ON THIS DATE

2001: Australian cricketer

Don Bradman, one of the greatest run scorers in the history of the game and often judged the greatest player of the 20th century, died at the age of 92.

1990: In Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of the U.S.-financed National Opposition Union achieved an upset victory over the incumbent president, Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

1986: On this day in 1986, Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, under pressure from the United States, fled his country for Hawaii after a fraudulent electoral victory over Corazon Aquino, who replaced him as president.

1964: American boxer Muhammad Ali, known at the time as Cassius Clay, became the world heavyweight champion by knocking out Sonny Liston in seven rounds.

1956: The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union came to a close after First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev delivered a secret speech denouncing the late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

1943: British musician George Harrison—lead guitarist of the Beatles, one of the most important and influential bands in the history of rock and roll—was born.

1917: English novelist and critic Anthony Burgess— whose fictional explorations of modern dilemmas combine wit, moral earnestness, and a note of the bizarre— was born.

1913: The Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which permitted a federal income tax, went into effect.

1870: American clergyman, educator, and politician

Hiram Rhodes Revels was sworn in to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress.

1841: French painter PierreAuguste Renoir, born this day in 1841, was initially associated with Impressionism, but in the 1880s his early works of sparkling colour and light gave way to a more disciplined, formal technique.