TODAY IN HISTORY
1809 French army under Napoleon Bonaparte takes Vienna.
1871 The Law of Guarantees in Italy declares the Pope’s person inviolable and allows him possession of the Vatican.
1888 Serfdom is abolished in Brazil.
1955 The Geneva Agreements on Indochina signed on July 20, 1954 following Việt Nam’s victory over the French at the Điện Biên Phủ battle, allows the French in North Việt Nam to re-group to Bến Nghiêng Village of Đồ Sơn District, Hải Phòng, in preparation for their final withdrawal from Indochina.
1968 Peace negotiations officially open in Paris between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam, with the latter demanding an unconditional end to the US air war against North Việt Nam.
1992 Three astronauts simultaneously walk in space for the first time. They retrieved and repaired the Intelsat-6 satellite from the US shuttle Endeavour in a walk lasting 8 hours 29 minutes.
2002 The United States and Russia announce they reached agreement on a pact committing both countries to cut their arsenal of nuclear weapons by two-thirds over the next 10 years.
2007 President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the United Arab Emirates for the first official visit since 1979.
2008 West Virginia voters go to the polls in the Democratic Party primary to elect 28 delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. New York Senator Hillary Clinton obtains a clear victory.
2010 The second case of poliomyelitis in two days is reported in Russia, in Russia’s first polio cases in 15 years, with the virus believed to have come from Tajikistan.
2014 Investigators claim to have found the wreck of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, off the north coast of Haiti.
2016 Kosovo and Gibraltar are elected as new members
of FIFA.
2017 Salvador Sobral of Portugal wins the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Amar pelos dois. While the country debuted in the 1964 edition of the contest, this marks the first win by a Portuguese entrant.
2018 At least 13 people are killed and more than 40 others wounded after a series of suicide bombings at three churches in Surabaya, Indonesia.
2019 American undersea explorer Victor Vescovo sets a new world record for the deepest ever sea dive at 10,972m in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. Several unusual things are discovered at the bottom, including four new species of prawn-like crustaceans, a new species of snailfish, strange brightly coloured rocky outcrops and a plastic bag.
2020 Democrat Christy Smith concedes defeat to Republican Mike Garcia in yesterday's special election for California’s 25th congressional district after vote returns showed Garcia in the lead. The results are the first time since 1998 that Republicans flipped a Democratic-held House seat in California.
2021 The last Spanish soldiers in Afghanistan arrive in Spain, ending the mission after 19 years. AP/REUTERS/VNS