1608 – Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia
1610 – Galileo discovers the first of four Jupiter satellites, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Although Jupiter has at least sixty-seven moons, these four, known as the Galilean moons, are extremely large. Ganymede, the largest, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury
1714 – Typewriter patented by Englishman Henry Mill although one is not built for several years
1785 – First balloon flight across English Channel is completed by Blanchard and Jeffries
1830 – First United States Railroad Station opens in Baltimore
1890 – W. B. Purvis patents fountain pen
1904 – Marconi International Marine Communication Company establishes “CQD” as the first radio distress signal to be transmitted in Morse code. Although used worldwide, this system was never adopted as an international standard because it could easily be mistaken for a general call “CQ” if reception was poor. “SOS” was adopted instead two years later
1914 – First steamboat passes through Panama Canal
1953 – President Harry Truman announces development of hydrogen bomb
1954 – Georgetown-IBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM
1970 – Farmers sue Max Yasgur, the owner of the Dairy Farm where Woodstock was hosted for thirty-five thousand dollars in damages
1990 – Tower Of Pisa closed to the public after leaning too far
1999 – President Bill Clinton begins his impeachment trial in the Senate
Birthdays
1800 – Millard Fillmore, Locke, New York. Thirteenth president of the United States
1912 – Charles Addams, cartoonist known for his darkly humorous characters who worked for the New Yorker. Some of his reoccurring characters became known as The Addams Family
Deaths
1943 – Nikola Tesla, Yugoslavian physicist and inventor, dies at eighty-six in New York City where he was living after retiring