In 1896 – Henri Becquerel discovered images of uranium rocks had appeared on a photographic plate without exposure to the sun. He had discovered natural radiation.

In 1995 – Jerry Yang and David Filo incorporate their website Yahoo!

In 2006 – English-language Wikipedia reached its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station.

In 1860 – Herman Hollerith was born. He would grow up to build the first punched-card tabulating machines as well as found the company that was to become IBM.

In 1880 – The bores which had begun to drill the St. Gotthard Tunnel from Göschenen and Airolo, met midway, linking Switzerland and Italy.

In 1940 – Ernest O. Lawrence delivered his 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics banquet speech in Berkeley, California, instead of the usual Sweden, so he could keep raising funds for his cyclotron research which got him the prize int he first place.

In 1947 – The first closed-circuit broadcast of a surgical operation showed procedures to observers in classrooms at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1954 – The Westinghouse H840CK15 goes on sale in the New York area. It is generally agreed to be the first production receiver using NTSC color offered to the public. Only 30 sets were sold at $1295 a pop.

In 1959 – Discoverer 1 was launched on a Thor-Agena A rocket and became the first man-made object ever put into a polar orbit.

In 1932 – English physicist James Chadwick published a letter on the existence of the neutron, some say giving birth to modern nuclear physics.

In 1891 David Sarnoff was born near Minsk.. He would go on to befriend Marconi and rise to the Presidency of RCA and be integral in founding NBC.

In 1986 – The United States Senate voted to allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis. The trial was successful.