- 1933 – Ray Dolby, inventor of the Dolby noise-reduction system, co-inventor of video tape recording, and founder of Dolby Laboratories, is born.
- 1911 – Eugene B. Ely lands a fixed-wing aircraft on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania using a tailhook apparatus, the first successful landing of an aircraft on a ship (pictured).
- 1944 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.
- 1978 – The roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center (now known as the XL Center) in Hartford, Connecticut collapses after a significant snowfall.
- 1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family. Thorpe won two gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics for the Pentathlon and Decathlon, which were controversially stripped of him in 1913.