1776-U.S. Congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and independence from Great Britain
1785-Geologist James Hutton publicly reads an abstract of his theory of uniformitarianism for the first time at the meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
1803-The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people by President Thomas Jefferson
1838-Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 children drown trying to escape flooding in the Silkstone Colliery in England. Leads to the 1842 Mines Act, which bans women and children working underground
1934-Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb
2017-North Korea test fires it’s first successful intercontinental ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan