1803 – US Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.
1817 – 1st Mississippi “Showboat” leaves Nashville on maiden voyage.
1820 – Spain sells part of Florida to US for $5 million.
1864 – US President Abraham Lincoln formally establishes Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
1898 – NC Mutual & Provident Insurance Company forms.
1906 – Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated his electrical vacuum tube (radio tube)
1917 – US suffragette Alice Paul begins a 7 month jail sentence for protesting women’s rights in Washington.
1939 – “All the Things You Are” recorded by Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
1944 – US forces under General Douglas MacArthur return to the Philippines with the landing of the US 6th army on Leyte.
1955 – Harry Belafonte records “Day-O” (Banana Boat Song)
1960 – 1st fully mechanized post office opened, Providence, RI.
1967 – All white jury convicts 7 in murder of 3 civil rights workers in Meridan, Mississippi.
1973 – US President Nixon discharges Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepts the resignation of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.
1975 – Supreme Court rules teachers could spank their pupils after warning.
1979 – John F. Kennedy Library dedicated in Boston.
1987 – Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz sentenced to 6 months in jail.
1995 – STS 73 (Columbia 18) launches into orbit.
1997 – US accuses Microsoft of violating pact forcing IE browser on computers.
2014 – Laquan McDonald (17) is shot dead by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke while jaywalking, the murder caught on video footage.
2015 – US Vice President Joe Biden confirms he will not run for President.