- 1790Court is now in session!The Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time, in New York City.
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1862
Julia Ward Howe's poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
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1884
The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary A–Ant, was published.
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1946
A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.
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1960
Four black college students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth’s, Greensboro, N.C.
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1968
During the Vietnam War, a Viet Cong officer was executed with a pistol shot to the head by Saigon's police chief and the image captured in a famous news photograph.
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1979
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after 15 years of exile.
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2003
The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it tried to reenter the Earth's atmosphere after a sixteen-day mission in space. All seven members of the crew were lost.
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2004
Janet Jackson's famous "wardrobe malfunction" occurred at Super Bowl XXXVIII.
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2009
Johanna Sigurdardottir takes office as Iceland's first female prime minister.