EVENTS:
- 529 – First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
- 1141 – Empress Matilda became the first female ruler of England, adopting the title ‘Lady of the English’.
- 1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.
- 1890 – Completion of the first Lake Biwa Canal.
- 1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
- 1927 – First long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).
- 1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
- 1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
- 1964 – IBM announces the System/360.
- 1967 – Film critic Roger Ebert published his very first film review in the Chicago Sun-Times.
- 1969 – The Internet‘s symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.
- 1983 – During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
- 2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.
- 2009 – Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.
- 2011 – The Israel Defense Forces use their Iron Dome missile system to successfully intercept a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza, marking the first short-range missile intercept ever.
- 2017 – A man deliberately drives a hijacked truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and injuring fifteen others.
- 2017 – U.S. President Donald Trump orders the 2017 Shayrat missile strike against Syria in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack.
- 2018 – Former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is arrested for corruption by determination of Judge Sérgio Moro, from the “Car-Wash Operation“. Lula stayed imprisoned for 580 days, after being released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
- 2018 – Syria launches the Douma chemical attack during the Eastern Ghouta offensive of the Syrian Civil War.
- 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: China ends its lockdown in Wuhan.
- 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigns for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on USS Theodore Roosevelt and the dismissal of Brett Crozier.
- 2021 – COVID-19 pandemic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States.
- 2022 – Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black female justice.
BIRTHS:
- 1859 – Walter Camp, American football player and coach (d. 1925)
- 1889 – Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957)
- 1920 – Ravi Shankar, Indian-American sitar player and composer (d. 2012)
- 1925 – Chaturanan Mishra, Indian trade union leader and politician (d. 2011)
- 1926 – Prem Nazir, Indian actor (d. 1989)
- 1942 – Jeetendra, Indian actor and producer
- 1943 – Dennis Amiss, English cricketer and manager
- 1990 – Trent Cotchin, Australian footballer
- 1992 – Guilherme Negueba, Brazilian footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
