Today in Entrepreneurial History: November 14

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Ruby Laser

1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in seventy-two days.
1910 – Aviator Eugene Ely performs the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.
1922 – The BBC begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
1967 – American physicist Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world’s first laser.
1995 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.
2007 – The last direct-current electrical distribution system in the United States is shut down in New York City by Con Edison.