1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act. That whole “Tea Party” thing really upset them. The original Tea Party folks didn’t dump their own tea in the harbor… We’re just not mad enough YET!

1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. Nothing like armed naval vessels showing up on your doorstep with superior firepower to get the ol’ diplomacy going.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. Built to commemorate the French national bloodbath Revolution, it is very French in that it is eminently elegant and does absolutely nothing except give the Germans something photogenic to march under…

1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association – NCAA) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States. Yeah. They’re amateurs like I’m Prince Consort to the Tsarina of All the Russias.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment. It wouldn’t work today because back then, people actually wanted to work. Today it’d just upset the dimoocrats’ biggest voting bloc. it’s easier to just pay ‘em to stay home.

1992 – An era ends as the USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active United States Navy Battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1998 – Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. If you’re still running MS Internet Exploder, you should change to FireFox. Really.