1886 – First alternating current power plant in the United States starts in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
1899 – Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is patented by Felix Hoffman at German company Bayer.
1918 – United States naval boat Cyclops disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.
1922 – Babe Ruth signs a 3-year contract with the New York Yankees for $52,000 per year.
1923 – Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals announce their players will wear numbers on their uniforms.
1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a nationwide bank holiday, temporarily shutting down all banks and passing the Emergency Banking Act and restore public confidence in the financial system by permitting only sound banks to open.
1940 – First telecast from an airplane taken over New York City by NBC.
1950 – Silly Putty goes on sale for the first time.
1959 – 11th Emmy Awards: Playhouse 90, Jack Benny Show, Raymond Burr win.
1964 – Boxing legend Cassius Clay joins the Nation of Islam and changes his name to Muhammad Ali, calling his former title a “slave name.”
1965 – First nonstop helicopter crossing of North America made by Commander James R. Williford and crew in a U.S. Navy Sikorsky SH-3A Sea King helicopter, covering 2,105 miles in 16 hours, 52 minutes.
1966 – Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” becomes #1 and stays there for 13 weeks.
1972 – Jack Nicklaus passes Arnold Palmer as golf’s all-time money winner with $1,480,884 in career earnings.
1981 – Walter Cronkite signs off as anchorman of CBS Evening News.
1985 – Enos Slaughter and Arky Vaughan elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
1998 – Matt Beck, an angry lottery accountant, kills four people and himself at Connecticut state lottery.
2006 – South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signs a bill that would ban most abortions in the state.
2017 – President Donald Trump signs his second executive order barring travelers from six mostly-Muslim countries for 90 days, but leaves out Iraq.
2018 – Forbes names Amazon founder Jeff Bezos the world’s richest person for the first time at $112 billion with Bill Gates at No. 2.
2019 – United States trade deficit rises to a 10-year high of $621 billion.
Author: Sonny Jones
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