This Year in History:
1791
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Future President James Buchanan is born in Cove Gap near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1791. Buchanan, remembered mostly for his administration’s corruption and his failure to solve the country’s crisis over slavery, also inspired salacious gossip about his love life over the course of his career. The son of wealthy Scottish and Irish immigrant […]
On August 19, 1791, the accomplished American mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker pens a letter to then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson corresponds prolifically with luminaries from around the world, but Banneker is unique among them: the son of a free Black American woman and a formerly enslaved African man from Guinea, Banneker criticizes Jefferson’s […]
Following ratification by the state of Virginia, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, become the law of the land. In September 1789, the first Congress of the United States approved 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The amendments […]
