1888 – First wax drinking straw patented by Marvin C. Stone in Washington, D.C.
1899 – First known use of the word “automobile” appears in an editorial in The New York Times.
1918 – US Employment Service opens as a unit of the Department of Labor.
1929 – 27-year-old William S. Paley becomes CBS president.
1938 – March of Dimes established to fight polio.
1944 – World War II: Top US flying ace Major Pappy Boyington shot down in his Corsair by Japanese Captain Massjiro Kawato flying a Zero. Boyington survives as a prisoner of war.
1947 – First opening session of Congress to be televised. It did not happen again until 1977.
1952 – “Dragnet” with Jack Webb premieres on NBC TV.
1957 – First electric watch, the Hamilton Electric 500, introduced by the Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
1962 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro.
1971 – First AFC Championship, Memorial Stadium, Baltimore: Baltimore Colts beat Oakland Raiders, 27-17.
1977 – Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs incorporate Apple Computers Inc.
1981 – American golfer Johnny Miller wins the sport’s first $1 million tournament when he beat Seve Ballesteros of Spain in a playoff in the inaugural Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City, South Africa.
1985 – Mitch McConnell becomes a senator representing Kentucky.
1987 – Aretha Franklin is the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
1997 – Texas-El Paso head basketball coach Don Haskins becomes 10th coach in NCAA Division 1 history to record 700 career wins when the Miners edged SMU 66-64.
2004 – After hosting the show for over 30 years, Casey Kasem gives up hosting duties of “American Top 40” to Ryan Seacrest.
2014 – Tommy Lynn Sells is executed at Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville for the murder of nine-year-old Mary Perez. Sells is thought to have committed 21 more murders.
2018 – Lawyers for President Donald Trump try to stop the publication of a book on Trump’s administration “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolf.
2022 – America records one million new COVID-19 cases for the first time. Omicron accounting for an estimated 95% of these.
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