On June 15, 1215, following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on Magna Carta, or “the Great Charter.”
In 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted unanimously to appoint George Washington head of the Continental Army.
In 1846, the U.S. – Canada boarder was established.
In 1864, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton signed an order establishing what is now Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
And also in 1864, during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia collide for the last time as the first wave of Union troops attacks Petersburg, a vital Southern rail center 23 miles south of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The two massive armies would not become disentangled until April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered and his men went home.
In 1877, Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
In 1902, the 20th Century Limited, an express passenger train between New York and Chicago, began service. (The Limited made its last run in December 1967.)
In 1955, following the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the United States and Britain signed a cooperation agreement for “mutual defence purposes.”