1542 – Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claims California for Spain.
1759 – General James Wolfe begins the siege of Quebec.
1898 – First solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.
1929 – 1st color TV demo (NYC).
1946 – The Canadian Parliament establishes the definition of Canadian citizenship with the Canadian Citizenship Act.
1950 – The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War.
1954 – The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the Soviet Union's first nuclear power station, opens in Obninsk, near Moscow.
1967 – The world's first ATM is installed in Enfield, London.
1971 – After only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Graham closes Fillmore East in New York, the "Church of Rock and Roll".
1974 – U.S. president Richard Nixon visits the Soviet Union.
1982 – Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission.
2007 – Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, a position he had held since 1997.
2013 – NASA launches the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun.