- The creation of a yellow fever vaccine for humans was announced. (1932) Virologist Max Theiler created the vaccine, and actually caught the disease himself while the vaccine was still in development. Before the availability of the vaccine, there had been over 20 major outbreaks of yellow fever, killing hundreds of thousands of people in North America alone.
- The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinied. (1789) The crew rebelled against Captain William Bligh because of his cruelty and because they wanted to remain on the island of Tahiti, where they had been docked for several months. The mutiny as since been made into a book and several movies.
- Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the army. (1967) Ali refused to be inducted because of religious reasons, and was stripped of his boxing titles and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 US Dollar (USD) fine for draft evasion. The conviction was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court
- The iTunes store launched. (2003) The store was phenomenally popular; eight months after opening, it had sold over 200 million songs.
- Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist. (2001) Tito is the multimillionaire founder of an investment management company, and was the first space tourist to pay for his own ticket, which reportedly cost $20 million USD.
- Railroad laborers set a record in laying track. (1869) Chinese and Irish laborers who were working on the First Transcontinental Railroad laid 10 miles (16 km) of track in one day, supposedly to settle a bet. It was the most railroad track ever laid by hand in one day.
- Mussolini was executed. (1945) He had been caught while trying to flee the country dressed as a soldier along with his mistress and her brother. He and his mistress were shot, then their bodies were sent back to Milan and hung upside down for the public to see.
- The International Congress of Women opened at the Hague. (1915) The meeting was a huge deal, especially since women still did not have the right to vote in the US, and was one of the first major international meetings of women to discuss political issues.
- The Kon-Tiki raft expedition began. (1947) The Kon-Tiki raft expedition was undertaken by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl to sail from South America to the Polynesian islands on a hand-made raft similar to those used by pre-Colombian explorers. Heyerdahl and his crew actually completed the journey, sailing over 4,000 miles in about 100 days.
- The University of Santo Tomas was founded. (1611) The university is the oldest in the Philippines as well as in East Asia, and is one of the largest Catholic universities in the world in terms of enrollment.
