Today:
1746 – The College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) receives its charter.
1797 – The first successful parachute jump is made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hot air balloon in Paris.
1836 – Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.
1879 – Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb.
1883 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod’s “Faust.”
1926 – J. Gordon Whitehead punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach, an incident that contributes to Houdini’s death a few days later.
1938 – Chester Carlson invents the photocopier and makes the first xerographic copy.
1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis escalates as U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces a naval “quarantine” of Cuba.
1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but declines it.
2008 – India launches its first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1.