479 BC – Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea. Along the with the Greek victory on the same day in the Battle of Mycale, the Persian invasion of Greece is halted.
1660 – The books of John Milton were burned in London due to his attacks on King Charles II.
1858 – The first cable news dispatch was sent and was published by “The New York Sun” newspaper. The story was about the peace demands of England and France being met by China.
1859 – The first oil well was successfully drilled in the U.S. by Colonel Edwin L. Drake near Titusville, PA.
1889 – Charles G. Conn received a patent for the metal clarinet.
1892 – The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York was seriously damaged by fire.
1938 – Robert Frost, in a fit of jealousy, set fire to some papers to disrupt a poetry recital by another poet, Archibald MacLeish.
1955 – “Guinness Book of World Records” 1st published
1958 – USSR launches Sputnik 3 with two dogs aboard
1962 – Mariner 2 was launched by the United States. In December of the same year the spacecraft flew past Venus. It was the first space probe to reach the vicinity of another plan
1985 – The Space Shuttle Discovery left for a seven-day mission in which three satellites were launched and another was repaired and redeployed.
1989 – The first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched. A British communications satellite was onboard.
1993 – The Rainbow Bridge connecting Tokyo’s Shibaura and the island of Odaiba is completed.
1998 – “Titanic” became the first movie in North America to earn more than $600 million.
2001 – Work began on the future site of a World War II memorial on the U.S. capital’s historic national Mall. The site is between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.
2012 – First interplanetary human voice recording is broadcast from the Mars Rover Curiosity
By: Archa Dave
