1876 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

1979 – Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.

1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.

2009 – The Kepler space observatory, designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, is launched.

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.

1981 – After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.

1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1982 – Soviet probe Venera 14 landed on Venus.

1960 – Cuban photographer Alberto Korda takes his iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

1940 – Members of Soviet politburo, including general secretary Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.

1933 – Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.

1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.

1837 – The city of Chicago is incorporated.

1991 – An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

1951 – Jackie Brenston, with Ike Turner and his band, records "Rocket 88", often cited as "the first rock and roll record", at Sam Phillips' recording studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

1938 – Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.

1885 – The American Telephone & Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York.

1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporates the Principality of Wales into England.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
The only ones I had trouble with were the early ones from '84 and a few newer ones every now and then but not often. I guess out of 1400 or so CD's some are bound to be defective. But the early ones failing is more common so it was likely from manufacturing problems there were not quite worked out yet. All mine are ripped to hard drive in flac format now but I keep the CD's just in case.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
I can't remember any CD failures but I've had lots of problems with DVDs. We still have some CDs but rarely actually use them anymore; our music library now exists on our computers, USB drives and in the cloud.