- 1513 – Spanish explorer Vasco Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first known European to see the Pacific Ocean.
- 1690 – Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time.
- 1789 – Congress passes twelve amendments to the Constitution: The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.
- 1890 – Congress establishes Sequoia National Park.
- 1957 – Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students entered all-white entered Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first female Supreme Court justice.
- 2008 – Federal regulators seized Washington Mutual in what officials said was the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.
