Two men murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas; the events became the subject of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of the true crime genre.
The Holocaust: In the Romani Holocaust, Nazi official Heinrich Himmler ordered that the Romani were to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps".
Fountain of Time, in Chicago's Washington Park, was dedicated as a tribute to 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain following the Treaty of Ghent.
American Civil War: Union army general William Tecumseh Sherman (pictured) began his March to the Sea, inflicting significant damage to property and infrastructure using scorched-earth tactics on his way from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia.