1776 – During the American Revolution the first naval battle of Lake Champlain was fought. The forces under Gen. Benedict Arnold suffered heavy losses.

1811 – The Juliana, the first steam-powered ferryboat, was put into operation by the inventor John Stevens. The ferry went between New York City, NY, and Hoboken, NJ.

1869 – Thomas Edison filed for a patent on his first invention. The electric machine was used for counting votes for the U.S. Congress, however the Congress did not buy it.

1881 – David Henderson Houston patented the first roll film for cameras.

1890 – The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in Washington, DC.

1899 – The Boer War began in South Africa between the British and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State.

1929 – JCPenney opened a store in Milford, DE, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 states.

1932 – In New York, the first telecast of a political campaign was aired.

1936 – The radio show, “Professor Quiz”, aired for the first time.

1939 – U.S. President Roosevelt was presented with a letter from Albert Einstein that urged him to develop the U.S.atomic program rapidly.

1942 – The Battle of Cape Esperance, during World War II, began in the Solomons.

1958 – Pioneer 1, a lunar probe, was launched by the U.S. The probe did not reach its destination and fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

1968 – Apollo 7 was launched by the U.S. The first manned Apollo mission was the first in which live television broadcasts were received from orbit. Wally Schirra, Don Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham were the astronauts aboard.

1971 – Hugh Downs left the “Today” show and “Concentration”. He later became the host of ABC’s “20/20”.

1975 – “Saturday Night Live” was broadcast for the first time. George Carlin was the guest host.

1983 – The last hand-cranked telephones in the U.S. went out of service. The 440 telephone customers of Bryant Pond, ME, were switched to direct-dial service.

1984 – Construction began on the Kamric/Cinergy Futursonics Studio in Houston, TX.

1984 – American Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first female astronaut to SpaceWalk. She was aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

1984 – Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) made his debut in the National Hockey League (NHL) against the Boston Bruins. He scored a goal on his first shot on his first NHL shift.

1994 – U.S. troops in Haiti took control of the National Palace.

1994 – Iraqi troops began moving away from the Kuwaiti border.

1994 – The Colorado Supreme Court declared that the anti-gay rights measure in the state was unconstitutional.

Less than a year before Richard M. Nixon’s resignation as president of the United States, Spiro Agnew became one of the first U.S. vice presidents to resign in disgrace.

The same day, he pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals.

Agnew, a Republican, was elected chief executive of Baltimore County in 1961. In 1967, he became governor of Maryland, an office he held until his nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1968. During Nixon’s successful campaign, Agnew ran on a tough law-and-order platform, and as vice president, he frequently attacked opponents of the Vietnam War and liberals as being disloyal and un-American. Reelected with Nixon in 1972, Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, after the U.S. Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of his political corruption, including allegations that his practice of accepting bribes had continued into his tenure as U.S. vice president. He died at the age of 77 on September 17, 1996.

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Source: history.com