Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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15851776 Club

English colonists step ashore at Roanoke Island under Ralph Lane

The wrecked flagship already cost them most of their food before they even reached the beach.

Sir Walter Raleigh had spent eighteen months turning a royal patent into a fleet, and on August 17, 1585, that fleet finally put men ashore. Under governor Ralph Lane, the first group of colonists landed on the north end of Roanoke Island, off present-day North Carolina, to build England's first military outpost in North America. They arrived already short on supplies, after a storm-battered voyage that had run the flagship Tiger aground. Within a year, hunger and worsening relations with the Secotan forced the colony's abandonment…

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More from August 17
1943

376 bombers split into two forces; 60 do not come home

The plan sent Curtis LeMay's group in first to draw the fighters, leaving Robert Williams to fight his way out alone.
1863

Fort Sumter takes another day of shelling; the fort answers with rubble, not guns

Five days into a sustained bombardment, Dahlgren's ships and Gillmore's batteries pound a fort already reduced to broken masonry.
1998

Clinton tells grand jury of "improper" ties to Lewinsky, then tells the country he misled them

Seven months after denying it on camera, the president reverses himself twice in one day.
19431776 Club
A five-week race up the island ends with the Seventh Army first through the gates.
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More from Colonial America
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.
1775

Congress creates a Continental Army; thirteen colonies, one command at last

Six weeks after Lexington and Concord, the patchwork of local militias gets a shared structure, a common supply, and a single authority over the fight against Britain.
1768

Otis stands before the General Court and charges King and Parliament with tyranny

The Boston lawyer who called taxation without representation unlawful delivers his sharpest attack yet; word is already moving toward London.
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