1797 – Charles Newbold patents 1st cast-iron plow, though farmers fear effects of iron on soil.
1848 – 1st pure food law enacted in US.
1894 – Karl Benz of Germany receives US patent for gasoline-driven auto.
1900 – Dr. Walter Reed begins research that beats Yellow Fever.
1916 – Cleveland Indians experiment with numbers on their jerseys (one game)
1924 – Ziegfeld Follies opens on Broadway.
1934 – FDR signs Federal Credit Union Act, establishing Credit Unions.
1945 – United Nations Charter signed by 50 nations in San Francisco.
1946 – Fred Allen’s last radio show, his guest is Jack Benny.
1968 – Iwo Jima & Bonin Islands returned to Japan by US.
1974 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
1975 – U.S. Supreme Court’s rules unanimously in “O’Conner b. Donaldson” that non-dangerous people can’t be confined to psychiatric facilities without adequate treatment if able to live viably in outside society.
1977 – Elvis Presley sings in Indianapolis, the last performance of his career.
1989 – Supreme Court rules 16 year olds can receive death penalty.
1990 – 8 Kansas & Oklahoma radio stations boycott K.D. Lange, due to her anti-meat ad.
1992 – NYC’s MTA votes to ban cigarette ads on January 1, 1993.
1993 – The U.S. launches a cruise missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for a thwarted assassination attempt against former President George H.W. Bush in April in Kuwait.
2008 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
2015 – U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 same-sex marriage is a legal right across all US states.
2016 – Panama Canal’s third set of locks opens for commercial traffic, doubling the Canal’s capacity at an estimated cost of $5.25 billion.
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