Today:
1775: The Spanish ship ‘San Carlos’ entered what would become San Francisco Bay, a harbor that had gone unnoticed by previous European explorers.
1858: The first transatlantic telegraph cable, connecting Ireland and Newfoundland, was completed. However, it only operated for less than a month.
1861: President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act, which created the first federal income tax in the United States to help fund the Civil War.
1864: Union Admiral David Farragut famously declared, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” during the Battle of Mobile Bay, which was a decisive victory for the Union forces.
1884: The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid on what was then called Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor.
1914: The world’s first electric traffic signal was installed in Cleveland, Ohio.
1962: Famed actress and pop culture icon Marilyn Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 36.
1963: The Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater, was signed by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
1981: President Ronald Reagan began firing over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who had walked off the job in defiance of a law prohibiting federal employees from striking.
2019: American author Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, died at the age of 88.