1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully land on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet

 ScottN wrote: 
USA! USA!

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
We have spent (I read somewhere) twice as much money on new NFL stadiums in the past twenty years than it would have cost to return to the moon. Imo, that is skewed priorities writ large.

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.

1962 – NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

1903 – The Wright brothers make their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1782 – The Montgolfier brothers' first balloon lifts off on its first test flight.

 islander wrote: 
tell it to Wiki

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
technically, this would be for tomorrow because the EVA started late evening, but on returning to the capsule Cernan said:

  

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

1968 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus featuring The Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, The Dirty Mac, Yoko Ono, Sir Robert Fossett's Circus and the Nurses is filmed at the Intertel (V.T.R. Services) Studio, Wycombe Road, Wembley

1934 – Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the last time.

1965 – The Grateful Dead's first concert performance under this new name.

1927 – The phrase "Grand Ole Opry" is used for the first time on-air.

1884 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.

1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).

1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined the object.

1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.