EVENTS:
- 1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India.
- 1855 – Michigan State University is established.
- 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.
- 1914 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.
- 1947 – The largest observed iron meteorite until that time creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union.
- 1961 – Soviet Union launches Venera 1 towards Venus.
- 1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union.
- 1983 – One hundred women protest in Lahore, Pakistan against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq‘s proposed Law of Evidence. The women were tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into lock-up. The women were successful in repealing the law.
- 1992 – The current Constitution of Mongolia comes into effect.
- 2001 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
- 2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York while on approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, killing all on board and one on the ground.
- 2014 – A massive winter storm across states in the southern United States causes widespread power outages, travel disruptions and dangerous road conditions.
- 2016 – Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill sign an Ecumenical Declaration in the first such meeting between leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since their split in 1054.
- 2019 – The country officially known since 1995 as “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” officially renames itself as the Republic of North Macedonia, by enacting the Prespa Agreement.
- 2021 – In response to her dispute with her former record label, Big Machine Records, over the ownership of master recordings to her earlier discography, Taylor Swift releases Love Story (Taylor’s Version), a re-recording of her 2008 song, and the first in a series of re-recordings of both her older songs and albums.
BIRTHS:
- 1824 – Dayananda Saraswati, Indian monk and philosopher, founded Arya Samaj (d. 1883)
- 1918 – Julian Schwinger, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)
- 1920 – Pran, Indian actor (d. 2013)
- 1949 – Gundappa Viswanath, Indian cricketer and referee
- 1967 – N. Ravikiran, Indian singer-songwriter
- 1979 – Antonio Chatman, American football player
- 1988 – DeMarco Murray, American football player
- 1990 – Robert Griffin III, American football player
- 1994 – Paxton Lynch, American football player
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
