| 1743 | The first recorded town meeting in America was held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston. |
| 1794 | Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry. |
| 1900 | Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act. |
| 1923 | President Harding became the first chief executive to file an income tax report. |
| 1939 | The Republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation. |
| 1943 | Aaron Copland's ''Fanfare for the Common Man'' premiered in New York City, with George Szell conducting. |
| 1951 | United Nations forces recaptured Seoul during the Korean War. |
| 1964 | A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, the previous November. |
| 1967 | The body of President Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery. |
| 1980 | A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team. |
| 1990 | The Soviet Congress elected Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the country's new, powerful presidency, a day after creating the post. |
| 1993 | An independent U.N.-sponsored commission released a report blaming the bulk of atrocities committed during El Salvador's civil war on the country's military. |
| 1994 | Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, a longtime friend of President and Mrs. Clinton, resigned because of controversy over billings he'd charged while in private law practice. |
| 1995 | American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, headed for the Mir space station. |
| 1999 | The Clinton administration conceded the Chinese had gained from technology allegedly stolen from a federal nuclear weapons lab but insisted the government responded decisively. |
| 2000 | Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore clinched their presidentialnominations in a sweep of Southern primaries. |
