Today:
1620: The Mayflower, carrying Pilgrims, first spotted land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1791: The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Dublin.
1862: General Ambrose Burnside was appointed to replace George McClellan as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War.
1872: The Great Boston Fire began, ultimately destroying 776 buildings over 65 acres.
1888: Mary Jane Kelly, widely believed to be the final victim of Jack the Ripper, was murdered in London.
1906: President Theodore Roosevelt departed for a trip to Panama, becoming the first U.S. president to travel officially outside the country while in office.
1918: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated his throne following the German Revolution, and Germany was proclaimed a republic.
1923: The Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler’s nascent Nazi Party’s attempt to seize power in Munich, was crushed by police and government troops.
1938: The anti-Jewish pogrom known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” began across Germany and Austria.
1989: East Germany opened its checkpoints, including the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany, an event that symbolized the beginning of the end of the Cold War.