Event-a-Day

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1749 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont. The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.

1777 – American General George Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.

1815 – Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.

1861 – American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the United States.

1868 – Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.

1870 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.

1871 – Battle of Bapaume, a Franco-Prussian war occurs.

1925 – Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy.

1933 – Minnie D. Craig becomes the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.

1938 – The March of Dimes is established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1946 – Popular Canadian American jockey George Woolf dies in a freak accident during a race; the annual George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award is created to honor him.

1947 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.

1959 – Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.

1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.

1993 – In Moscow, Russia, George Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

1994 – More than seven million people from the former apartheid Homelands receive South African citizenship.

1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched.

1642 – King Charles I of England sends soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, commencing England's slide into civil war.

1649 – English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial.

1717 – The Netherlands, Great Britain, and France sign the Triple Alliance.

1762 – Great Britain enters the Seven Years' War against Spain and Naples.

1853 – After having been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South, Solomon Northup regains his freedom; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later becomes a national bestseller.

1865 – The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters near Wall Street in New York City.

1889 – The Oklahoma Land Run opens two million acres of unused Oklahoma Territory to first serve first come settlers on April 22.

1896 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.

1958 – Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from orbit.

1959 – Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon.

1974 – United States President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

2004 – Spirit, a NASA Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC.

2007 – The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.

1066 – Edward the Confessor dies childless, sparking a succession crisis that will eventually lead to the Norman conquest of England.

1757 – Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for regicides.

1781 – American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold.

1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom.

1875 – The Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated in Paris.

1913 – First Balkan War: During the Battle of Lemnos, Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it did not venture for the rest of the war.

1914 – The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and that it would pay a "living wage" of at least US$5 for a day's labor.

1919 – The German Workers' Party, which would become the Nazi Party, is founded.

1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female governor in the United States.

1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.

1945 – The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland.

1949 – United States President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program.

1957 – In a speech given to the United States Congress, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces the establishment of what will later be called the Eisenhower Doctrine.

1972 – United States President Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program.

2005 – Eris, the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

2014 – A launch of the communication satellite GSAT-14 aboard the GSLV MK.II D5 marks the first successful flight of an Indian cryogenic engine.

1017 – Cnut the Great is crowned King of England.

1066 – Harold Godwinson (or Harold II) is crowned King of England.

1540 – King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves.

1853 – President-elect of the United States Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Massachusetts. Pierce's 11-year-old son Benjamin is killed in the crash.

1930 – The first diesel-engined automobile trip is completed, from Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York, New York.

1931 – Thomas Edison signs his last patent application.

1941 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address.

1946 – The first general election ever in Vietnam is held.

1994 – Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the knee at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit.

1558 – France takes Calais, the last continental possession of England.

1610 – Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following day.

1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.

1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.

1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used.

1894 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film.

1904 – The distress signal "CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by "SOS".

1940 – Winter War: The Finnish 9th Division stop and completely destroy the numerically superior Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.

1942 – World War II: The siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins.

1945 – World War II: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge.

1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO.

1968 – Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.

1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

871 – Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings.

1499 – Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany.

1746 – Second Jacobite rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.

1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.

1806 – Cape Colony becomes a British colony.

1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.

1806 – Cape Colony becomes a British colony.

1811 – An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslondes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana.

1815 – War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.

1835 – The United States national debt is zero for the only time.

1863 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield

1867 – African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.

1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.

1904 – The Blackstone Library is dedicated, marking the beginning of the Chicago Public Library system.

1912 – The African National Congress is founded.

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I.

1963 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States.

1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched. Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.

1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband.

1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.

1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.

1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.

1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.

1806 – British Admiral Horatio Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral.

1861 – Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

1894 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.

2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

1776 – Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet Common Sense.

1791 – The Siege of Dunlap's Station begins near Cincinnati during the Northwest Indian War.

1806 – Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrender to the British.

1861 – American Civil War: Florida secedes from the Union.

1863 – The London Underground, the world's oldest underground railway, opens between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.

1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.

1920 – The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.

1927 – Fritz Lang's futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.

1946 – The first General Assembly of the United Nations opens in London. Fifty-one nations are represented. The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the Moon and receiving the reflected signals.

1962 – Apollo program: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, which became known as the Saturn V Moon rocket, which launched every Apollo Moon mission.

1759 – In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.

1787 – William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

1805 – The Michigan Territory is created.

1861 – Alabama secedes from the United States.

1927 – Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at a banquet in Los Angeles, California.

1935 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

1996 – Space Shuttle program: STS-72 launches from the Kennedy Space Center marking the start of the 74th Space Shuttle mission and the 10th flight of Endeavour.

1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1918 – Finland's "Mosaic Confessors" law goes into effect, making Finnish Jews full citizens.

1921 – Acting to restore confidence in baseball after the Black Sox Scandal, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected as Major League Baseball's first commissioner.

1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.

1966 – Lyndon B. Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.

1969 – The New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

1986 – Space Shuttle program: Congressman Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a Mission Specialist.

2004 – The world's largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.

2005 – Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta II rocket.

1822 – The design of the Greek flag is adopted by the First National Assembly at Epidaurus.

1830 – The Great Fire of New Orleans begins.

1888 – The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C.

1898 – Émile Zola's J'accuse…! exposes the Dreyfus affair.

1942 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car. First use of an aircraft ejection seat by a German test pilot in a Heinkel He 280 jet fighter.

1966 – Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member when he is appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

1978 – United States Food and Drug Administration requires all blood donations to be labeled "paid" or "volunteer" donors.

1993 – Space Shuttle program: Endeavour heads for space for the third time as STS-54 launches from the Kennedy Space Center.

1539 – Spain annexes Cuba.

1784 – American Revolutionary War: Ratification Day, United States - Congress ratifies the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain.

1822 – Greek War of Independence: Acrocorinth is captured by Theodoros Kolokotronis and Demetrios Ypsilantis.

1858 – Napoleon III of France escapes an assassination attempt.

1911 – Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition makes landfall on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.

1938 – Norway claims Queen Maud Land in Antarctica.

1943 – World War II: Japan begins Operation Ke, the successful operation to evacuate its forces from Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal Campaign. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill begin the Casablanca Conference to discuss strategy and study the next phase of the war. Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to travel by airplane while in office when he travels from Miami to Morocco to meet with Winston Churchill.

1950 – The first prototype of the MiG-17 makes its maiden flight.

1952 – NBC's long-running morning news program Today debuts, with host Dave Garroway.

1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey, London, England.

1759 – The British Museum opens.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut (present-day Vermont) declares its independence.

1782 – Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

1910 – Construction ends on the Buffalo Bill Dam in Wyoming, United States, which was the highest dam in the world at the time, at 325 ft (99 m).

1943 – The Pentagon is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.

1967 – The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles. The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10.

1969 – The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5.

2001 – Wikipedia, a free wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.

2005 – ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the Moon.

2009 – Captain Sully (Chesley Sullenberger) emergency landed a US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River saving all 155 passengers after the plane collided with birds few minutes after take-off.

1547 – Ivan IV of Russia a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible becomes Czar of Russia.

1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain.

1572 – Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.

1900 – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.

1909 – Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

1919 – Temperance movement: The United States ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition in the United States one year after ratification.

1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France.

1945 – Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker.

1964 – Hello, Dolly! opened on Broadway, beginning a run of 2,844 performances.

1969 – Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

1991 – Coalition Forces go to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War.

2001 – US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish–American War.

2002 – The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the remaining members of the Taliban.

2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.

1648 – England's Long Parliament passes the "Vote of No Addresses", breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.

1773 – Captain James Cook commands the first expedition to sail south of the Antarctic Circle.

1899 – The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.

1903 – El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.

1917 – The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.

1943 – World War II: Greek submarine Papanikolis captures the 200-ton sailing vessel Agios Stefanos and mans her with part of her crew.

1961 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military–industrial complex" as well as the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending.

1997 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: A Delta II carrying a GPS2R satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.

1486 – King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.

1778 – James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".

1871 – Wilhelm I of Germany is proclaimed Kaiser Wilhelm in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles (France) towards the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Wilhelm already had the title of German Emperor since the constitution of 1 January 1871, but he had hesitated to accept the title.

1886 – Modern hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England.

1896 – An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.

1903 – A transmitter in Wellfleet, Massachusetts sends the first transatlantic radio transmission to originate in the United States.

1911 – Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco Bay, the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.

1943 – Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

1983 – The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family.

1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 states.