1580 – From back when the British had balls, Sir Francis Drake completes his circumnavigation of the globe. When he shows up back home, he’s got gold he captured from the Spanish in several engagements.

1777 – The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.

1786 – Protestors shut down the court in Springfield, Massachusetts in a military standoff that begins Shays’ Rebellion. It’s about the courts enforcing tax and debt collection.

1792 – Marc-David Lasource begins accusing Maximilien Robespierre of wanting a dictatorship for France. They get a dictatorship anyway, but Robespierre is executed in 1794. He’s a victim of the terror in France that he helped author.

1820 – Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved tomatoes weren’t poisonous by eating several on the steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey. The news takes decades to be absorbed as far as Texas, which is why REAL chili doesn’t have tomatoes.

1918 – World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, begins.

Paul von Hindenburg stated, “… without the American troops and despite a food blockade… the war could have ended in a sort of stalemate.”

1950 – General Douglas MacArthur’s American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, recaptures Seoul from the North Koreans.

1960 – In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Nixon isn’t a cute as Kennedy and his poll numbers suffer…

1960 – Fidel Castro announces Cuba’s support for the U.S.S.R. Two words: “Communist bast*rd!” He makes the longest speech in UN history (4 hrs, 29 mins).