On this day, 1965, the entirety of New York State, as well as parts of eastern Canada lost power. The power failure was caused by a blown-out Canadian power line near Ontario, Canada. The outage began at 5:16 p.m., rush hour, and lasted until power was gradually restored overnight and through the next morning. Hundreds of thousands were stuck in subways, buildings, elevators and traffic, the total number of people affected being close to 30 million.

Information found on History.com.