1817 - From Galveston Island, Samuel Bangs John J. McLaren issued a Manifesto for the ill fated Francisco Xavier Mina's expedition. The proclamation was similar to one Mina had earlier issued in Pennsylvania. The manifesto's were an attempt to encourage a general uprising to free Mexico from Spain. As a result of this encouragement Mina made preparations to form an expedition. The troops were disembarked on April 15. Mina captured Soto la Marina without difficulty and proceeded inland. After many small victories over the Spanish, all the while trying to restore unity among insurgent leaders, he was defeated and captured at Venadito on October 27. He was taken to Mexico City, tried, and executed at Fort San Gregorio with twenty-five companions on November 11, 1817, at the age of twenty-eight years.
1836 - James W. Fannin(commander of the garrison at Goliad)sent Francis W. Thornton with William G. Cooke and David N. Burke to Washington-on-the-Brazos to deliver prisoners arrested as spies.
1847 - Gen. Zachary Taylor's largely untested 4,600-man army won a closely contested battle against 15,000 Mexicans at Buena Vista during the Mexican War. The conflict between the United States and Mexico in 1846–48 had its roots in the annexation of Texas and the westward thrust of American settlers. On assuming the American presidency in 1845, James K. Polk attempted to secure Mexican agreement to setting the boundary at the Rio Grande and to the sale of northern California. What he failed to realize was that even his carefully orchestrated policy of graduated pressure would not work because no Mexican politician could agree to the alienation of any territory, including Texas.
1866 - The Port Isabel Lighthouse resumed operation after being fitted for a replacement lens and light.
1877 - Buffalo hunter Marshall Sewell (or Soule) was killed by Indians near the town of Rath City, also known as Reynolds, Hide Town, Rath, and Rath's Store. It was a short-lived frontier town established in 1876 on the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River fourteen miles northwest of Hamlin in southern Stonewall County. Rath City became the rallying point for some 300 frontiersmen after fellow Sewell was killed. An expedition of forty-five men left the settlement and pursued a war party of Comanches under Black Horse to a site north of the present city of Lubbock. After an inconclusive battle in Yellow House Canyon on February 22, 1877,the hunters returned to Rath City, thus completing one of the last Indian campaigns on the Southern Plains. A declining buffalo population brought an end to the settlement, and it was abandoned by 1880.
1907 - The Texas Nurses Association, a professional association of registered nurses and a constituent of the American Nurses Association, was originally founded as the Graduate Nurses' Association of Texas when nineteen Texas nurses met in Fort Worth.
1913 - Buddy Tate, tenor saxophonist, was born in Blue Creek Community near Sherman, Texas. Tate, one of the great tenor saxophonists of the swing era, began his professional career in the late 1920s playing around the Southwest in bands led by Terrence Holder, Andy Kirk, and Nat Towles. He played with the Count Basie Band.
1954 - The first patients that were treated with a cobalt-60 unit for the treatment of cancer, were made at the new M.D. Anderson Cancer Center In Houston. It was the world's first clinical cobalt-60 unit that had been designed by M. D. Anderson's Dr. Gilbert H. Fletcher, a radiotherapist, and Dr. Leonard G. Grimmett, a physicist, and approved by the United States Atomic Energy Commission.
1969 - Robert D. Law, Medal of Honor recipient, from Fort Worth with five companions were on a long-range reconnaissance patrol when they made contact with a small enemy patrol. As the opposing elements exchanged intense fire, Law maneuvered to a perilously exposed position and began directing suppressive fire on the enemy. His spirited defense rallied his comrades against the well-equipped hostile troops. When an enemy grenade landed in his team's position, Law, instead of diving to safety, threw his body on the grenade and sacrificed his own life to save the lives of his comrades. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty." The medal was presented to his parents, Mrs. Martha E. Moore of Fort Worth and Robert M. Law of Leander, by President Richard M. Nixon at the White House on August 6, 1970. Law is buried at Mount Olive Cemetery, Fort Worth.
