Today:
1776 – British forces under General William Howe landed at Kip’s Bay on Manhattan during the American Revolution, forcing George Washington’s Continental Army to retreat from New York City.
1789 – The U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State, and Thomas Jefferson was later appointed the nation’s first Secretary of State.
1835 – HMS Beagle, carrying naturalist Charles Darwin, reached the Galápagos Islands. Darwin’s observations there would later contribute to the development of his theory of evolution by natural selection.
1857 – William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He became the 27th president of the United States and later the 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the only person to have held both offices.
1916 – Tanks were used in combat for the first time when the British deployed them during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on the Western Front during World War I.
1935 – Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, stripping German Jews of citizenship and prohibiting marriage and sexual relationships between Jews and people classified as “German or related blood.”
1950 – United Nations forces commanded by General Douglas MacArthur launched the amphibious landing at Inchon during the Korean War. The daring operation helped reverse a series of North Korean victories and led to the recapture of Seoul.
1963 – Four young girls were killed when members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The attack became a pivotal moment in the American civil rights movement.
1978 – Muhammad Ali defeated Leon Spinks in a rematch at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, becoming the first boxer to win the world heavyweight championship three times.
2008 – Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection following the collapse of the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. It was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history at the time and became one of the defining events of the global financial crisis.