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17691776 Club

Portolá leads a party north from San Diego; Monterey Bay is the prize

Friar Juan Crespí and engineer Costansó ride along to map the coast as Spain moves to counter Russian traders pressing south.

By the summer of 1769, Spain had a problem: Russian fur traders were creeping down the Pacific coast, and Spanish California existed mostly on paper. On July 14, Gaspar de Portolá led a party north from San Diego, aiming to find Monterey Bay and plant a permanent Spanish claim there. Franciscan diarist Juan Crespí and engineer Miguel Costansó rode along to map the land and record what they saw. The expedition missed Monterey Bay entirely and, in early November 1769, stumbled onto something bigger: San Francisco Bay…

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More from July 14
1798

It is now a federal crime to publish "false or malicious" criticism of officials; Adams signs the Sedition Act

The last of four laws Congress has passed since June, the act caps a Federalist push to silence perceived French sympathizers working against the government.
1881

Garrett fires in the dark, and Billy the Kid is dead at twenty-one

The outlaw walks into Pete Maxwell's bedroom at Fort Sumner asking "¿Quién es?"; Garrett's first shot strikes just above the heart.
1943

Roosevelt signs a monument into existence for Carver; no Black American has been honored this way before

The site near Diamond, Missouri, where Carver was born into slavery, becomes the first national monument built to honor a private citizen.
20031776 Club
Two senior administration officials are the columnist's sources, eight days after Wilson accused the White House of twisting Iraq intelligence.
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More from Colonial America
1775

Twelve colonies convene in Philadelphia; no army, no treasury, a war already begun

Delegates gather at the Pennsylvania State House three weeks after Lexington and Concord, with no authority from the Crown and no clear path forward.
1775

Allen and Arnold take Ticonderoga; not a shot is fired

83 Green Mountain Boys cross Lake Champlain before dawn and walk out with a British fort's entire stockpile of heavy artillery.
1772

Providence men row out at night and burn HMS Gaspee to the waterline

Eighteen boatloads led by Abraham Whipple and merchant John Brown board the grounded revenue schooner in Narragansett Bay; Lieutenant Duddingston is shot and wounded.
1692

Bridget Bishop is hanged at Salem; the first life taken in the witchcraft trials

The English-born woman, convicted of bewitching five young women, goes to the gallows eight days after the jury returned its verdict.
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