- 1170 – Archbishop Thomas Becket is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral.
- 1800 – Charles Goodyear is born.
- 1808 – Andrew Johnson is born. He later served at Abraham Lincoln’s second Vice-President and became the 17th President of the U.S upon Lincoln’s assassination. He also became the first U.S. president to be impeached.
- 1845 – Texas becomes the 28th state.
- 1851 – Retired sea captain Thomas Valentine Sullivan establishes the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Boston, MA.
- 1890 – U.S. Army massacres Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee. Nearly half of the victims are women and children.
- 1937 – Thea Bowman is born. She became the first black Catholic nun to join white Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in the 1960s, worked with issues of racial inequality.
- 2016 – LaVell Edwards dies at age 86
