Events
- 1837 – Houston, Texas is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.
- 1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti–slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly starts a ten–month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Piedmont: Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.
- 1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- 1917 – World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as "Army registration day."
- 1933 – The U.S. Congress abrogates the United States' use of the gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold.
- 1946 – A fire in the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago, kills 61 people.
- 1947 – Marshall Plan: At a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war–torn Europe.
- 1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
- 1968 – U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies the next day.
- 1976 – Collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho, United States.
- 1977 – The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, goes on sale.
- 1981 – The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
- 1986 – A 52–year old man in Auburn, Washington, United States, dies after taking an Excedrin capsule laced with cyanide; this is the first of two Excedrin deaths.
- 1998 – A strike begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan, that quickly spreads to five other assembly plants (the strike lasted seven weeks).
- 2001 – U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords leaves the Republican Party, an act which shifts control of the United States Senate from the Republicans to the Democratic Party.