May 22 1939: The foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a “Pact of Steel” committing their two countries to a military and political alliance. 1964: President Lyndon B. […]
May 8 1541: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River, the first recorded European to do so. 1846: U.S. forces led by Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican forces near modern-day Brownsville, Texas, in […]
May 1 1931: The Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City; it would be the world’s tallest building for four decades. 1960: The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane over […]
April 3 1860: The first Pony Express mail delivery rides began; one heading west from St. Joseph, Missouri, and one heading east from Sacramento, California. 1882: Outlaw Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert […]
March 27 1939: The first NCAA men’s Division I basketball championship game was held, with the University of Oregon defeating Ohio State, 46-33. 1973: Marlon Brando refused to accept his Oscar for best actor in […]
March 20 1815: Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule. 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was first published in book […]
Feb. 20 1792: President George Washington signed an act creating the United States Post Office Department, the predecessor of the U.S. Postal Service. 1907: President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, […]
Feb. 13 1945: Allied forces in World War II began a three-day bombing raid on Dresden, Germany, killing as many as 25,000 people and triggering a firestorm that swept through the city center. 1935: A […]
Jan. 23 1368: China’s Ming dynasty, which lasted nearly three centuries, began. 1789: Georgetown University was established in present-day Washington, D.C. 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the […]
Jan. 9 1861: Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union. 1916: The World War I Battle of Gallipoli ended with an Ottoman Empire victory as Allied forces withdrew. 1945: During World War […]
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