Events
- 1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh establishes first English colony on Roanoke Island, old Virginia (now North Carolina).
- 1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia Canada taken from the Acadians.
- 1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for Great Britain.
- 1812 – Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
- 1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
- 1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of the king's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled and dies a few days later, never having regained consciousness.
- 1917 – The very first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
- 1919 – Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
- 1939 – Holocaust: The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later died in Nazi concentration camps.
- 1942 – World War II: Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island with much of the Imperial Japanese navy.
- 1944 – World War II: A hunter–killer group of the United States Navy capture the German submarine U-505, marking the first time a U.S. Navy vessel captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
- 1973 – Patent for the ATM granted to Don Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
- 1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
- 1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.