1716 – 1st lighthouse built in North America (Boston)
1819 – Thomas Blanchard patents lathe.
1837 – Oberlin Collegiate Institute of Ohio goes co-ed (4 women, 30 men)
1839 – Great fire in New York.
1866 – Fredrick Douglass is 1st US black delegate to a national convention.
1876 – Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
1899 – Carnation processes its first can of evaporated milk.
1901 – US President William McKinley is shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in New York.
1909 – Word received that American explorer Robert Peary had discovered the North Pole, 5 months earlier.
1916 – 1st true supermarket, the “Piggly Wiggly” is opened by Clarence Saunders in Memphis, Tennessee.
1954 – US plane shot down above Siberia.
1954 – Yankees use a record 10 pinch-hitters.
1957 – Elvis records “White Christmas”, “Silent Night” & “Here Comes Santa Claus”
1984 – “Today Show” begins live remote telecasts from Moscow.
1985 – Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9 crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.
1990 – US citizen is shot in Kuwait: oil markets surge on aggressive US statements toward Iraq.
1995 – Senate Ethics committee votes 6-0 to ask for expulsion of Bob Packwood.
2012 – Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for US President.
2017 – Hurricane Irma makes landfall on Caribbean Islands of Barbuda, Sint Maartens and British Virgin Islands.
2018 – New York and New Jersey state attorneys launch investigations into sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy, bring to six the number of states investigating.