- 1780 At about midday, near-total darkness descends on New England, now known to be caused by forest fires in Canada
- 1885 First mass production of shoes by Jan Matzeliger's Consolidated Lasting Machine Company in Lynn, Massachusetts
- 1898 US Congress passes the Private Mailing Card Act, allowing private publishers and printers to produce postcards, which have to be labeled "Private Mailing Cards" until 1901, known as "souvenir cards"
- 1906 Italian King Victor Emmanuel and Swiss President Ludwig Forrer open the Simplon Tunnel, a railroad tunnel through the Alps that is the world's longest until 1982
- 1928 51 frogs enter the first annual "Frog Jumping Jubilee" in Angels Camp, California
- 1934 Sherlock Holmes crossword puzzle in "Saturday Review of Literature"; males who solved puzzle became members of Baker Street Irregulars [1]
- 1950 The New York Times reports on the world's smallest and simplest mechanical brain
Theseus
1952 "Time" magazine features "Theseus," an electrical learning machine built by American scientist Claude Shannon, as the first example of Artificial Intelligence [1]
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
1962 Marilyn Monroe sings "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to JFK before 15,000 attendees, accompanied by jazz pianist Hank Jones, at Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1995 World's youngest doctor, Balamurali Ambati, 17, graduates from Mount Sinai
Search for Dark Matter
2011 Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a project to search for dark matter led by Samuel C. C. Ting, is installed on the International Space Station
- 2019 US billionaire Robert F. Smith announces that he will pay off the college loans of nearly 400 students in the graduating class at Morehouse College in Atlanta
- 2022 Mercedes confirms the sale of the world's most expensive car, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR coupe, for €135 million ($142 million) [1]
Jim Morrison Statue Recovered
2025 Police in Paris, France, recover the memorial bust of American 'The Doors' singer, Jim Morrison, that was stolen from his grave in 1988
