Historical Events
The following events took place on . The list is arranged in chronological order.
Found 51 events. Showing 31 - 51.
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- World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini’s disastrous Italian invasion of Greece.
- World War II: Battle of Berlin: Four hundred forty Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
- The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba.
- The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
- The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
- United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
- The first push-button telephone goes into service.
- U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
- In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
- King’s Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city’s busiest underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras.
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- War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
- Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
- After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People’s Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
- In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives.
- In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule.
- A fire occurs on a train traveling through the Channel Tunnel from France to England causing several injuries and damaging approximately 500 metres (1,600 ft) of tunnel.
- Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
- In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.
- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4–3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
- Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria becomes the 118th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
- NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars.
