Today:
1302 – Battle of the Golden Spurs: A coalition around the County of Flanders defeats the Kingdom of France.
1346 – Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland.
1616 – Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec.
1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the storming of the Bastille.
1798 – The United States Marine Corps is reestablished; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.
1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery.
1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kōkichi Mikimoto.
1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as the 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published.
30 American Heritage Events: #11
Compromise of 1850
A package of five bills passed to defuse a confrontation between slave and free states.