On March 14, 1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized the American cotton industry.

In 1879, Albert Einstein, who would revolutionize physics and the understanding of the universe, was born in Ulm, Germany.

In 1964, a jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, and sentenced Ruby to death. (Both the conviction and death sentence were overturned, but Ruby died before he could be retried.)

In 1973, future U.S. senator and presidential candidate John McCain was released from North Vietnamese captivity after being held as a prisoner of war for over five years.

In 2018, Stephen Hawking, the best-known theoretical physicist of his time, died at his home in Cambridge, England, at age 76.