2012 – The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN.

1997 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.

1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act went into effect the next year.

1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.

1845 – Henry David Thoreau moves into a small cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau's account of his two years there, Walden, will become a touchstone of the environmental movement.

1054 – A supernova, called SN 1054, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1973 – David Bowie retires his stage persona Ziggy Stardust with the surprise announcement that it is "the last show that we'll ever do" on the last day of the Ziggy Stardust Tour.

1886 – Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first purpose-built automobile.

1884 – Dow Jones & Company publishes its first stock average.

1966 – France conducts its first nuclear weapon test in the Pacific, on Moruroa Atoll.

1964 – Civil rights movement: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.

1890 – The U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.

1968 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is signed in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.

1963 – ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail.

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).