On this day for the United States
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Events
- 1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
- 1789 – The United States War Department is established.
- 1794 – Whiskey Rebellion begins: Farmers in the Monongahela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.
- 1927 – The Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
- 1942 – World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal begins – U.S. Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
- 1944 – IBM dedicates the first program–controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
- 1945 – President Harry Truman announces the bombing of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
- 1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design and is still in use.
- 1959 – Explorer program: Explorer 6 launched from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- 1964 – Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
- 1966 – Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.
- 1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
- 1973 – NBC airs the final day of the Watergate hearings on U.S. daytime television.
- 1974 – Philippe Petit performed a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 ft (417.0 m) in the air.
- 1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
- 1978 – United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.
- 1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
- 1988 – Rioting in New York City's Tompkins Square Park.
- 1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D–TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
- 1989 – The Beach Boys release "Still Cruisin'" as a single.
- 2007 – Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run.