 *363 – Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sasanian Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death.
*1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.
*1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus’s book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheresis added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published.
*1770 – Boston Massacre: Five colonists are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later.
*1836 – Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
*1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a “bank holiday”, closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.
*1933 – Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections, which allowed the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.
*1940 – Six high-ranking members of Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre.
*1946 – Cold War: Winston Churchill coins the phrase “Iron Curtain” in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.
*1953 – Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, dies at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after being hit by a cerebral hemorrhage.
*1982 – Soviet probe Venera 14 lands on Venus.
*Births
*1658 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, French explorer and politician, 3rd Colonial Governor of Louisiana (d. 1730)
*1733 – Vincenzo Galeotti, Italian-Danish dancer and choreographer (d. 1816)
*1853 – Howard Pyle, American author and illustrator (d. 1911)
*1894 – Henry Daniell, English-American actor (d. 1963)
*1898 – Zhou Enlai, Chinese politician, 1st Premier of the People’s Republic of China (d. 1976)
*1901 – Louis Kahn, American architect and academic (d. 1974)
“In a small room one does not say
what one would in a large room.”
Louis Kahn
*1949 – Bernard Arnault, French businessman, philanthropist, and art collector
*Deaths
*1695 – Henry Wharton, English writer and librarian (b. 1664)
*1945 – Lena Baker, African American maid and murderer (b. 1900)
*1953 – Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator and politician of Georgian descent, 2nd leader of the Soviet Union (b. 1878)
*1982 – John Belushi, American actor (b. 1949)
Various internet sources and searches are used in the making of this document
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