On this day in 1608, John Smith was elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.
On this day in 1846, Elias Howe was granted a patent for the sewing machine.
On this day in 2001, Charles Ingram cheated his way into winning one million pounds on a British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
On this day in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history, was powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.