On this date in 1865…

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s troops halted the rampage of Sherman’s yankee troops through the Carolinas at Bentonville, North Carolina.

• 1788 – A Fire destroyed 856 buildings in New Orleans, Louisiana.
• 1841 – More than 200 Tallahassee Seminole prisoners boarded a boat in Tampa Bay bound for Indian Territory. Fifteen of the Indians die in transit.
• 1883 – Chiricahua Apaches Chato, Bonito and Chihuahua raided a mining settlement near Tombstone, Arizona and escaped to Mexico, triggering a raid into Mexico by General George Crook to find the Apaches.
• 1891 – A Hatfield married a McCoy in West Virginia and ended the bloody 20-year feud that started with an accusation of pig theft.
• 1916 – Confederate guerrilla and bandit Thomas Coleman “Cole” Younger died at Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
• 1925 – Tennessee passed The Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution.
• 1965 – More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
• 1989 – Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison when his conviction was overturned after the documentary “The Thin Blue Line” challenged evidence of Adams’ conviction for killing a police officer. 

On this date in 1933…

Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara was executed in Florida’s electric chair for killing Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and shooting four others in an attempt to assassinate President Franklin D. Roosevelt at an event in Miami.

• 1699 – While explorating up the Mississippi River, French explorer Lemoyne d’Iberville visited the village of the Houma Indians.
• 1864 – Eight hundred Navajo, mostly women, children and old men began the 300 mile “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo Reservation, in New Mexico. More than a hundred died in a snow storm before reaching the reservation.
• 1865 – A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was ruined when Lincoln changed his plans and did not appear at the Soldier’s Home near Washington, DC.
• 1868 – The James-Younger Gang was blamed for a bank robbery in Russelville, Kentucky that netted $14,000.
• 1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered 4,000 troops to protect the Selma-Montgomery civil rights marchers. 
• 1989 – A Washington, DC district court judge blocked a curfew imposed by Mayor Barry and the City Council. 
• 1997 – Liggett Group, the maker of Chesterfield cigarettes, settled 22 state lawsuits by admitting the industry marketed cigarettes to teenagers and agreed to warn on every pack that smoking is addictive. 
• 2000 – Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, once known as H. Rap Brown, was captured following a shootout that left a sherriff’s deputy dead. 

On this date in 1840…

During a peace conference and prisoner exchange between the Comanche and Texas settlers at the San Antonio council house a fight erupted after the Texans saw how Matilda Lockhart had been mutilated by her captors. Seven whites and thirty-three Comanche including 12 chiefs died in what became known as the Council House Fight.

• 1687 – While searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle was murdered by his own men.
• 1865 – The Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina began.  This was the last significant attempt to stop the invading federal army of  W.T. Sherman. 
• 1879 – Jim Currie opened fire on several actors near Marshall, Texas wounding Maurice Barrymore and killing Ben Porter.
•  1908 – The state of Maryland barred Christian Scientists from practicing without medical diplomas.
• 1953 – Tennessee Williams’ play “Camino Real” premiered in New York City.
• 1954 – The first rocket-sled on rails was tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
• 1968 – Students at Howard University seized the administration building.

On this date in 1782 – Southern statesman, Secretary of War, and U.S. Vice-President John C. Calhoun was born in Abbeville, South Carolina.

• 1541 – Hernando de Soto observed the first recorded flood in American history on the Mississippi River.
• 1865 – The Confederate States Congress adjourned its final sesion.
• 1937 – A gas explosion at the school in New London, Texas killed 294 victims.
• 1954 – Texas tycoon Howard Hughes bought RKO Pictures for $23,489,478, making it the first motion picture studio to be owned by an individual.
• 1968 – The U.S. Congress repealed the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency and took America off the gold standard.
• 1981 – The U.S. government disclosed that it tested biological weapons in Texas in 1966.
• 1990 – In Tampa, Florida, a little league player was killed when hit with a pitch.
• 2003 – FBI agents raided the corporate headquarters of the HealthSouth Corporation in Birmingham, Alabama on suspicion of corporate fraud by the company’s executives.

On this date in 1775 – The Transylvania Company, headed by North Carolina Judge Richard Henderson, traded $10,000 worth of trade goods and $2,000 to Cherokee Chiefs Attakullaculla and Oconostota for most of western and central Kentucky, and north central Tennessee. The treaty was revoked by the governments of Virginia and North Carolina, but later used by the U.S. government as a claim on Cherokee land.

• 1828 – Confederate General Patrick R. Cleburne was born in County Cork, Ireland.
• 1836 – Texas abolished slavery.
• 1863 – Battle of Kelly’s Ford, Virginia.
• 1886 – The Carrollton Riot in Mississippi caused the death of 20 black people.
• 1917 –  Almost 100 women participated in America’s first bowling tournament for ladies in St. Louis, Missouri..
• 2007 – Mike Modano of the Dallas Stars scored his 502nd and 503rd career goals making him the all-time U.S. leader in hockey goal-scoring.