Today in History

The British Army’s longest continual operation, Operation Banner (1969-2007), ends as British troops withdraw from Northern Ireland.

Fidel Castro temporarily hands over power to his brother Raul Castro.

NASA purposely crashes its Discovery Program’s Lunar Prospector into the moon, ending the agency’s mission to detect frozen water on Earth’s moon.

The US and the USSR sign a long-range nuclear weapons reduction pact.

Bosnia-Herzegovina declares independence from Yugoslavia.

Bridge collapse at Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal in Butterworth, Malaysia, kills 32 and injures more than 1,600.

An F4 tornado in Edmonton, Alberta kills 27 and causes $330 million in damages; the day is remembered as “Black Friday.”

Apollo 15 astronauts take a drive on the moon in their land rover.

J.K. Rowling, author (Harry Potter series).

Federation of Malaysia formally proposed.

Evonne Goolagong, Australian tennis player.

The Soviet army takes Kovno, the capital of Lithuania.

Adolf Hitler‘s Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) doubles its strength in legislative elections.

Horace Silver, jazz pianist, composer and bandleader.

Whitney Young, Jr., civil rights leader and executive director of the National Urban League.

Primo Levi, Italian writer and scientist (Survival in Auschwitz).

The third Battle of Ypres commences as the British attack the German lines.

Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist.

The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains with Russia’s Pacific coast, is completed.

Jean Dubuffet, French sculptor and painter.

Great Britain declares territories in Southern Africa up to the Congo to be within its sphere of influence.

Belle and Sam Starr are charged with horse stealing in the Indian territory.

Former president Andrew Johnson dies at the age of 66.

S.S. Kresge, American businessman.

William Clarke Quantrill, Confederate raider during the American Civil War.

George Henry Thomas, Union general during the American Civil War.

John Ericsson, naval engineer and inventor, developed the screw propeller.

The U.S. Patent Office opens.

Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, drives the French army back to the Rhine River.

English novelist Daniel Defoe is made to stand in the pillory as punishment for offending the government and church with his satire The Shortest Way With Dissenters.

Arabs capture Thessalonica.