In 1754, France's King Louis XVI was born at Versailles.
In 1785, U.S. naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry was born in South Kingstown, R.I.
In 1838, one of the first colleges for women, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley Mass., graduated its first students.
In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany in World War I.
In 1927, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 payroll robbery. The case had drawn widespread controversyk, with many convinced that Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted for their political beliefs.