1775 – A postal system was established by the 2nd Continental Congress of the United States. The first Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin.
1788 – New York became the 11th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1881 – Thomas Edison and Patrick Kenny execute a patent application for a facsimile telegraph (U.S. Pat. 479,184).
1893 – Commercial production of the Addressograph started in Chicago, IL.
1907 – The Chester was launched. It was the first turbine-propelled ship.
1908 – U.S. Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte issued an order that created an investigative agency that was a forerunner of the FBI.
1945 – Winston Churchill resigned as Britain’s prime minister.
1945 – HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the Second World War
1947 – U.S. President Truman signed The National Security Act. The act created the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
1948 – U.S. President Truman signed executive orders that prohibited discrimination in the U.S. armed forces and federal employment.
1952 – King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1953 – Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro eventually ousted Batista six years later.
1956 – Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.
1971 – Apollo 15 was launched from Cape Kennedy, FL.
1971 – Nicolette Milnes-Walker completes sailing non-stop single-handedly across the Atlantic, becoming the first woman to successfully do so.
1974 – Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis forms the country’s first civil government after seven years of military rule.
1999 – India won the Kargil war against Pakistan
2005 – Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission: Launch of Discovery, NASA’s first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.
2008 – Fifty-six people are killed and over 200 people are injured in 21 bomb blasts in Ahmedabad bombing in India.