1750 – First school in America to offer manual training courses in Maryland.
1824 – US House of Representatives begins to decide outcome of election deadlock between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson (Adams wins)
1843 – 1st chartered mutual life insurance company opens.
1878 – 1st White House telephone installed.
1884 – American Old West: Near Frisco, New Mexico, deputy sheriff Elfego Baca holds off a gang of 80 Texan cowboys who want to kill him for arresting Charles McCarthy.
1903 – “The Great Train Robbery”, the 1st western film, released.
1913 – 1st drive-up gasoline station opens (Pittsburgh).
1913 – Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford (car every 2:38).
1917 – Boys Town founded by Father Edward Flanagan west of Omaha, Nebraska.
1924 – George & Ira Gershwin’s musical “Lady Be Good” premieres in NYC.
1929 – Game of Bingo invented by Edwin S. Lowe.
1942 – Gasoline rationed in US.
1952 – The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
1953 – Hugh Hefner publishes 1st edition of Playboy magazine, featuring Marilyn Monroe as the magazine’s 1st centerfold.
1955 – Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama.
1964 – Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to J. Edgar Hoover about is slander campaign.
1969 – US government holds its 1st draft lottery since WW II.
1982 – Dentist Barney B. Clark gets 1st artificial heart.
1993 – Northwest Airlink plane crashes in Minn, killing 18.
1997 – Westinghouse formally changes its name to CBS.
1998 – Exxon announces a $73.7 billion USD deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest company.
2008 – The US economy has been in recession since December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research announces.