1778: Captain Cook anchors off Alaska.
1899: J.S. Thurman patents a motor-driven vacuum cleaner.
1922: The 1st facsimile photo (fax) was sent over city telephone lines in Washington, DC.
1935: Italy invades Ethiopia.
1947: A telescope lens 200 inches (508 cm) in diameter is completed.
1952: The first video recording on magnetic tape is made in Los Angeles, California.
1970: Baseball umpires call their first strike.
1977: Indira Gandhi is arrested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIYiGiYn4Q
1991: South African author Nadine Gordimer is named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.
1993: Boris Yeltsin declares a state of emergency in Moscow, as fighting erupted in the streets between pro- and anti-Yeltsin forces. Sixty-two people die in the violence.
1994: South African President Nelson Mandela addresses the United Nations, urging the world to support his country's economy.
1995: Former American football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the 1994 double murder of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
1997: In Japan an experimental magnetically-levitated train, the MLX01, sets a world speed record when it reaches 279.6 mph on a test track.
2003: Pakistan test-launches a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
