On this day in 1693, The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, received its charter, thereby becoming the second institution of higher learning in the United States (after Harvard University). The original plans for William & Mary stretch back to 1618 -- decades before Harvard -- but were tabled by an "Indian uprising." James Blair traveled to Britain to advocate for a college on behalf of his fellow Virginians. On February 8, 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England signed the charter for a "perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences" to be founded in the Virginia Colony. Just like that, William & Mary was born. Workers commenced construction on the Sir Christopher Wren Building, then known as the College Building in 1695, before the town of Williamsburg even existed. Over the next two centuries, the Wren Building would catch fire on three separate occasions, each time being re-...