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Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proves that tomatoes are not poisonous by eating one in public on September 28, 1820.
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The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper on
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The first boat leaves Buffalo, NY, enroute to New York City via the Erie Canal
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Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die
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The first bank robbery in U.S. history occurs at the City Bank of New York
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The first attempted assassination of a U.S. president (Andrew Jackson) fails when Richard Lawrence's gun misfires
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P.T. Barnum begins his first circus tour of the United States
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Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates Antarctica, claiming it for the United States
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Samuel B. Morse sends the message, "What hath God wrought" over the first telegraph line from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD.
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Elias Howe patents the sewing machine
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Millard Fillmore is sworn into office as the 13th President of the United States, following Zachary Taylor's death
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"America" wins the first America's Cup yacht race
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The U.S. Supreme Court's "Dred Scott Decision" rules that slaves do not become free when transported into a free state.
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Drilling is completed on the first productive commercial oil well in Titusville, PA,
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The Pony Express leaves Sacramento, CA, for St. Joseph, MO,
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Russia finalizes its sale of Alaska to the U.S.,
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Ceremonies at Promontory, UT, celebrate completion of the transcontinental railroad
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Missouri Republican Hiram Rhoades Revels becomes the first black Senator
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The Great Chicago Fire" begins
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The first Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY,
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Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company,
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The first Vaudeville theater opens in Boston, MA,
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The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published