1576: Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spanish defeat Walloon and capture Antwerp

1841: First wagon train arrives in California after a five and a half month and 1,730 mile journey over the Sierra Nevada from Missouri

1845: First nationally observed uniform election day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November

1862: American inventor Richard Jordan Gatling patents the hand cranked Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis

1879: African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents the Refrigerating Apparatus

1922: Howard Carter discovers the intact tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt

2008: Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States, defeating Republican candidate John McCain

Source: Onthisday.com