Today:
1541: Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded the city of Santiago, which is now the capital of Chile.
1554: Lady Jane Grey, known as the “Nine Days’ Queen,” was beheaded at the Tower of London for high treason at the age of 16 or 17.
1733: James Oglethorpe and the first English colonists arrived at Yamacraw Bluff to found Savannah, establishing the colony of Georgia.
1809: Both Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President, and Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who proposed the theory of evolution, were born on this exact day.
1818: Bernardo O’Higgins formally approved the Chilean Declaration of Independence, ending Spanish colonial rule.
1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in New York City by a group of multi-racial activists.
1912: The Xuantong Emperor, better known as Puyi, abdicated the throne, bringing an end to the Qing Dynasty and over 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.
1924: George Gershwin’s iconic composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City during a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music.”
1999: The United States Senate acquitted President Bill Clinton on two articles of impeachment: perjury and obstruction of justice.
2001: NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft became the first human-made object to land on an asteroid when it touched down on the surface of 433 Eros.