On this day in 1793, Queen Marie-Antoinette of France was tried and convicted in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.
On this day in 1951, Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducted the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first three oral contraceptives.
On this day in 1997, the first supersonic land speed record was set by Andy Green in ThrustSSC (United Kingdom), exactly 50 years and 1 day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Earth's atmosphere.