1826 — First photograph taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
1837 — Victoria becomes queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
1861 — American Civil War begins
1866 — Alfred Nobel invents dynamite
1873 — Jules Verne publishes Around the World in Eighty Days
1879 — Thomas Alva Edison invents practical electric light
1896 — First modern Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece
1898 — Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium and polonium
1903 — Henry Ford organizes the Ford Motor Company
1909 — American explorers Peary and Henson reach the North Pole
1912 — Ocean liner Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks
1928 — Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1931 — Empire State Building completed in New York City
1933 — Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany
1954 — First atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched
1959 — Fidel Castro takes over Cuba
1974 — US president Richard Nixon resigns
2009 — Burj Khalifa in Dubai becomes the tallest structure in the world