The Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic, standing as the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1903. Construction took over a decade and the original architect, John Roebling, died from tetanus after a freak accident. Its completion, however, created the first overland link between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
German-American painter Emanuel Leutze is born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, a village in southern Germany. Leutze, who moved to Pennsylvania as a child, studied art in Europe before returning to the United States where painted his most famous canvas, Washington Crossing the Delaware.
Delegate John Hancock is unanimously elected as President of the Continental Congress; Hancock would preside over the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
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