EVENTS
- 1867 – A major eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy began, lasting several months.
- 1918 – Austria becomes a republic.
- 1923 – Adolf Hitler was arrested in Germany after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.
- 1927 – Joseph Stalin gains full control of the Soviet Union.
- 1936 – The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic for the first time.
- 1942 – During World War II in North Africa, The city of Tobruk was captured by the British Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery.
- 1948 – Japanese General Hideki Tojo and six others were sentenced to death by an Allied war crimes tribunal.
- 1966 – First images of a Solar Eclipse taken from space. The crew of Gemini 12 which included Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin were able to view and take pictures of the total solar eclipse over South America.
- 1974 – The U.N. General Assembly suspended South Africa over its policy of apartheid.
- 1981 – STS-2 launched. The second space shuttle mission by NASA, space shuttle Columbia was launched from NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the first time a manned space shuttle had been launched twice.
- 1982 – In Russia, Yuri Andropov was elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist party following the death of Leonid Brezhnev.
- 1984 – First salvage operation in space. Astronauts Dale A. Gardner and Joseph P. Allen aboard space shuttle Discovery performed a series of space walks to salvage parts from two satellites, the Palapa B-2 and the Westar 6 which had steered away from their orbits.
- 1990 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
- 1990 – Coup in Lesotho. Justin Metsing Lekhanya staged a coup against King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho and took over the government of Lesotho. Lekhanya was deposed a few months later in another military coup.
- 1991 – Dili massacre. Several pro-independence protesters were shot at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor by Indonesian soldiers. about 250 people were killed in this event, which is also known as the Dili massacre or the Santa Cruz massacare
BIRTHDAYS
- 1815 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Women’s Rights Activist)
- 1840 – Auguste Rodin (French sculptor)
- 1866 – Sun Yat-sen (Chinese revolutionary, politician, 1st President of the Republic of China)
- 1929 – Grace Kelly (Actress)
- 1934 – Charles Manson (American cult leader, murderer)
- 1945 – Neil Young (Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer)
- 1961 – Nadia Comaneci (Olympic gymnast)
- 1968 – Sammy Sosa (Baseball Player)
- 1970 – Tonya Harding (Figure Skater)
- 1980 – Ryan Gosling (Actor)
- 1982 – Anne Hathaway (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1035 – Cnut the Great (Danish king)
- 1757 – Colley Cibber (English poet)
- 1939 – Norman Bethune (Canadian physician)
- 1969 – Iskander Mirza (Pakistani politician, 1st President of Pakistan)
- 2010 – Henryk Górecki (Polish composer)