EVENTS
- 1831 – Charles Darwin set out from Plymouth, England, aboard the ship HMS Beagle on his five-year global scientific expedition. Darwin collected fossils and studied plants and animals, gradually beginning to doubt that many diverse species of living things had sprung into existence at one moment (creationism). In 1859, he published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’.
- 1845 – Anesthesia used for the first time for childbirth. Dr. Crawford W. Long, an American physician, gave ether to his wife during the birth of their second child. The event revolutionalized the use of anesthesia in medicine and surgery.
- 1904 – ‘Peter Pan’ a play by James Barrie, premieres in London.
- 1918 – Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919 begins. The revolt against the Germans began in Poznań after a speech by the Polish Prime Minster, Ignacy Paderewski. The uprising led to newer territory being added to Poland in the Treaty of Versailles.
- 1927 – Josef Stalin consolidated his power in Soviet Russia by expelling rival Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Communist Party.
- 1932 – Radio City Music Hall opens for the first time.
- 1945 – The International Monetary Fund was established in Washington, D.C.
- 1947 – ‘Howdy Doody’, a children’s television program, makes its debut
- 1949 – The Dutch transferred sovereignty of Indonesia to the new United States of Indonesia. The new nation retained a formal association with the Netherlands until 1954, when an independent Republic of Indonesia was formed. Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia. It consists of 13,677 islands along the equator between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and a population of over 150 million.
- 1978 – Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship.
- 1996 – A genocide trial began concerning the killing of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. In 1994, a bloody civil war had broken out between the two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. After the Hutu army seized power it had waged a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Tutsi population.
- 2007 – Benazir Bhutto assassinated. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan was killed after a shooting and the detonation of a suicide bomb while campaigning for the upcoming elections in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1571 – Johannes Kepler (Astronomer)
- 1822 – Louis Pasteur (French scientist)
- 1901 – Actress Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) was born in Berlin, Germany (She starred in The Blue Angel, the first ‘talkie’ made in Germany (She then moved to Hollywood and starred in films including; Destry Rides Again, Touch of Evil, Judgment at Nuremberg and Witness for the Prosecution (In the 1950’s she toured the world as a cabaret singer in a stage revue.
- 1939 – John Amos (Actor)
- 1943 – Cokie Roberts (Journalist)
- 1948 – Gérard Depardieu (French actor)
- 1979 – Carson Palmer (Football Player)
- 1980 – Antonio Cesaro (Swiss wrestler)
- 1981 – Emilie de Ravin (Actress)
- 1983 – Cole Hamels (Baseball player)
DEATHS
- 1958 – Harry Warner (Polish/American businessman, co-founded Warner Bros)
- 1979 – Hafizullah Amin (Afghan politician)
- 1985 – Dian Fossey (American zoologist)
- 1997 – Billy Wright (English/Irish commander)
- 2007 – Benazir Bhutto (Pakistani politician, first female Prime Minister of Pakistan)