1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh takes off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, landing 33+1⁄2 hours later.

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

1940 – The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1964 – Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias.

1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by a team of French scientists including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann, and Luc Montagnier.

1828 – U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828 into law, sparking outrage in the South and leading to the Nullification crisis.

1963 – The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

 Proclivities wrote:

Locked up for profound stupidity. 

 Proclivities wrote:

Ooh. 

Side note: when people do dumb things in Yellowstone, someone will always comment about "people these days," but clearly it's a basic human trait.

 Red_Dragon wrote:
Article from 2020, but still...
The Story Behind One of the Most Striking Photos of the Mount St. Helens Eruption

 Red_Dragon wrote:
I get inflation and all but there also must have been some radical change in how they calculate this. Seems low low

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens caused an estimated $1.1 billion in damages (equivalent to roughly $3.5–$4 billion in 2024), making it one of the costliest and most destructive volcanic events in U.S. history.

1896 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional.

1912 – The first Indian film, Shree Pundalik by Dadasaheb Torne, is released in Mumbai.

1933 – New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1944 – Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union.

1974 – Nuclear weapons testing: Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1994 – Israeli troops finish withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, ceding the area to the Palestinian National Authority to govern.

1204 – Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire.

1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England.

1770 – The 14-year-old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste, Dauphin de France, who later becomes king of France.

 Red_Dragon wrote:
1689
Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō leaves Edo on his epic 150-day journey to Honshu Island in Japan, which he writes about in the literary masterpiece "Oku no Hosomichi" (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)

1975
Tabei Junko of Japan, accompanied by Ang Tsering of Nepal, became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1770
Marie-Antoinette married the future King Louis XVI of France.

1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.

1891 – The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, featuring the world's first long-distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current (the most common form today).

1929 – In Hollywood, the first Academy Awards ceremony takes place.

1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1988 – A report by the Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1911 – In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.

1933 – All military aviation organizations within or under the control of the RLM of Germany are officially merged in a covert manner to form its Wehrmacht military's air arm, the Luftwaffe.

1940 – Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald's restaurant.

1948 – Following the expiration of The British Mandate for Palestine, the Kingdom of Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade Israel, thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

1957 – At Malden Island in the Pacific Ocean, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.

1551 – National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.

2017 – The WannaCry ransomware attack impacts over 400,000 computers worldwide, targeting computers of the United Kingdom's National Health Services and Telefónica computers.

1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg's charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times are dismissed.

1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

1998 – India conducts three underground atomic tests in Pokhran.

330 – Constantine the Great dedicates the much-expanded and rebuilt city of Byzantium, changing its name to New Rome and declaring it the new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (today: Istanbul, former Constantinople after his name). ~ (That same emperor, who ended the prosecution of all Christians. Under his reign, the 'canon' of texts comprising The Bible was compiled by bishops of the Catholic Church West & East.
Some believe, he "got rid of" the Christian dogma of reincarnation.  ~  MORE HERE!)

868 – A copy of the Diamond Sūtra is published, the earliest dated and printed book known.

1869 – The First transcontinental railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory with the golden spike.

1872 – Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States.

1908 – Mother's Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.

1924 – J. Edgar Hoover is appointed first Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and remains so until his death in 1972.

1933 – Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings.

1962 – Marvel Comics publishes the first issue of The Incredible Hulk.

1975 – Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder.

1994 – Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

1974 – Watergate scandal: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

2020 – The COVID-19 recession causes the U.S. unemployment rate to hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression.

1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.

1970 – The Beatles release their 12th and final studio album Let It Be.

1973 – A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota ends with the surrender of the militants.

1980 – The World Health Organization confirms the eradication of smallpox.

1824 – World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the composer's supervision.

1846 – The Cambridge Chronicle, America's oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1895 – In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector—a primitive radio receiver. In some parts of the former Soviet Union the anniversary of this day is celebrated as Radio Day.

1946 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded.

2000 – Vladimir Putin is inaugurated as president of Russia.