Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory produces a carbon-filament incandescent lamp long-lasting enough for practical use.
Three days after receiving his patent, Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call to his assistant Thomas Watson.
Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors defeat the US 7th Cavalry Regiment led by George Armstrong Custer.
The golden spike is driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, completing the first transcontinental railroad in the United States.
US Army troops kill hundreds of Lakota people, many of them women and children, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
The United States signs a treaty to buy Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million.
The colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick unite as the Dominion of Canada, the beginning of the modern Canadian state.