1617 – Pocahontas died in England at about age 22. Three years earlier, she converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca and married Englishman John Rolfe.
1790 – Thomas Jefferson of Virginia became the first secretary of state.
1925 – The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closes.
1965 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1980 – President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics to protest the Soviet-Afghan War.
2006 – Twitter is founded.
