On This Day in History: October 11

A joyful young toddler girl wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat and sturdy boots kneels in a sunlit garden, holding a magnifying glass up to a friendly crawling ladybug. Colorful daisies, fluttering butterflies, and a beaming sunshine surround her cheerful garden adventure.

Established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, International Day of the Girl Child is celebrated annually on October 11. The observance champions girls' education, equal rights, and the power of young women around the globe to dream big, explore science and nature, and shape a brighter future.

A cheerful, round-faced vintage steam locomotive puffs happy rings of white smoke as it chugs along shining steel tracks past a scenic countryside station. Beside the railway crossing, a smiling stationmaster waves a green safety flag under an arched brick bridge.

During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the expansion of railway networks transformed the world, allowing people and goods to travel between distant towns in hours rather than weeks. Steam locomotives inspired generations of mechanical engineering and taught communities the value of connected travel.

The Apollo 7 Command and Service Module glides smoothly through low Earth orbit against the starry blackness of space, its thrusters firing gentle puffs of gas. Below the spacecraft, the curving blue rim of Earth's oceans and continents shines brightly in the sun.

Launched on October 11, 1968, Apollo 7 was the very first crewed flight of NASA's historic Apollo program. Astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham spent nearly 11 days testing the command module's systems and broadcasting the first live television transmissions from an American spacecraft, paving the way for the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

A retro 1970s futuristic arcade cabinet with curvy fiberglass body and glowing CRT monitor screen stands beside an early computer terminal. On the screen, pixelated rocket ships and flying saucers dodge torpedoes in a dark cosmic battlefield illuminated by coin-operated arcade lights.

In October 1971, engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney released Computer Space, the world's first commercially sold coin-operated video arcade game. Featuring custom transistor-transistor logic without a central computer microprocessor, this pioneering machine launched the modern billion-dollar video game industry and led to the founding of Atari.