In 1621, the Dutch West India Co. received a charter for New Netherlands, now known as New York.
In 1808, Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy, was born in Christian County, Ky.
In 1888, the poem "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, was first published, in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.
In 1981, Pope John Paul II left a Rome hospital and returned to the Vatican three weeks after the attempt on his life.
In 1988, In London, President Reagan followed up his visit to Moscow by encouraging Britain and other Western allies to help Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev fulfill his plans for transforming his country.