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The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade.
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French aviator Léon Delagrange pilots the first passenger flight with Henri Farman inside.
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The Qing Dynasty of China, also called the Manchu Dynasty, comes to an end after 268 years
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An earthquake (6.8 in Richter scale) in Avezzano, Italy, kills more than 29,000.
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In Washington, D.C. the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place
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The U.S. Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time (DST goes into effect on March 31).
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Prohibition begins in the United States with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution coming into effect.
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The National Football League was founded
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A typhoon hits Shantou, China, killing more than 50,000 people.
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U.S. Army pilots John Harding and Erik Nelson complete the first round-the-world flight. It takes them 175 days and 74 stops before they finally returned to Seattle.
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The U.S. Congress approves the construction of Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam.
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The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States National anthem.
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The Huang He floods kill between 850,000 and 4,000,000 people (the deadliest historic natural disaster).
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A 7.1 magnitude earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan, killing 40,000.
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Parker Brothers releases the board game Monopoly.
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In Germany, the "night of broken glass" begins as Nazi activists and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all night affair sees 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed, and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested)
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The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a surprise attack on the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor, thus drawing the United States into World War II. The attack is announced on radio stations in the US at about 2:26 p.m. EST (19.26 GMT).
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Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. The U.S. responds in kind.
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On her 13th birthday, Anne Frank makes the first entry in her new diary
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United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies.
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Operation Overlord, commonly known as D-Day, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The Allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland, in the largest amphibious military operation in history. This operation helps liberate France from Germany, and also weakens the Nazi hold on Europe.
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EBR-1, the world's first (experimental) nuclear power plant, opens.
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The North Sea flood of 1953 kills 1,836 people in the southwestern Netherlands (especially Zeeland), 307 in the United Kingdom[1][2] and several hundred at sea, including 133 on the ferry MV Princess Victoria in the Irish Sea.
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Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
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Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.
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Typhoon Vera hits central Honshū, Japan, killing an estimated 5,098, injuring another 38,921, and leaving 1,533,000 homeless. Most of the victims and damage are centered in the Nagoya area.
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The Beatles perform for the first time at the Cavern Club
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Hurricane Flora, one of the worst Atlantic storms in history, hits Hispaniola and Cuba killing nearly 7,000 people
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In Dallas, Texas, United States President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded, and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson becomes the 36th President.
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The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) takes its maiden flight.
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The first-ever episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is broadcast on CBS: "What a Night for a Knight".
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The U.S. ends its trade embargo of China.
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A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, in Orissa State in India, kills 10,000.
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Bill Gates founds Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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The rings of Uranus are discovered.
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President Ronald Reagan nominates the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, to the Supreme Court of the United States
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Seatbelt use for drivers and front seat passengers becomes mandatory in the United Kingdom.
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The Chernobyl disaster: A mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union "killed at least 4056 people and damaged almost $7 billion of property".[3] Radioactive fallout from the accident concentrated near Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 350,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these areas. After the accident, "traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere
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War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill providing the death penalty for murderous drug traffickers.
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Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in
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The Great Blizzard of 1993 strikes the eastern U.S., bringing record snowfall and other severe weather all the way from Cuba to Quebec; it reportedly kills 184.
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In Afghanistan, the Taliban capture the capital city of Kabul, after driving out President Burhanuddin Rabbani and executing former leader Mohammad Najibullah.
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Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State, after confirmation by the United States Senate.
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Euro is established
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A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.
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Nearly 3,000 are killed in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; and in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93 crashes into grassland in Shanksville
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The use of hand-held cell phones while driving is made illegal in the United Kingdom.
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Hurricane Katrina makes land fall along the U.S. Gulf Coast causing severe damage. At least 1,836 die in the aftermath.
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Iran opens its first space center and launches a rocket into space
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The United States and the United Kingdom close their embassies in Yemen due to the ongoing security threat by Al Qaeda.
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The tallest man-made structure to date, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is officially opened
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An 8.8-magnitude earthquake occurs in Chile, triggering a tsunami over the Pacific and killing at least 525.[14] The earthquake is one of the largest in recorded history
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U.S. President Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the militant group Al-Qaeda, has been killed during an American military operation in Pakistan
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A 9.1-magnitude[15] earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east of Japan, killing 15,840 and leaving another 3,926 missing. Tsunami warnings are issued in 50 countries and territories. Emergencies are declared at four nuclear power plants affected by the quake
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