1975 – Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

1953 – Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1934 – The creation of the position Führer is approved by the German electorate with 89.9% of the popular vote.

1692 – Salem witch trials: in Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.

1902—Birthday of Ogden Nash
 He said "Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you."

1927- Birthday of Gene Roddenberry

1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States.

1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage.

1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers.

1982 – The first Compact Discs (CDs) are released to the public in Germany.

1970 – Venera program: Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus).

1959 – Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the much acclaimed and highly influential best selling jazz recording of all time, is released.

1958 – Pioneer 0, America's first attempt at lunar orbit, is launched using the first Thor-Able rocket and fails. Notable as one of the first attempted launches beyond Earth orbit by any country.

1896 – Bridget Driscoll is run over by a Benz car in the grounds of The Crystal Palace, London, the UK's first pedestrian motoring fatality.

1974 – Punk Rock pioneers The Ramones play their first show in a local New York club named CBGB.

1929 – The 1929 Palestine riots break out in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.

1896 – Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.

1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.

1971 – President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.

1969 – Woodstock rock and roll concert opens.