Today:
1066 – William the Conqueror and his Norman army landed at Pevensey on the coast of England, beginning the Norman invasion that would culminate in the Battle of Hastings.
1781 – American and French forces began the Siege of Yorktown during the American Revolution. The siege ended with the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis in October.
1850 – The U.S. Navy abolished flogging as a form of punishment aboard its ships.
1889 – The first General Conference on Weights and Measures established the international prototype meter as the standard definition of the meter.
1924 – Two U.S. Army aircraft landed in Seattle, completing the first successful aerial circumnavigation of the world. The journey took 175 days and covered roughly 27,000 miles.
1928 – Scottish physician and bacteriologist Alexander Fleming noticed that a mold growing in one of his laboratory culture dishes was killing nearby bacteria, leading to his discovery of penicillin.
1941 – Baseball star Ted Williams finished the regular season with a .406 batting average after going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader. He remains the last Major League Baseball player to hit .400 or better in a season.
1951 – CBS began selling the first commercially manufactured color television sets to the public. The early sets were expensive and CBS’s color system was soon overtaken by a competing technology.
1960 – Ted Williams hit a home run in the final at-bat of his Major League Baseball career at Fenway Park, ending his 19-season career with 521 home runs.
2008 – SpaceX’s Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to successfully reach Earth orbit, a major milestone in the development of commercial spaceflight.