On This Day…

1797 – The first parachute jump of note is made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris.
1879 – Thomas Edison perfects carbonized cotton filament light bulb.
1883 – New York’s original Metropolitan Opera House has its grand opening with a performance of the opera “Faust”.
1884 – International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide, creating 24 international time zones with longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian.
1962 – Cuban missile crisis: US President John F. Kennedy addresses TV about Russian missile bases in Cuba and imposes a naval blockade on Cuba, beginning the missile crisis.
1978 – Pope John Paul II is inaugurated as Pope.
2010 – WikiLeaks, a Web site that functioned as a clearinghouse for classified or otherwise privileged information, released thousands of U.S. documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Via  Britannica / On This Day