Today in American History 
Events in History
- 1846 Anesthetic ether is used for the 1st time, by American dentist Dr William Morton who extracts a tooth
- 1857 US occupies Sand, Baker, Howland & Jarvis Island, south of Hawaii
- 1862 First Battle of Newtonia (American Civil War), Newton County, Missouri
- 1864 Battle of Preble's Farm Virginia (Poplar Springs Church)
- 1878 1st Portuguese immigrants arrive in Hawaii
- 1919 Elaine Massacre: Arkansas state militia and rioters kill over 200 hundred Black people in response to sharecroppers' attempt to organize against landowners; trials of survivors for murder leads to Supreme Court enacted judicial reforms [1] [2] [3]
The Boulder Dam
1935 The Boulder Dam (later the Hoover Dam), astride the border of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Nimitz Finds Guadalcanal
1942 Admiral Chester Nimitz's B-17 finds Guadalcanal using a National Geographic map
Chief Justice Earl Warren
1953 Earl Warren appointed Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court
- 1961 Bill for Boston Tea Party is paid by Mayor Snyder of Oregon who wrote a check for $196, the total cost of all tea lost
United Farm Workers
1962 Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez founds the United Farm Workers
- 1970 New American Bible published
- 1989 NASA closes down tracking stations in Hawaii & Ascension
Colin Powell Retires
1993 US Army General Colin Powell retires at 56
- 1995 Cleveland Indian Albert Belle hits his 50th home run of season
- 2014 A case of Ebola Virus reaches Dallas, Texas
Birthdays in History
- 1631 William Stoughton, American judge at the Salem witch trials (d. 1701)
- 1805 Samuel Peter Heintzelman, American Major General (Union Army), born in Manheim, Pennsylvania (d. 1880)
- 1827 Ellis H. Roberts, American Treasurer of the United States (1897-1905) and politician (Rep-R-New York), born in Utica, New York (d. 1918)
- 1827 Kenner Garrard, American Brevet Major General (Union Army), born in Bourbon County, Kentucky (d. 1879)
- 1861 William Wrigley Jr., American industrialist (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company), born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 1932)
- 1870 Thomas W. Lamont, American banker; father of Corliss Lamont; great-grandfather of Ned Lamont (d. 1948)
- 1893 Lansdale Ghiselin Sasscer, American politician (REP-Maryland 1939-53), born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland (d. 1964)
Truman Capote (1924-1984)
American author (Breakfast At Tiffany's; In Cold Blood), born in New Orleans, Louisiana
- 1927 W. S. Merwin, American poet (17th United States Poet Laureate), born in New York City (d. 2019)
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)
Jewish Auschwitz survivor and author (Night), Nobel Prize winner 1986, born in Sighet, Romania
- 1945 Bob Lassiter 'Mad Dog', American radio personality, born in Camden, New Jersey (d. 2006)
- 1946 William Thurston, American mathematician (Fields Medal, 1982), born in Washington, D.C. (d. 2012)
- 1960 Blanche Lincoln, American politician (Senator-Arkansas 1999-2011, youngest person elected to the Senate at 38), born in Helena, Arkansas
- 1964 Stephen N. Frick, American naval commander and astronaut, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- 1966 Kerry G. Johnson, African American graphic designer and caricaturist
Deaths in History
- 1630 John Billington, English-born murderer who sailed on the Mayflower, 1st American executed by Plymouth colony, hanged at about 40
George Whitefield (1714-1770)
English-born Methodist leader and preacher, dies in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at age 55
- 1862 Isaac Peace Rodman, American banker and Brigadier General (Union Army), dies of injury at about 40
Edith Roosevelt (1861-1948)
US First Lady and wife of Teddy Roosevelt, dies at 87
- 1984 Ellsworth Bunker, US ambassador (South-Vietnam, dies at 90)
- 1997 Male alligator, largest in Florida (14 feet), killed at about 65
- 2003 Robert Kardashian, Armenian-American lawyer, dies of cancer at 59
- 2011 Anwar al-Awlaki, American-born terrorist and Islamist militant (b. 1971)
- 2014 Martin Lewis Perl, American physicist (1995 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovery of the tau lepton particle), dies from a heart attack at 87