1908 – Katie Mulcahey is arrested for lighting a cigarette, violating the 1-day old “Sullivan Ordinance” banning women from smoking in public, and is fined $5. Appearing before the judge she stated “I’ve got as much right to smoke as you have. I never heard of this new law, and I don’t want to hear about it. No man can dictate to me.”
1940 – 1st radio broadcast of “Road to Happiness” on CBS.
1947 – 1st commercial TV station west of Mississippi opens in Hollywood, California.
1949 – Chinatown telephone exchange is San Francisco is closed.
1954 – 11th Golden Globes: The Robe, Spencer Tracy, & Audrey Hepburn win.
1956 – 30 people die in a train crash in Los Angeles.
1960 – 10th NBA All-Star Game, Convention Hall, Philadelphia, Pa: East beats West, 125-115; MVP: Wilt Chamberlain, Philadelphia Warriors, C.
1965 – US launches TIROS 9 weather satellite.
1968 – “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” premiers on NBC.
1968 – NBA announces expansion franchise licenses awarded to Milwaukee (Bucks) and Phoenix (Suns)
1970 – 1st commercial Boeing 747 flight, Pan American World Airways flies from New York City to London in 6 1/2 hours.
1973 – Roe vs Wade: US Supreme Court legalizes most abortions.
1983 – Houston is 1st NBA team to be held scoreless in an overtime: Portland Trail Blazers out score them 17-0 & win 113-96.
1984 – Super Bowl XVII, Tampa Stadium, Tampa, FL: LA Raiders beat Washington Redskins,38-9; MVP: Marcus Allen, Los Angeles, RB.
1988 – Defending champion Mike Tyson beats former titleholder Larry Holmes by TKO in round 4 at Convention Centre, Atlantic City to retain his undisputed heavyweight boxing title.
1990 – Will Clark, NL’s MVP signs a $15M 4-year contract with SF Giants.
2003 – Last successful contact with NASA spacecraft Pioneer 10, one of the most distant man-made objects.
2010 – Conan O’Brein’s last The Tonight Show episode after a big controversy over the Tonight Show timeslot.
2016 – Winder storm conditions strand 500 motorist for 24 hours in Somerset and Bedford counties, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
2018 – US government ends three-day shutdown after an agreement in Congress to extend funding.
2018 – Netflix becomes the largest digital media and entertainment company in the world worth $100 billion.
2020 – China locks down the city of Wuhan and its 11 million people, in an effort to control COVID-19 with a then official death toll of 17 and over 500 people ill.
