1809 – Peregrine Williamson of Baltimore patents a steel pen.
1842 – Mount St Helens in Washington erupts.
1863 – Union General O Howard orders plunderers be shot to death.
1903 – Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt are engaged.
1919 – Labor conference committee in US urges 8-hour work day and 48-hour week.
1927 – 1st snowmobile patent granted to Carl Eliason (Sayner, Wisconsin)
1930 – 1st US football game broadcast to England (Harvard 13, Yale 0)
1934 – “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” 1st heard on Eddie Cantor’s show.
1935 – Flying boat “China Clipper” takes off from Alameda, California, carrying 100,000 pieces of mail on 1st trans-Pacific airmail flight.
1943 – US troops land on Abemada, Gilbert Island.
1957 – Simon & Garfunkel appear on “American Bandstand” as “Tom & Jerry”
1963 – American President John F. Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.
1963 – Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as the 36th US President after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
1969 – Isolation of a single gene announced by scientists at Harvard University.
1972 – US ends 22 year travel ban to China.
1980 – Georgia tanker at Pilottown, Louisiana, spills 1.3 million gallons of oil after an anchor chain causes a ship to leak.
1985 – Largest swearing-in ceremony, 38,648 immigrants become US citizens.
1990 – George H.W. Bush visits US troops in Saudi Arabia.
1992 – Washington Post reports Oregon Senator Bob Packwood sexually harassed 10 women.
2012 – 2 people are killed and 120 injured after a 100-vehicle pile-up in dense fog in Texas.
2016 – US President Barack Obama posthumously awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to pioneering computer scientist and Navy Admiral Grace Hopper.
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