ON THIS DAY

743 Slave exports by Christians to heathen areas is prohibited. 918 Balderik becomes bishop of Utrecht.

1260 Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghis, conquers Damascus.

1562 The French Wars of Religion start with the massacre of 63 Huguenots.

1849 The Cape Agulhas lighthouse begins operating.

1854 The SS City of Glasgow leaves Liverpool with 480 passengers and crew, never to be seen again.

1872 Yellowstone National Park in the US becomes the world’s first national park.

1873 Remington and Sons begin production of the first practical typewriter.

1893 Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio.

1910 An avalanche buries a railway train in Washington state, killing 96 people.

1921 The Australian cricket team completes a whitewash of The Ashes.

1939 A Japanese Army ammunition dump explodes in Osaka, Japan, killing 94.

1953 Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin supposedly has a stroke and dies. Fresh evidence suggests he was poisoned to avert a nuclear war with the US.

1975 Jody Scheckter wins the South African Grand Prix. The only other South African to win it was Buller Meyer in 1938. 1983 Swatch bursts onto the watch scene. 1988 A Bop Air plane explodes over Germiston, killing all 17 people aboard.

1998 Titanic became the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide.

2002 The US invasion of Afghanistan begins with Operation Anaconda.

2003 The International Criminal Court holds its inaugural session, in The Hague.

2003 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, is captured in Pakistan.

2004 Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, speaking from Johannesburg, claims he was forced to leave Haiti by US military forces.

2006 Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article. | The Historian