Tag: today in history

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,…

1769 Ottawa Indian chief Pontiac murdered. 1841 The first detective story, Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue was published. 1902 Marie and Pierre…

April 19 1775 The “shot heard around the world” was fired. Colonial Minute Men took on British Army regulars at Lexington and Concord, Mass., starting…

April 18 1775 Paul Revere rode from Charlestown to Lexington to warn Massachusetts colonists of the arrival of British troops during the American Revolution. 1906…