- 1789 – New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
- 1945 – Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at Nuremberg.
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis ends as President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of Cuba after the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from the island.
- 1969 – The Occupation of Alcatraz began as Native American activists seized control of the island prison. It took 19 months to remove the activists from the rock.
- 1974 – The Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T. The suit leads to the breakup of the Bell system.
