Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1775

Francis Salvador, the first Jew to be elected in the Americas, took his seat on the South Carolina Provincial Congress.

1805

The Michigan Territory was created.

1861

Alabama seceded from the Union.

1913

The Hudson Motor Car Company introduces the first fully enclosed hardtop automobile.

1922

Leonard Thompson was the first person to be successfully treated with insulin, at Toronto General Hospital.

1935

Aviator Amelia Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1940

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., became the United States Army's first black general.

1942

Japan declared war against the Netherlands, the same day that Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies.

1943

The United States and Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in China.

1962

At least 2,000 people are feared dead after a huge avalanche in the Peruvian Andes engulfs nine villages.

1964

United States Surgeon General Luther Terry issues the first report that cigarette smoking may be dangerous.

1973

Owners of American League baseball teams voted to adopt the designated-hitter rule on a trial basis.

1977

France set off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1978

Two Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz 27 capsule linked up with the Salyut 6 orbiting space station, where the Soyuz 26 capsule was already docked.

1984

Michael Jackson is nominated for 12 Grammy Awards, winning an unprecedented 8 for his album Thriller.

1988

Vice President George Bush met with representatives of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh to answer questions about the Iran-Contra affair.

1998

Islamic extremists are blamed for the deaths of 100 people in two villages in Algeria.

2003

Declaring the death penalty "arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral," Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates, two days before leaving office.

1757

Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, was born in the West Indies.

1815

Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, was born in Glasgow, Scotland.

1864

Thomas F. Dixon, writer.

1885

Alice Paul, American, chief strategist for the suffrage movement and author of the Equal Rights Amendment.

1952

Ben Crenshaw, golfer.

1960

Stanley Tucci, director.

1928

Thomas Hardy, English poet and novelist.