- 1562 Kissing in public is banned in Naples and is punishable by death
The Wealth of Nations
1776 Adam Smith publishes the influential economics book "The Wealth of Nations"
- 1868 The opera "Hamlet" by Ambroise Thomas premieres in Paris
- 1926 Bertha Landes is elected as the first woman mayor of Seattle and the first female mayor of any major US city
- 1959 Barbie makes her debut at the American Toy Fair in New York. Over a billion have been sold worldwide since.
- 1959 First known radar contact is made with Venus
1961 Soviet flight Sputnik 9 carries and returns from orbit a dog named Chernushka (Blackie), frogs, and a guinea pig
- 1964 First Ford Mustang produced
1974 The last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in the Philippines, surrenders 29 years after World War II ends
- 1986 Soviet probe Vega 2 flies by Halley's Comet at 8,030 km
Appointment of Interest
1988 Actress Audrey Hepburn is appointed a UNICEF Special Ambassador (Goodwill Ambassador 1989)
- 2006 Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn
- 2011 Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights
- 2013 Asteroid 2013 ET comes within 960,000 km from the Earth’s surface
- 2021 China and Russia agree to build a research station on or around the Moon and collaborate on lunar missions, in move that could start another space race
Event of Interest
2022 Stolen notebooks belonging to naturalist Charles Darwin, including his famous 'tree of life' sketch, mysteriously returned after 22 years to Cambridge University Library [1]
- 2025 Colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), a species identified in 1925, is filmed for the first time by scientists from the Schmidt Ocean Institute; the 30 sm (11.8 inches) juvenile was captured on video at a depth of 600 meters (1968 feet) near the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean using SuBastian, a remotely operated vehicle [1]
