1709 — Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal.
1844 — The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1876 — Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1908 — Wilbur Wright makes his first public flight (and it was at a racecourse at Le Mans, France — what’s with that!).
1911 — Francis Holton files a patent for a tubeless vehicle tire. Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine patents had been filed before his, albeit not for tubeless tires.
1911 — Public Law 62-5 sets the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives at 435 (but it doesn’t go into effect until 1913).
1945 — The United States becomes the third signatory nation of the United Nations Charter.
1973 — US Vice President Spiro Agnew appears on television to denounce accusations he had taken kickbacks while governor of Maryland.
1974 — US President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day.
1990 — Iraq occupies Kuwait.
2009 — Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as the first Latina justice of the US Supreme Court — and she’s also the first Hispanic justice and the first Puerto Rican justice and the first woman justice (after Sandra and Ruth, of course).