1982 – Michael Jackson's second solo album, Thriller is released worldwide. It will become the best-selling record album in history.

1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges Meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space.

1940 – Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.

1872 – The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.

3340 BC – Earliest believed record of an eclipse.

 miamizsun wrote: 

That cannot be possible. Mayonnaise was not even invented until 1756, by Duke Richelieu's chef. I think.

in plymouth plantation on this day in 1621 the first turkey sandwich came to be


i think

1972 – Atari announces the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission – Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee as WSM Barn Dance.

1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered to be one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire.

1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1893 – Women vote in a national election for the first time: the New Zealand general election.

1814 – The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.

1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence.

1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasted only four months.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, the anniversary of which is sometimes called "Evolution Day"