• 1105 Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome completes Talmudic dictionary.
• 1434 River Thames in London freezes over.
• 1639 1st observation of transit of Venus by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree – helped establish size of the Solar System.
• 1642 Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovers Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
• 1759 Destructive eruption of Vesuvius.
• 1859 English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species”.
• 1874 American inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire.
• 1917 Nine police officers and one civilian are killed when a bomb explodes at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police headquarters building.
• 1936 German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for uncovering German re-armament.
• 1947 John Steinbeck’s novel “Pearl” published.
• 1958 Mali becomes an autonomous state within French Community.
• 1964 Rebellion ends in Zaire.
• 1966 First TV station in Congo, Kinshasa (Zaire).
• 1966 400 die of respiratory failure and heart attacks in New York City smog, smoggiest day in city’s history.
• 1966 The Beatles began recording sessions for their album “Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
• 1966 A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashes near Bratislava, Slovakia.
• 1966 The cult classic “One Million Years B.C.”, starring Raquel Welch, is released first in West Germany.
• 1969 Apollo 12 returns to Earth.
• 1971 A woman is killed after members of the Irish Republican Army carry out an attack on British soldiers in Strabane, County Tyrone.
• 1980 “9 to 5 and Odd Jobs” 23rd studio album by Dolly Party is released
• 1981 First air-launched cruise missile tested.
• 1983 “The Colour of Magic” by Terry Pratchett published by Colin Smythe in the UK, 1st book in the Discworld series
• 1992 Boeing 734 crashes into mountain in China, kills 141.
• 1993 Brady bill passes establishing 5-day waiting period for US handgun sales.
• 1993 11-year-old Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of English two-year-old James Bulger.
• 1995 Ireland votes to end 58-year-old amendment on divorce (50.28% to 49.72%).
• 2012 Gangnam Style becomes the most viewed Youtube video surpassing 808 million views.
• 2014 A 12-year-old boy is shot dead by police in Cleveland, after brandishing what turned out to be a fake gun in a playground.
• 2015 Tunisia declares state of emergency after an attack on a bus in Tunis carrying presidential guards kills at least 12.
• 2015 Turkey shots down a Russian fighter jet after claiming it had flown into Turkish airspace.
• 2015 Venezuelan opposition leader Luis Díaz is shot and killed days before the country’s general election.
• 2016 International research team publishes discovery of 1 500 new viruses found in invertebrates.
Source: www.onthisday.com
