TODAY IN HISTORY

1818 Birth of Karl Marx (died 1883), German political philosopher and revolutionist, co-founder with Friedrich Engels of scientific socialism, and as such, one of the most influential thinkers of all time.

1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France and conqueror of much of Europe, dies as a British prisoner on the island of St Helena.

1867 Nellie Bly, a US reporter who pioneered investigative journalism, is born. Attempting to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg, she travelled around the world in 72 days.

1902 Birth of Phan Đăng Lưu, Vietnamese revolutionary and one of the early leaders of the Communist Party. He was captured and executed by the French.

1908 Trần Quý Cáp (1870 -1908), Vietnamese patriotic scholar, is executed by the French. He was one of the initiators of the patriotic Đông Du (Go East) movement.

1930 Amy Johnson begins the first solo flight by a

woman between England and Australia.

1955 The Federal Republic of Germany becomes a sovereign state after the Allied High Commissioners meet to formally disband; the republic also joins NATO the same day.

1959 The Việt Nam People’s Army decides to build a secret road system to carry war supplies to the southern front. The network, initially coded 559, eventually became known as the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.

1999 Indonesia and Portugal sign an agreement allowing the people of East Timor to vote on whether to remain part of Indonesia or seek independence.

2001 The world’s first paying space tourist, Dennis

Tito, returns to Earth after a week in space.

2003 Rwanda frees more than 22,000 detainees, most of whom were held in connection with the 1994 massacre of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu by Hutu militias. Around 80,000 genocide suspects remained in prison, with many yet to stand trial.

2010

Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek government-debt crisis.

2015 South Korea and Việt Nam sign a bilateral Free

Trade Agreement.

2016 The western Canadian province of Alberta declares a state of emergency as devastating wildfires, fed by unseasonably hot temperatures and dry conditions, grow to five times their initial size.

2017 Russia, Iran and Turkey reach an agreement to establish four "safe zones" in Syria over which all military aircraft, including Turkish, Russian, and American aircraft, will be barred from flying.

2019 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has ordered "massive strikes" in the Gaza Strip following the escalation of tensions between Israel and Hamas recently. The violence resulted in the deaths of nine Palestinians and three Israelis.

2020

President Donald Trump accuses Democrats of hoping his coronavirus response fails “so they can win the election”, as the Republican governor of Texas moved to further relax business shutdowns aimed at quelling the pandemic.

2021 Canada is the first country to authorise the Pfizer

COVID-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds. AP/RE