EVENTS
- 1789 – The mutiny on the HMS Bounty occurs.
The mutiny on the HMS Bounty - 1930 – The first night game in organized baseball history takes place.
- 1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans.
- 1945 – Twenty-three years of Fascist rule in Italy ended abruptly as Italian partisans shot former Dictator Benito Mussolini. Other leaders of the Fascist Party and friends of Mussolini were also killed along with his mistress, Clara Petacci. Their bodies were then hung upside down and pelted with stones by jeering crowds in Milan.
- 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl begins his legendary journey on Kon-Tiki. The Norwegian explorer and his crew set out on the 101-day journey on the self-built raft to prove that South Americans could have reached and settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.
- 1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France. De Gaulle founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and became its first President a year later.
- 1990 – After 6,237 performances, the Broadway musical A Chorus Line closes.
- 1994 – Former CIA officer Aldrich Ames admits he forwarded U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames was sentenced to life imprisonment for his activities which amounted to one of the most damaging spy cases in U.S. history.
- 2001 – Dennis Tito becomes the first space tourist in history. A Russian rocket transported the Californian billionaire to the International Space Station (ISS).
- 2003 – Apple’s iTunes Music Store opens, selling 1 million songs in its first week.
- 2004 – The first Abu Ghraib torture pictures are published. The images aired in a 60 Minutes II report showed gross human rights violations, including torture and murder, committed by U.S. soldiers and CIA personnel in the Baghdad prison.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1758 – James Monroe (5th US President)
- 1908 – Oskar Schindler (Czech/German businessman)
- 1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini (Italian businessman, created Lamborghini)
- 1937 – Saddam Hussein (Dictator of Iraq)
- 1941 – Ann Margaret (Actress)
- 1948 – Terry Pratchett (English author)
Terry Pratchett - 1950 – Jay Leno (Talk Show Host)
- 1974 – Penelope Cruz (Actress)
- 1981 – Jessica Alba (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1945 – Benito Mussolini (Italian politician, Dictator of Italy)
Benito Mussolini - 1946 – Louis Bachelier (French mathematician)
- 1949 – Aurora Quezon (Filipino wife of Manuel L. Quezon, 2nd First Lady of the Philippines)
- 1992 – Francis Bacon (Irish painter)
