1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

1947 – Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident.

1928 – Sliced bread is sold for the first time (on the inventor's 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.

2003 – The 70-metre Yevpatoria Planetary Radar sends a METI message (Cosmic Call 2) to five stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri (HD 75732), HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris (HD 95128). The messages will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044, and 2049, respectively.

1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.

1947 – The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union.

1944 – Jackie Robinson refuses to move to the back of a bus, leading to a court-martial.

1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the "Secret Annexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

1939 – Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany closes the last remaining Jewish enterprises.

1996 – Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

1994 – Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.

1954 – Elvis Presley records his first single, "That's All Right", at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

1954 – The BBC broadcasts its first daily television news bulletin.

2012 – The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN.

1997 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.

1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act went into effect the next year.

1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.

1845 – Henry David Thoreau moves into a small cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau's account of his two years there, Walden, will become a touchstone of the environmental movement.

1054 – A supernova, called SN 1054, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1973 – David Bowie retires his stage persona Ziggy Stardust with the surprise announcement that it is "the last show that we'll ever do" on the last day of the Ziggy Stardust Tour.