211 – Roman Emperor Septimius Severus dies at Eboracum while preparing to lead a campaign against the Caledonians. He is famously said to have given the advice to Caracalla and Geta, his quarrelling sons: “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men” and left the empire in their control. By the end of 211, Caracalla had had Geta murdered and subsequently ordered his name to be removed from all inscriptions
960 – The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song, initiates the Song dynasty period of China that would last more than three centuries
1703 – In Edo, forty-six of the forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master’s death
1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College
1794 – The French legislature abolishes slavery throughout all territories of the French First Republic. Although it was reestablished in the French West Indies in 1802
1936 – Radium becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
1941 – The United Service Organization is created to entertain American troops.
1945 – The Yalta Conference between the “Big Three”, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, opens at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea
1961 – Angolan War of Independence begins.
1967 – Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft
1970 – Yasser Arafat takes over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization
1992 – A coup d’état is led by Hugo Chávez against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez
1997 – En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop-transport helicopters collide in mid-air over northern Galilee, Israel killing seventy-three
2003 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro and adopts a new constitution
Birthdays
1902 – Charles Lindbergh, Detroit, Michigan, pilot and explorer
1943 – Wanda Rutkiewicz, Lithuania, mountaineer. Rutkiewicz had successfully summited eight of the fourteen “eight-thousanders” and was climbing her ninth, Kangchenjunga, when she disappeared. It is uncertain whether Rutkiewicz reached the peak of Kanchenjunga, and if she did she would be the first woman to reach the top of the world’s three highest mountains
Deaths
1894 – Adolphe Sax, Belgian instrument maker, invented the Saxophone as well as the saxtuba, saxhorn, and saxotromba
1987 – Meena Keshwar Kamal, Afghan activist, founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Anniversaries