1776 – Continental Congress negotiates a war loan of $181,500 from France.
1783 – US General George Washington resigns his military commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to Congress.
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.
1900 – As American forces defeat the Filipino insurgents and impose civil authority, some Filipinos form a Federal Party with a platform recognizing US sovereignty.
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.
1937 – First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.
1947 – Transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley in Bell Labs.
1954 – The first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
1961 – Fidel Castro announces Cuba will release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion for $62M worth of food and medical supplies.
1968 – 82 members of US intelligence ship Pueblo released by North Korea.
1968 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the 1st men to orbit the Moon.
1970 – NYC World Trade Center reaches highest point (411 m)
1975 – Congress passes Metric Conversion Act.
1986 – Experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan & Jeana Yeager, completes 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 – US Agriculture Department estimates it costs $149,820 to raise a child to 18.
1997 – Terry Nichols found guilty of manslaughter in Oklahoma bombing.