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.