- 1570 – Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and persecution of English Catholics during her reign and absolves her subjects from allegiance to the crown.
- 1793 – First US cabinet meeting is held at George Washington’s home.
- 1828 – John Quincy Adam’s son, John Adams, marries his first cousin, Mary Catherine Hellen in a private ceremony at the White House.
- 1836 – Samuel Colt patents first multi-shot revolving-cylinder revolver, enabling the firearm to be fired multiple times without reloading.
- 1836 – Showman P. T. Barnum exhibits African American slave Joice Heth, claiming she was the 161 year-old nursemaid to George Washington. (She wasn’t.)
- 1841 – French Impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir is born.
- 1842 – Idawelly Lewis, lighthouse keeper, is born. Ida began rescuing people from the waters off the shores of Newport, Rhode Island when she was 12. She became the lighthouse keeper after her parents passed away and served for 32 years in that official capacity. She was called “the bravest woman in America” for her heroic rescues.
- 1862 – Legal Tender Act passed to help finance the Civil War.
- 1870 – First Black Congressman, Hiram Rhodes Revels, sworn in to the U.S. Senate.
- 1901 – US Steel Corporation is organized under J.P. Morgan, Sr.
- 1910 – Millicent Fenwick is born. As a member of the New Jersey General Assembly (1969-73), she earned the nickname “Outhouse Millie” for her fight for better working conditions for migrant workers (including portable toilets). She won seat in Congress in 1974 and served three terms, turning up in the comic strip “Doonesbury” as “Lucy Davenport,” champion of gun control, campaign spending limits, and the ERA.
- 1928 – Bryce Canyon National Park is established.
- 1930 – George Lewis McCarthy’s invention the Checkograph, banks made photographic records of checks before returning them to their customers. Kodak would later purchase McCarthy’s patent and apply the product to other archival systems such as libraries and newspapers, beginning with the New York Times. And so began the era of microfilm.
- 1932 – Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship
- 1948 – Martin Luther King, Jr. ordained as a Baptist minister.
- 1964 – Young Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston for first world title.
- 1971 – President Nixon met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
- 1986 – Corazon Aquino becomes the first female president of the Philippines, while Marcos fled the country.
- 1991 – Adrienne Mitchell is killed in her military barracks in Saudi Arabia, becoming the first Black woman to die in combat in the Persian Gulf War.
