Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
1682 English astronomer Edmond Halley first observes the comet named after him.
1781 Los Angeles is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziúncola).
1882 Thomas Edison flips the switch to the first commercial electrical power plant in history, lighting 2.5km² of lower Manhattan, beginning the electrical age.
1884 Britain ends its policy of sending convicts to New South Wales in Australia.
1886 After almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo, with his warriors, surrender to US troops in Arizona.
1888 George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak and receives a patent for his camera that uses roll film.
1899 Mary Elizabeth Barber, an 1820 Settler, dies in Malvern, Natal. With a wide knowledge of natural history, especially botany and entomology, she gave Charles Darwin a lot of data for his work, On the Origin of Species.
1939 The House of Assembly defeats Prime Minister JBM Hertzog’s motion of neutrality and proposes joining World War II.
1939 A Bristol Blenheim is the first British aircraft to cross the German coast after the declaration of war; bombing German ships.
1972 Dutchman Willem Ruska wins gold medals in the judo heavyweight and open weight divisions of the Munich Olympics.
1972 American swimmer Mark Spitz becomes the first person to win 7 gold medals at a single Olympic Games.
1998 Google is founded by Standford University computer science graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page on the back of an algorithm from their dorm rooms. Later working from a garage they change the name from Backrub to Google and the two men shortly after thought they might sell the company, apparently not quite aware of the potential of the product. Today it’s one of the most valuable and easily recognisable brands in the world.
2006 Globally popular Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife expert and conservationist, is killed by a stingray at the Great Barrier Reef. His funeral is watched by over 300 million viewers worldwide. (Stingrays have venomous barbs they use to defend themselves with.)
2018 Amazon becomes America’s second trillion-dollar company, after Apple.
2018 The WHO reports more than a quarter of people worldwide (1.4 billion) don’t get enough physical exercise to avoid major diseases.
2022 A mass stabbing leaves 10 people dead and 19 injured with two suspects on the run in James Smith Cree Nation, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.