1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time.
1660 – First kosher butcher licensed in New Amsterdam to Asser Levy. Levy successfully challenged Peter Stuyvesant to allow Jews to serve as soldiers and trade in Albany. With his purchase of land on South Willaim Street, Levy became the first Jewish owner of real estate in New York. As one of the city’s wealthiest inhabitants, Levy was called upon to lend the city money for fortifications against the English. Later he lent money for the construction of the first Lutheran Church in New York.
1777 – After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1864 – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1914 – Harry Turner becomes the first player to die from game-related injuries in the “Ohio League”, the direct predecessor to the National Football League.
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1939 – In Washington, D.C., President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
1968 – The Cleveland Transit System becomes the first transit system in the western hemisphere to provide direct rapid transit service from a city’s downtown to its major airport.
1988 – An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
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The Peacekeepers, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and David Dixon Porter
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1891 – W. Averell Harriman, American businessman and politician, 11th United States Secretary of Commerce and 48th Governor of New York (d. 1986)
2008 – Grace Hartigan, American second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter and a member of the New York School. (b. 1922)