EVENTS
- 1184 BC – Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse.
- 1800 – The Library of Congress was established in Washington, D.C. It is America’s oldest federal cultural institution and the world’s largest library. Among the 145 million items in its collections are more than 33 million books, 3 million recordings, 12.5 million photographs, 5.3 million maps, 6 million pieces of sheet music and 63 million manuscripts. About 10,000 new items are added each day.
- 1898 – Spain declares war on the United States starting the Spanish-American War.
- 1915 – In Asia Minor during World War I, the first modern-era genocide began with the deportation of Armenian leaders from Constantinople and subsequent massacre by Young Turks. In May, deportations of all Armenians and mass murder by Turks began, resulting in the complete elimination of the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire and all of the historic Armenian homelands. Estimates vary from 800,000 to over 2,000,000 Armenians murdered.
- 1957 – The Suez Canal reopens after the Suez Crisis. The conflict between Egypt on the one hand and France, the United Kingdom and Israel on the other, erupted in October 1956 when Egypt announced that the canal will be nationalized.
Suez Canal - 1981 – The first IBM PC is introduced.
- 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope is launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery.
- 2005 – Joseph Ratzinger is inaugurated as Pope Benedict XVI. The German was considered a particularly conservative Pope – quite unlike his successor, Pope Francis.
- 2013 – 1129 people die in Bangladesh in the worst building collapse disaster in modern history. The building was used by clothing factories producing garments for western markets, highlighting the disastrous working conditions in the industry.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1897 – Benjamin Lee Whorf (American linguist)
- 1934 – Shirley MacLaine (Actress)
- 1941 – Richard Holbrooke (American journalist, banker, diplomat, 22nd United States Ambassador to the United Nations)
- 1942 – Barbara Streisand (Singer)
Barbara Streisand - 1964 – Cedric the Entertainer (Actor)
- 1972 – Chipper Jones (Baseball player)
- 1973 – Sachin Tendulkar (Indian cricketer)
- 1982 – Kelly Clarkson (Singer and American Idol winner)
DEATHS
- 1731 – Daniel Defoe (English journalist, spy)
- 1942 – Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canadian author)
- 1960 – Max von Laue (German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)
Max von Laue - 1980 – Alejo Carpentier (Swiss/Cuban author)
- 2011 – Sathya Sai Baba (Indian guru, philosopher)
