1775 – The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress. The Marines went out of existence after the end of the Revolutionary War in April of 1783. The Marine Corps were formally re-established on July 11, 1798. This day is observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps.
1801 – The U.S. state of Tennessee outlawed the practice of dueling.
1871 – Henry M. Stanley, journalist and explorer, found David Livingstone. Livingston was a missing Scottish missionary in central Africa. Stanley delivered his famous greeting: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
1879 – Western Union and the National Bell Telephone Company reached a settlement over various telephone patents.
1917 – 41 suffragists were arrested in front of the White House.
1919 – The American Legion held its first national convention, in Minneapolis, MN.
1928 – Michinomiya Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
1951 – Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began when Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, NJ, called his counterpart in Alameda, CA.
1954 – The Iwo Jima Memorial was dedicated in Arlington, VA.
1957 – 102,368 people attended the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams game. The crowd was the largest regular-season crowd in NFL history.
1969 – “Sesame Street” made its debut on PBS.
1970 – The Great Wall of China opened for tourism.
1975 – The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. The resolution was repealed in December of 1991.
1975 – The Edmund Fitzgerald, an ore-hauling ship, and its crew of 29 vanished during a storm in Lake Superior.
1976 – The Utah Supreme Court gave approval for Gary Gilmore to be executed, according to his wishes. The convicted murderer was put to death the following January.
1977 – The Major Indoor Soccer League was officially organized in New York City. (New York)
1980 – CBS News anchor Dan Rather claimed he had been kidnapped in a cab. It turned out that Rather had refused to pay the cab fare.
1982 – Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died of a heart attack at age 75. He was suceeded by Yuri V. Andropov.
1982 – In Washington, DC, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to visitors.
1984 – The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1986 – Camille Sontag and Marcel Coudari, two Frenchmen were released by the captors that held them in Lebanon.
1988 – The U.S. Department of Energy announced that Texas would be the home of the atom-smashing super-collider. The project was cancelled by a vote of the U.S. Congress in Oct. 1993.
1990 – Chandra Shekhar was sworn in as India’s new prime minister.
1991 – Robert Maxwell was buried in Israel, five days after his body was recovered off the Canary Islands.
1993 – John Wayne Bobbitt was acquitted on the charge of marital sexual assault against his wife who sexually mutilated him. Lorena Bobbitt was later acquitted of malicious wounding her husband.
1993 – The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Brady Bill, which called for a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.
1994 – U.S. officials announced that it planned to stop enforcing the arms embargo against the Bosnian government the following week. The U.N. Security Council was opposed to lifting the ban.
1994 – Iraq recognized Kuwait’s borders in the hope that the action would end trade sanctions.
1995 – Nigeria’s military rulers hanged playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa along with several other anti-government activists.
1995 – In Katmandu, Nepal, searchers rescued 549 hikers after a massive avalanche struck the Himalayan foothills. The disaster left 24 tourists and 32 Nepalese dead.
1996 – Dan Marino (Miami Dolphins) became the first quarterback in NFL history to pass for more than 50,000 yards. (Florida)
1997 – WorldCom Inc. acquired MCI Communication Corporation. It was the largest merger in U.S. history valued at $37 billion.
1997 – A jury in Virginia convicted Mir Aimal Kasi of the murder of two CIA employees in 1993.
1997 – A judge in Cambridge, MA, reduced Louise Woodward’s murder conviction to manslaughter and sentenced the English au pair to time served. She had served 279 days in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.
1998 – At the White House, “The Virtual Wall” website (www.thevirtualwall.org) was unveiled. The site allows visitors to experience The Wall through the Internet.
1999 – Ted Danson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2001 – The World Trade Organization approved China’s membership.
2001 – The musical “Lady Diana – A Smile Charms the World” opened in Germany.
2004 – Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) was awarded the “Man for Peace” prize in Rome at the opening of a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.