- 1776 In a bar decorated with bird tail in Elmsford, New York, a customer requests a glassful of “those cock tails” from bartender Betsy Flanagan
- 1805 45 women meet at Mrs. Silas Lee's home in Wiscasset, Maine, and organize the Female Charitable Society, one of the earliest women's clubs in America
- 1878 Edison makes electricity available for household use
- 1892 First commercial long-distance phone line opens between Chicago and New York
- 1909 Count de Lambert of France sets an airplane altitude record of 300 meters
- 1919 Belvin Maynard wins the first transcontinental air race in a round trip of 9 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes, and 12 seconds; the race costs 9 lives with 54 crashes or forced landings
Pop-up Toaster
1921 Charles Strite is granted US patent #1,394,450 for his invention, the automatic pop-up toaster
- 1929 In the landmark "Persons Case," Canada's highest court of appeal declares that the word "person" includes women
- 1930 Joseph Sylvester becomes the first jockey to win seven races in one day
- 1954 Texas Instruments Inc. announces the first transistor radio
MOMA Hangs Picture Upside Down
1961 The Museum of Modern Art in New York displays Henri Matisse's picture "Le Bateau" upside down, and it takes 47 days and 116,000 people before someone notices [1]
- 1968 Circus Circus Hotel, the largest permanent big top in the world, opens in Las Vegas
First Quadruple-Double
1974 Chicago Bulls' Nate Thurmond, in his debut with the team, becomes the first NBA player to complete a quadruple-double: 22 points, 14 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 blocks
- 2019 First all-female spacewalk by NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir outside the International Space Station
2019 The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-host "Event 201" in New York City, a tabletop exercise simulating the devastating impact of a severe pandemic; three months later, COVID-19 breaks out [1]
- 2022 Evidence of a lost star catalog by second-century BC Greek astronomer Hipparchus, the earliest known attempt to record celestial objects' coordinates with the naked eye, is found in a palimpsest manuscript published by scholars [1]
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