1776 – Continental Congress negotiates a war loan of $181,500 from France.
1788 – Maryland votes to cede a 10 square mile area for District of Columbia.
1862 – Union General Ben “Beast” Butler is proclaimed a “felon, outlaw & common enemy of mankind” by Jefferson Davis.
1907 – 1st all-steel passenger railroad coach completed, Altoona, Pa.
1913 – US President Woodrow Wilson signs Federal Reserve Act into law.
1919 – Alice H. Parker patents gas heating furnace.
1928 – NBC sets up a permanent, coast-to-coast radio network.
1930 – Bette Davis arrives in Hollywood under contract to Universal Studios.
1938 – Margaret Hamilton’s costume catches fire in filming of “The Wizard of Oz”
1947 – Transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley in Bell Labs.
1951 – National Football League Championship, LA Memorial Coliseum: Los Angeles Rams beat Cleveland Browns, 24-17, first coast-to-coast televised NFL title game.
1961 – Fidel Castro announces Cuba will release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion for $62M worth of food & medical supplies.
1968 – 1st US case of space motion sickness.
1975 – Congress passes Metric Conversion Act.
1986 – Experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan & Jeana Yeager, complete 1st nonstop, round-the-world flight without refueling, lands.
1987 – Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, serving a life sentence for attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, escapes from Alderson Prison.
1994 – Fearing arrest by the FBI, Whitey Bulger flees Boston, and successfully hides from law enforcement for the next 16 years.
1997 – Terry Nichols found guilty of manslaughter in Oklahoma bombing.
1997 – US Agriculture Department estimated it costs $149,820 to raise a child to 18.
2016 – United Nations Security Council adopts a landmark resolution demanding a halt to all Israeli settlement in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. Resolution 2334 was moved by New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela and passed 14-0 with a US abstention.
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