Today:
1462 – Vlad the Impaler launched a night attack against Ottoman forces led by Sultan Mehmed II near Târgoviște.
1579 – Sir Francis Drake claimed a land on the west coast of North America for England, naming it New Albion.
1631 – Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth; her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, later built the Taj Mahal in her memory.
1775 – The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought during the American Revolutionary War.
1789 – The Third Estate in France declared itself the National Assembly, a key early moment in the French Revolution.
1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor aboard the French ship Isère.
1930 – President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1940 – The Soviet Union occupied Latvia and Estonia during World War II.
1963 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abington School District v. Schempp that school-sponsored Bible readings in public schools were unconstitutional.
1972 – Five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.