- 1879 – Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi is awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty.
- 1885 – Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- 1901 – Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the British House of Commons.
- 1916 – Mabel Stark, one of the world’s first female tiger trainers, is mauled in California.
- 1931 – Toni Morrison is born. The Pulitzer Prize winning novelist was the first Black American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
- 1934 – Activist and poet, Audre Geraldine Lorde is born.
- 1965 – Church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson is beaten and shot during a peaceful march in Marion, Alabama. His death 8 days later inspires the Selma to Montgomery marches.
- 2001 – Dale Earnhardt, Jr. killed in crash at the Daytona 500.
- 2010 – WikiLeaks publishes the first documents leaked by Chelsea Manning.
- 2011 – Green River serial killer Gary Ridgeway pleads guilty to 49th murder.
