- 1830 – Joseph Smith and five others officially start The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fayette, NY.
- 1846 – Dred Scott and his wife Harriet file suit against Irene Emerson for their freedom, the beginning of a decade-long legal fight for their freedom. Ultimately, the US Supreme Court ruled that all people of African descent were not citizens and had no right to sue in federal court and that the Fifth Amendment protected slave owner rights because slaves were property.
- 1880 – Maria Beasley receives a patent for the life raft.
- 1917 – The United States officially enters WWI.
- 1994 – Juvénal Habyarimana, Rwandan General, Dictator and President of Rwanda (1973-94), is assassinated by missile strike on his plane over Kigali, Rwanda at 57, setting off a genocide where almost a million people will die in 100 days.
