1925 John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system.
1927 The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.
1928 Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
1947 The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.
1947 ''Meet the Press'' makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1948 ''Toast of the Town'', later ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', makes its television debut.
1948 ''Candid Camera'' makes its television debut after being on radio for a year as ''Candid Microphone''.
1949 ''The Goldbergs'', the first sitcom on American television, first airs.
1949 Fireside Theater debuts on television.
1949 KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
1950 Television: CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
1951 The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.
1953 68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to ''I Love Lucy'' to watch Lucy give birth.
1954 Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in the first televised prize boxing fight shown in colour.
1954 The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.
1955 The Mighty Mouse Playhouse premieres on television.
1956 Television is first broadcast in Australia.
1957 The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television close down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm is abolished in the United Kingdom.
1958 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.
1960 In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
1962 First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.
1962 First transatlantic satellite television transmission.
1962 Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.
1963 ''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.
1965 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.
1969 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.
1969 National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program ''Sesame Street''.
1970 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.
1971 Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.
1975 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.
1981 British television: on ''Coronation Street'', Ken Barlow marries Deirdre Langton, which proves to be a national event scoring massive viewer numbers for the show.
1986 The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.
1986 A tornado is broadcast live on KARE television in Minnesota when the station's helicopter pilot makes a chance encounter.
1987 Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself at a press conference on live national television, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism.
1987 The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".
1997 The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.