TODAY in HISTORY

Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard. Nojpeten, capital of the last independent Maya kingdom, falls to Spanish conquistadors, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala. William Herschel discovers Uranus. Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in a coup d’etat.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto

receives its premiere performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist. Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (According to Gregorian date, it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.) The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins, ending on January 26, 1885. During the second Boer War, British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State. Mongolia is proclaimed an independent monarchy, ruled by Russian military officer Roman von Ungern-Sternberg as a dictator. The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory. German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Krakow.

Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation

Northwoods. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Mr Lemnitzer from his position. Apollo programme:

Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module. The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d’etat in Grenada. The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan. Missionaries of Charity elects Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader. The journal

Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints have been found in Italy. At least 28 people are killed in a bus crash in a motorway tunnel near the town of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. Pope Francis is elected, in the papal conclave, as the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. Three gunmen storm two hotels in the Ivory Coast town of Grand-Bassam, killing at least 18.