1957 – The International Geophysical Year begins.

1881 – The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.

1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful typewriter, goes on sale.

1858 – Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society of London.

1770 – Lexell's Comet is seen closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 astronomical units (2,180,000 km; 1,360,000 mi).

1986 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, is founded.

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place.

1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, resulting in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia.

1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

2007 – Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone.

2006 – Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.

1971 – Prior to re-entry (following a record-setting stay aboard the Soviet Union's Salyut 1 space station), the crew capsule of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurizes, killing the three cosmonauts on board. Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev are the first humans to die in space.

1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.

1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.

1977 – Elvis Presley holds what will prove to be his final concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1978 – The rainbow flag representing gay pride is flown for the first time during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

2022 – In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution does not assign the authority to regulate abortions to the federal government, thereby returning such authority to the individual states. This overturns the prior decisions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

2012 – Death of Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise.