- 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.