- 1789 – The Bill of Rights is sent to the various States for ratification.
- 1919 – President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him incapacitated for several weeks.
- 1925 – Scottish inventor John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system.
- 1950 – The “Peanuts” comic strip by Charles M. Schulz was published for the first time. The comic ran for 50 years until Schulz’s death in 2000 from cancer.
- 1959 – The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
- 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.
- 1970 – An aircraft carrying the Wichita State University football team, administrators, and supporters crashes in Colorado, killing 31 people.
- 1980 – Michael Myers becomes the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War for his role in the Abscam scandal.
- 2002 – A 55-year-old Maryland was slain in the first in a series of apparent random sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C. area for three weeks.
