1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, resulting in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia.

1905 – Albert Einstein sends the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik.

2007 – Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone.

2006 – Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law.

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with the Kirov Ballet.

1971 – Prior to re-entry (following a record-setting stay aboard the Soviet Union's Salyut 1 space station), the crew capsule of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurizes, killing the three cosmonauts on board. Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev are the first humans to die in space.

1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.

1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.

1977 – Elvis Presley holds what will prove to be his final concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1978 – The rainbow flag representing gay pride is flown for the first time during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

2022 – In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution does not assign the authority to regulate abortions to the federal government, thereby returning such authority to the individual states. This overturns the prior decisions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

2012 – Death of Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise.

1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, starring William Boyd, is aired on NBC.

2016 – The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union, by 52% to 48%.

1969 – IBM announces that effective January 1970 it will price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry.

1960 – The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.

2025 – The United States conducts airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy.

1975 – The film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters".

1963 – Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States sign an agreement to establish the so-called "red telephone" link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow.