1768: The first US chartered fire insurance company opens in Pennsylvania.

1792: President George Washington signs the bill that created the US Post Office.

1869: Tennessee Gov. W.C. Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis.

1895: Congress authorizes a US mint at Denver, CO.

1953: The US Court of Appeals rules that organized baseball is a sport, not a business subject to antitrust law, affirming a 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling; the decision effectively dismisses the antitrust suits of Jack Corbett and Walter Kowalski.

1962: U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the earth.

1996: Republican Pat Buchanon won the New Hampshire primary over Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes.

Deaths

1895: Frederick Douglass, 77, abolitionist and escaped slave, died in Washington, D.C.

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