A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.

Georgetown College, the first Roman Catholic college in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.)

At Union College in Schenectady, New York a group of college students form Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the first African-American fraternity at an historically black college or university, is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.