1716 – 1st lighthouse in American colonies lit (Boston Harbor)
1814 – Francis Scott Key pens the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry, later known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore harbor.
1848 – Alexander Stewart opens 1st US department store.
1901 – Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the youngest man to serve as US President, after William McKinley finally dies after an anarchist shoots him in Buffalo.
1933 – 2 billion board feet of lumber destroyed in Tillamook Oregon fire.
1937 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt bans US ships from trading arms with China or Japan.
1939 – World’s 1st practical helicopter, the VS-300 designed by Igor Sikorsky takes (tethered) flight in Stratford, Connecticut.
1940 – US Congress passes 1st peace-time conscription bill (draft law)
1948 – Milton Berle starts his TV career on Texaco Star Theater.
1954 – Hurricane Edna (2nd of 1954) hits NYC, $50 million damage.
1955 – Herb Score sets rookie record of 235 strikeouts (en route 245)
1963 – Mary Ann Fischer of Aberdeen, South Dakota, gives birth to America’s 1st surviving quintuplets, 4 girls & a boy.
1964 – President Lyndon Johnson presents Walter Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1981 – Judge Wapner & People’s Court premieres on TV.
1998 – Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.
2001 – Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation’s capital.
2011 – Elizabeth Warren announces she intends to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 Massachusetts Senatorial election.
2015 – 14 year old Texan Ahmed Mohamed arrested at school when home-made clock assumed to be a bomb – Mark Zuckerberg and US President Barack Obama sent supportive tweets.
2018 – Hurricane Florence makes landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, as a category 1 hurricane.
2018 – Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort pleads guilty to conspiracy charges and agrees to cooperate with Government investigations.