1576-Eighty Years' War: In Flanders, the Spanish defeat the Walloons and capture Antwerp
1841-The first wagon train arrives in California after a five-and-a-half-month, 1,730-mile journey over the Sierra Nevada from Missouri
1845-First nationally observed uniform election day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November
1862-American inventor Richard Jordan Gatling patents the hand-cranked Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis
1879-African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents the Refrigerating Apparatus
1922-Howard Carter rediscovers the intact tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt
1979- A total of 500 Iranian students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini seize the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages for 444 days
2008-Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States, defeating Republican candidate John McCain