New York City subway gunman Bernhard H. Goetz was sentenced to one year in prison for possessing an unlicensed gun that he used to shoot four youths he said were about to rob him.
Telimco makes the 1st ever advertisment for a radio set, by advertising a $7.50 set in the 'Scientific American' which claimed to receive signals for up to one mile.
1898
Novelist Emile Zola's 'J'accuse' - a defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew falsely convicted of treason - was published in a Paris newspaper.
Dr. William Brydon, a surgeon in the British Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, becomes famous for (reputedly) being the sole survivor of an army of 16,500 when he reaches the safety of a garrison in Jalalabad.
President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.