1799 – First patent for a seeding machine is issued for Eliakim Spooner of Vermont 1825 – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York opens as the first engineering college in America 1840 – American naval expedition under Charles Wilkes first to identify Antarctica as a new continent 1863 – General Joseph Hooker replaces Burnside as head of Army of the Potomac 1915 – Alexander Graham Bell in New York calls Thomas Watson in San Francisco 1939 – First nuclear fission experiment, the splitting of a uranium atom, in the United States, is done in the basement of Pupin Hall, Columbia University by a team including Enrico Fermi 1979 – First documented case of a robot killing a human in the United States 1993 – Sears announces it is closing its catalog sales department after ninety-seven years 1999 – After an inquiry into a corruption scandal, six International Olympic Committee members are expelled 2011 – Egyptian Revolution of 2011 begins in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labor strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in Egypt Birthdays 1858 – Kokichi Mikimoto, Japanese pearl farm pioneer 1882 – Virginia Woolf, author born in London, England Deaths 1573 – Hirate Hirohide, Japanese samurai, dies at the Battle of Mikatagahara 1947 – Al Capone, Chicago gangster, dies of neurosyphilis at forty-eight Anniversaries 1533 – England’s King Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, his second wife 1871 – President William McKinley weds Ida Saxton at the First Presbyterian Church in Canton
1993 – Sears announces it is closing its catalog sales department after ninety-seven years