John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system.

The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.

''Meet the Press'' makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).

''Toast of the Town'', later ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', makes its television debut.

''Candid Camera'' makes its television debut after being on radio for a year as ''Candid Microphone''.

''The Goldbergs'', the first sitcom on American television, first airs.

Fireside Theater debuts on television.

KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

Television: CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to ''I Love Lucy'' to watch Lucy give birth.

Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in the first televised prize boxing fight shown in colour.

The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.

The Mighty Mouse Playhouse premieres on television.

Television is first broadcast in Australia.

The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television close down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm is abolished in the United Kingdom.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.

In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.

First transatlantic satellite television transmission.

Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

''CBS Evening News'' becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.

NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash landing.

Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies.

National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program ''Sesame Street''.

President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States, starting on January 1, 1971.

Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.

The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.

British television: on ''Coronation Street'', Ken Barlow marries Deirdre Langton, which proves to be a national event scoring massive viewer numbers for the show.

The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.

A tornado is broadcast live on KARE television in Minnesota when the station's helicopter pilot makes a chance encounter.

Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself at a press conference on live national television, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism.

The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.