1494     The Family de’ Medici are expelled from Florence. 1620     Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 1861     The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto. 1887     The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1888     Mary Jane Kelly is murdered in London, widely… Continue reading →

1519     Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration. 1602     The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened to the public. 1656     Edmond Halley (born), English astronomer and mathematician (died 1742) 1837     Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes Mount Holyoke College. 1847     Bram… Continue reading →

1665     The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published. 1687     William Stukeley (born), English antiquarian (died 1765) 1775     John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, offering freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial… Continue reading →

1494     Suleiman the Magnificent (born), Ottoman sultan (died 1566) 1528     Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the known European to set foot in Texas. 1851     Charles Dow (born), American journalist and economist (died 1902) 1854     John Philip Sousa (born), American composer (died 1932) 1855     E. S. Gosney (born), American philanthropist and eugenicist,… Continue reading →

1605    The arrest of Guy Fawkes, found during a search of the Palace of Westminster, foils Robert Catesby’s plot to destroy the House of Lords and all within it. 1831     Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia. 1855    Eugene V. Debs (born), American politician (died 1926) 1872    In… Continue reading →