Category: today

1775 Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British. 1863 Confederate General Stonewall Jackson died after being accidentally shot by…

1914 Mother’s Day became a public holiday. 1926 Explorers Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett flew over the North Pole. 1936 Fascist Italy annexed Ethiopia.…

1794 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. 1877 The first Westminister Dog Show was held. 1902…

May 5 1809 Mary Kies of South Killingly, Conn., became the first woman to be granted a patent. The patent was for the rights to…

1626 Peter Minuit landed in Manhattan, which he later bought for $24 worth of cloth and brass buttons. 1886 The Haymarket Square riot broke out…

1937 Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Gone With the Wind. 1948 The Shelley v. Kraemer Supreme Court decision stated that it…

1707 The Act of Union joined England and Scotland to form Great Britain. 1931 The Empire State Building opened in New York City. At 102…

1788 Maryland became the 7th state in the United States. 1789 Fletcher Christian led the mutiny aboard the British ship Bounty against Captain William Bligh.…

1521 Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in a fight with natives of the Philippines. 1805 The U.S. Marines captured Derna, on the shores of…

1836 Texan army under Sam Houston defeated Mexicans in the Battle of San Jacinto. 1910 Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), author of the novel Huckleberry Finn,…