1779 – US Army Corps of Engineers established (1st time)
1865 – General William T. Sherman’s Union forces occupies Fayetteville, North Carolina.
1897 – A meteorite enters the earth’s atmosphere and explodes over New Martinsville, West Virginia. The debris causes damage but no human injuries are reported.
1918 – US Army mess cook Private Albert Gitchell of Fort Riley, Kansas becomes the first documented case of Spanish flu; start of worldwide pandemic killing millions.
1927 – 1st armored commercial car hold-up in US, Pittsburgh.
1941 – FDR signs Lend-Lease Bill (lend money to Britain)
1954 – US Army charges Senator Joseph McCarthy used undue pressure tactics.
1958 – American B-47 accidentally drops nuclear bomb 15,000 feet on a family home in Mars Bluff, South Carolina; creates crater 75 feet across, bomb without its nuclear capsule.
1958 – Charles Van Doren finally loses on US TV game show “Twenty-One” after winning $129,000 – later revealed to be fixed.
1963 – US Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara orders the adoption by the US military of the M16 assault rifle, originally designed as the AR-15 by Eugene Stoner.
1968 – Otis Redding is the first person in the US to posthumously receive gold record for his single “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay”
1971 – Jim Morrison leaves for Paris to reorient himself emotionally and creatively and to avoid the jail sentence given to him in Miami. He will never return to the US.
1982 – US boycotts Libyan crude oil.
1986 – 187.27 million shares traded in NY Stock Exchange.
1986 – NFL adopts instant replay rule.
1991 – Monica Seles ends Steffi Graf’s streak of 186 weeks ranked as #1.
2007 – 54th ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament: #8 North Carolina beats NC State, 89-80.
2018 – Superhero movie “The Black Panther” becomes the fifth Marvel movie to earn $1 billion worldwide.
2020 – COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus with 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths.
2020 – Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison for a criminal sex act and rape in New York.
2020 – 11-year bull market ends as the Dow Jones industrial average falls more than 20%, becoming a bear market.
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