In 1792, President George Washington signed an act creating the United States Post Office Department.

In 1816, the opera buffa “The Barber of Seville” by Gioachino Rossini premiered in Rome under its original title, “Almaviva, or the Useless Precaution.”

In 1862, William Wallace Lincoln, the 11-year-old son of President Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, died at the White House, apparently of typhoid fever.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded “idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from being admitted to the United States.

In 1915, the Panama Pacific International Exposition opened in San Francisco (the fair lasted until December).

In 1938, Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary following Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s decision to negotiate with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth as he flew aboard Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 spacecraft.