On this day in 1757, English poet Christopher Smart was admitted into St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement to mental asylums.
On this day in 1882, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law, implementing a ban on Chinese immigration to the United States that remained until the Magnuson Act was enacted in 1943.
On this day in 1937, the German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during an attempt to dock at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, killing 36 people.
On this day in 1991, Time magazine published "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power", an article highly critical of the Scientology organization, leading to years of legal conflict that ended when the Church of Scientology's petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States was denied in 2001.