David Crockett was born in a cabin along the Nolichucky River in what is now Tennessee. He would become a celebrated frontiersman, bear hunter, and U.S. congressman before dying at the Alamo in 1836, and his exaggerated frontier exploits made him one of early America's first folk-hero celebrities.

After a decade of engineering effort that cost roughly 5,600 lives to disease and accidents, the Panama Canal opened to commercial traffic when the cargo ship SS Ancon crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The 50-mile waterway, built by the United States after a failed French attempt, transformed global shipping by eliminating the need to sail around South America.

Just two days after Japan's surrender, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta read a brief proclamation of independence from the porch of Sukarno's Jakarta home. The Dutch refused to recognize it, triggering years of guerrilla warfare and diplomacy before the Netherlands finally conceded sovereignty in 1949. The date is now Indonesia's most important national holiday.

Gabon became the last of France's former Equatorial African colonies to gain independence in 1960, with Léon M'ba becoming president. Rich in oil, manganese, and timber, the nation maintained unusually close ties to Paris after independence, a relationship critics later called 'Françafrique.' The date remains Gabon's national holiday.