In 1652, silversmith John Hull, in defiance of English colonial law, established the first mint in America.
In 1692, in Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bridget Bishop, the first colonist tried in the Salem witch trials, was hanged after being found
guilty of the practice of witchcraft.
In 1898, U.S. Marines invaded Cuba in the Spanish-American War.
In 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio.
In 1942, the German Gestapo burned the tiny Czech village of Lidice after shooting 173 men and shipping the women and children to concentration camps.
In 1943, Hungarian Laszlo Biro invented the ballpoint pen.
In 1989, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said his conservative lobbying group, the Moral Majority, had accomplished its goals and would disband.
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted, spewing debris as far as 20 miles away.
In 1992, Texas law officers urged a boycott of Time-Warner and Warner Bros. over a recording by rap artist Ice-T that they said encouraged the shooting
of officers.
In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton froze most financial transactions between the United States and Haiti and suspended commercial flights to the Caribbean
nation.
In 1995, Cuba announced the arrest of U.S. financier-turned-fugitive Robert Vesco on spying charges. Vesco had fled the United States in 1972 ahead of
embezzlement charges.
In 1998, a jury in Jacksonville, Fla., found the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. liable in the lung cancer death of a smoker. The jury awarded his family
$950,000, including $450,000 in punitive damages — the first such assessment in a smoking-related lawsuit.
In 1999, NATO suspended its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
In 2000, Syrian President Hafez Assad died from a heart attack at age 69. He had ruled Syria since 1970.
In 2003, a three-member Ontario Court of Appeal in Canada ordered that full marriage rights be extended to same-sex couples.
In 2004, Ray Charles, a 12-time Grammy-winning singer-pianist who pioneered the blending of country and RB, died at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 73.
In 2006, three detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, hanged themselves in the first reported deaths at the facility.
In 2007, Israeli planes attacked Gaza, one day after a Palestinian gunman rammed the security border and opened fired in Israel.
Also in 2007, the Iranian government was reported intensifying its domestic crackdown on dissidents by targeting banks, unions and civic groups and accusing
women and student groups of seeking to overthrow the government.
In 2008, a massive turnout reported to include several hundred thousand people jammed the streets of Seoul to protest South Korea’s decision to resume
imports of U.S. beef, which was banned in 2003 after mad cow disease was diagnosed in the United States.
In 2009, Chrysler, one of America’s “Big 3″ automakers, climbed out of bankruptcy with a reconstruction plan that included a partnership deal with Italian
carmaker Fiat.
Also in 2009, a security guard was killed at the entrance of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, allegedly by an 88-year-old white supremacist.
And, the U.S. Treasury Department appointed Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington attorney, to oversee executive compensation pay at seven major U.S. companies.
