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Made for the 250thOn this day › October 6
What happened on October 6 in American history
October 6 is the 279th day of the year (the 280th in leap years). Patriot Compass has published 6 stories from October 6 spanning 1777 to 2010. Among them: in 1777, Forts Clinton and Montgomery fall in an hour; the Hudson chain goes down with them; and in 1942, Five Marine battalions cross the Matanikau in a pincer; the Japanese line east of the river breaks.
1777
Forts Clinton and Montgomery fall in an hour; the Hudson chain goes down with them
Sir Henry Clinton lands 2,100 men at Stony Point and marches them in from the landward side, where the Americans had never finished the landward defenses.
1942
Five Marine battalions cross the Matanikau in a pincer; the Japanese line east of the river breaks
A carefully drawn trap at the river mouth and an inland footbridge catches Japanese troops before they can finish digging in near Henderson Field.
1979Member story · 1776 Club
A pope walks into the White House for the first time; Carter greets John Paul II
Five days into his first American journey, the Polish pontiff arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a meeting no predecessor ever had.
1990Member story · 1776 Club
Discovery carries the heaviest shuttle payload yet, then lets go of Ulysses
Six hours after liftoff, the European-built probe begins a five-year detour through Jupiter toward the Sun's unseen poles.
2008
MESSENGER finds a 716-kilometer scar on Mercury's southern hemisphere
The second of three planned flybys doubles as a gravity-assist maneuver and a discovery run.
2010Member story · 1776 Club
A photo-sharing app called Instagram appears in the App Store
Built from the wreckage of a failed check-in app, it asks users to frame their lives in a square.
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