two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.
1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first Colonial European representative assembly in the Americas, the Virginia General Assembly, convened for the first time.
1676 – Nathaniel Bacon issued the “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, which began Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.
1729 – Founding of Baltimore, Maryland.
1733 – The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States was constituted in Massachusetts.
1863 – President Abraham Lincoln issued “eye-for-eye” order to shoot a rebel prisoner for every black prisoner shot.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempted to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1866 – Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans rioted against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.
1916 – Black Tom explosion: German agents detonated two million tons of U.S.-made munitions off the shores of Manhattan that were to be supplied to the Allies in World War I.
1928 – George Eastman showed the first amateur color motion pictures to guests at his New York house, including Thomas Edison.
1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.
1935 – The first Penguin book is published, which started the paperback revolution.
1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill which created the women’s Navy auxiliary agency (WAVES).
1942 – German SS killed 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most died during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.
1946 – The first rocket attains 100 mile altitude. (White Sands, New Mexico).
1954 – Elvis Presley joined the Memphis Federation of Musicians, Local 71.
1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower which authorized In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, which established Medicare and Medicaid.
1966 – Beatles’ “Yesterday… & Today” album goes #1 which it holds for 5 weeks.
1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon made an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and met with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.
1971 – Apollo program: On Apollo 15, David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon landed on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
1974 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon released subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of the United States.
1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He was never seen or heard from again.
1977 – “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” by Andy Gibb reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
1978 – The 730: Okinawa Prefecture changed its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
1991 -Heavy metal band Metallica released their single “Enter Sandman”.
2003 – In Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line.
2004 – “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”, starring Kal Penn and John Cho, was released.
2006 – The world’s longest running music show, Top of the Pops, was broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.
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