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

1841: First wagon train arrives in California after a five-and-a-half-month, 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 [1]

1922: Howard Carter rediscovers 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