1913 – The first ship sails through the Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
1927 – Tornado hits Washington, D.C.
1928 – Notre Dame finally loses a football game at home after 23 years.
1931 – Charles Lindbergh inaugurates Pan Am service from Cuba to South America in the Sikorsky flying boat (American Clipper)
1933 – United States recognizes Soviet Union, opens trade.
1940 – Green Bay Packers become first NFL team to travel by plane.
1947 – The Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath.
1956 – Syracuse fullback Jim Brown scores NCAA record 43 points against Colgate.
1962 – President John Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.
1967 – Surveyor 6 becomes first man-made object to lift off Moon.
1970 – Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse.
1973 – President Richard Nixon tells AP “…people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
1980 – RCA Victor Records releases “9 to 5 and Odd Jobs”, the 23rd studio album by country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton.
1989 – Bret Saberhagen signs record $2,966,667 annual contract with the Kansas City Royals.
1992 – Dateline NBC airs a demonstration showing General Motors trucks blowing up on impact. It was later revealed NBC rigged the test.
1997 – Mario Lemieux enters the National Hockey League Hall of Fame.
2004 – Kmart Corp. announces it is buying Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $11 billion and naming the newly merged company Sears Holdings Corporation.
2008 – Japan, the world’s second-biggest economy, slides into its first recession in seven years.
2019 – 21-year-old Greek tennis star Stefanos Asitsipas beat Dominic Thiem of Austria 6-7, (6-8), 6-2, 7-6, (7-4) in London to become the youngest winner of the ATP Finals in 18 years.
2021 – Record number of Americans, over 100,000, die of drug overdoses between April 2020 and April 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control.