- 1752 Dutch States-General forbids export of windmills
- 1815 World's first commercial cheese factory established, in Switzerland
- 1876 Albert Spalding invests $800 to start a sporting goods company, manufacturing the first official baseball, tennis ball, basketball, golf ball, and football
Jumbo the Elephant
1882 Circus owner P. T. Barnum buys his world-famous elephant Jumbo
Discovery of Homo Erectus
1928 Paleoanthropologist Davidson Black reports his findings on the ancient human fossils found at Zhoukoudian, China, in the journal Nature and declares them to be a new species he names 'Sinanthropus pekinensis' (now known as 'Homo erectus')
Apex of Moronia
1931 Arkansas legislature passes a motion to pray for the soul of journalist H. L. Mencken after he calls the state the "apex of moronia"
- 1964 "Meet the Beatles" album goes gold
- 1966 1st operational weather satellite, ESSA-1 launched US
- 1966 First soft landing on the Moon, by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9
- 1969 Ibuprofen launches in the UK under the brand name Brufen as a prescription medicine, now the world's most popular anti-inflammatory painkiller [1]
Canterbury Tales
1969 Musical adaptation of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", opens at Eugene O'Neill Theater, NYC; runs for 121 performances
- 1979 "Y.M.C.A." by Village People peaks at #2 on pop singles chart
- 1982 Greatest helicopter lift, 56,888 kg, Podmoscovnoe, USSR
