1789 – Founding Father Ethan Allen dies of a stroke at age 52.
1793 – First Fugitive Slave law passed by Congress. This Act authorized local governments to seize and return escapees to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight.
1809 – Abraham Lincoln is born. So is Charles Darwin.
1865 – Born a slave, Pastor Henry Highland Garnet became the first Black person to speak in the U.S. Capitol when he delivered a sermon on the abolition of slavery to the House of Representatives.
1870 – Utah’s acting territorial governor signed the suffrage bill into law. Woot!
1884 – Alice Roosevelt Longworth, “Princess Alice,” is born. When her father Theodore Roosevelt was asked why he could not discipline her, he explained that he do that or rule the country but he couldn’t do both.
1909 – The NAACP is founded.
1912 – The last emperor of China abdicates.
1930 – In Tuskegee, Alabama, the Rosenwald Fund made grants to the Alabama State Board of Health to help meet the cost of a study of syphilis in Black men – and the women they infected – living in rural Georgia and Alabama. Over 400 men were allowed to carry the disease without medical treatment for nearly 40 years.
1938 – Judy Blume is born.
1948 – First Lt. Nancy C. Leftenant became the first Black nurse accepted in the regular Army Nursing Corps.
1956 – Arsenio Hall is born. He grew up to become the nation’s first Black late-night talk show host.
1973 – The release of US POWs from Hanoi begins.
1999 – President Bill Clinton acquitted on both articles of impeachment.
2000 – Charles Schultz dies at age 77 from colon cancer.
2002 – Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial for war crimes.