1866 – The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.

1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

1945 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, is executed by the Nazi regime.

1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the first known recording of an audible human voice.

2010 – U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign the New START Treaty.

1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.

1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.

2021 – COVID-19 pandemic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States.

1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.

1969 – The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.

1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.

1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banning Jews and political dissidents from civil service posts.

1927 – AT&T engineer Herbert Ives transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

1974 – The first California Jam festival takes place at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California. Co-headlined by Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The festival set what were then records for the loudest amplification system ever installed, the highest paid attendance, and highest gross in history.

1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

1964 – The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.

1925 – The Schutzstaffel (SS) is founded under Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in Germany.