1986 – The world’s worst nuclear disaster to date occurred at Chernobyl, in Kiev. Thirty-one people died in the incident and thousands more were exposed to radioactive material
1392 – Korean Confucian scholar and statesman Jeong Mong-ju is assassinated on the Sonjuk Bridge in Gaeseong (now North Korea). A brown spot on the bridge is still said to be his blood.
1467 – The miraculous image of Our Lady of Good Counsel appears in Genazzano, Italy
1478 – The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de’ Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence.
1514 – Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.
1607 – The British established an American colony at Cape Henry, Virginia. It was the first permanent English establishment in the Western Hemisphere.
1654 – Jews are expelled from Brazil
1777 – Sybil Ludington aged 16, rides 40 miles in New York to warn her father’s militia of the approach of the British
1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious migrs of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.
1819 – The first Odd Fellows lodge in the U.S. was established in Baltimore, MD.
1859 – US Congressman Daniel E. Sickles is acquitted in the murder Philip Barton Key, on grounds of “temporary insanity” – 1st time this defense used successfully in the US
1865 – John Wilkes Booth was killed by the U.S. Federal Cavalry.
1904 – General Kuroko leads the Japanese Army against the large Russian force at the Yalu river during the Russo-Japanese War
1915 – Italy secretly signs the “Treaty of London” with Britain, France and Russia, bringing Italy into World War I on the Allied side
1920 – Harlow Shapley and Heber D. Curtis hold the “Great Debate” on the nature of nebulae, galaxies and size of the universe at US National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
1921 – U.S. Naval Detachment left Yugoslavia after administering area around Spalato for 2 years to guarantee transfer of area from Austria to new country
1931 – New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hit a home run but was called out for passing a runner.
1937 – German planes attacked Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War for the Spanish nationalist government. This raid is considered one of the first to be attacks on a civilian population by a modern air force.
1938 – Mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich, valued Jewish property is to be seized within Greater Germany at a value of approximately eight billion Reichmarks.
1941 – An organ was played at a baseball stadium for the first time in Chicago, IL.
1942 – The worst mining accident in history kills 1,549 miners in an explosion at the Honkeiko Colliery, Manchuria
1945 – Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.
1952 – USS Hobson sinks after colliding with USS Wasp; 176 lives lost
1954 – Mass trials of Jonas Salk’s anti-polio vaccine begin; the first shot is delivered in Fairfax County, Virginia; more than 443,000 children receive shots over three months
1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections.
1964 – The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
1968 – Students seized the administration building at Ohio State University.
1980 – Iran begins scattering US hostages from the US Embassy
1982 – The British announced that Argentina had surrendered on South Georgia.
1985 – In Argentina, a fire at a mental hospital killed 79 people and injured 247.
1986 – The worst nuclear disaster in history occurs in Chernobyl – Large parts of Europe were contaminated when reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Although the number of deaths attributable to the disaster is difficult to determine, experts anticipate tens of thousands of deaths across Europe in the coming decades due to cancer caused by the radioactive fallout.
1994 – Germany makes Holocaust denial illegal
1998 – Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he’d compiled on atrocities during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war was made public.
1999 – BBC presenter Jill Dando shot and killed outside her London home – launches Metropolitan Police’s largest murder enquiry, crime remains unsolved
2002 – In Erfurt, Germany, an expelled student killed 17 people at his former school. The student then killed himself.
2005 – Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country.
2012 – Indonesia suspends imports of American beef after a confirmed case of mad cow disease in California
2018 – Serial killer “Golden State Killer” identified after 40 years as a former police officer, responsible for 12 killings, 50 rapes in California
2019 – “No religion” tops survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1% edging out Catholics 23.0% and evangelicals 22.5%, in long-running General Social Survey
2021 – US Census results shows its population growth second slowest in recorded history, population at 331,449,281 with only 7.4% increase on 2010
2022 – Russia says it will stop supplying gas to Poland and Bulgaria, after the countries refused to pay in rubles, escalating the energy supply standoff between Russia and Europe
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
