Today:
565: Byzantine Emperor Justinian I died.
1832: The first horse-drawn streetcar service began operations in New York City.
1851: Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick was published in the United States.
1889: Journalist Nellie Bly set out to travel around the world in under 80 days, a feat she completed in 72 days.
1910: Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performed the first takeoff from a ship, the USS Birmingham.
1922: The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) began its first domestic radio service in the United Kingdom.
1940: The English city of Coventry was heavily bombed by the German Luftwaffe during World War II.
1960: Six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first African American child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the U.S. South.
1969: NASA launched Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to land on the Moon.
1971: NASA’s Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars.