Big Day
It's the anniversary of the proclamation of the state of Israel in Tel Aviv on this day in 1948.
It's the anniversary of the first English settlement in the New World. Explorers from the London Company landed in what would become Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
It was on this day in 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, set out from St. Louis on their overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back.
It was on this day in 1796, that Edward Jenner, a doctor, inoculated an eight-year-old boy with a vaccine for smallpox. It was the first safe vaccine ever developed, and it was the first time anyone had successfully prevented the infection of any contagious disease. What made it so remarkable was that it was accomplished before the causes of disease were even understood, decades before anyone even knew about the existence of germs.