1775Member story · 1776 Club
Washington names a Boston lawyer to police his own army's discipline
William Tudor, once John Adams's law pupil, becomes the Continental Army's first Judge Advocate.
1858Member story · 1776 Club
Aboard the Powhatan, Japan opens its ports to American trade
Townsend Harris gets the terms Commodore Perry only sketched, four years after Perry's ships first forced the door open.
1862
Belle Boyd is taken by Union troops, her own lover the informant
A lover's tip to federal officials ends a year of spying that included her famous ride to warn Turner Ashby.
1914Member story · 1776 Club
After three centuries of proposals, a canal finally opens across Cape Cod
Boston, Cape Cod and New York Canal Company opens the waterway on a limited basis, seventeen days before the Panama Canal.
1958
Eisenhower signs the Space Act; a civilian agency will run America's push into orbit
NACA's 8,000 employees and three research labs become the seed of a new agency with a mandate for peace, not war.