- 1492 – Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached the Indies.
- 1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor Sir Williams Phips.
- 1793 – The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
- 1799 – Jeanne Genevieve Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 3,000 feet.
- The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in many public schools as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage.
- 1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the “Executive Mansion” to the White House.
- 1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe.
- 1973 – President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan for the vice presidency to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.
