EVENTS:
- 1649 – An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years.
- 1743 – Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
- 1911 – Parks Canada, the world’s first national park service, is established as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior.
- 1917 – the Norwegian football club Rosenborg BK was founded.
- 1922 – The Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union is established.
- 1961 – Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
- 1971 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union.
- 2012 – Three gas cylinder bombs explode in front of a vocational school in the Italian city of Brindisi, killing 1 and injuring 5 others.
- 2015 – The Refugio oil spill deposited 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto an area in California considered one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the west coast.
- 2016 – EgyptAir Flight 804 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea while traveling from Paris to Cairo, killing all on board.
- 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is held at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, with an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion.
- 2024 – A helicopter crash in Iran leaves 8 people dead, including the country’s president Ebrahim Raisi & foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
BIRTHS:
- 1908 – Manik Bandopadhyay, Indian author (d. 1956)
- 1910 – Nathuram Godse, Indian assassin of Mahatma Gandhi (d. 1949)
- 1910 – Alan Melville, South African cricketer (d. 1983)
- 1913 – Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Indian politician, 6th President of India (d. 1996)
- 1914 – Max Perutz, Austrian-English biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2002)
- 1934 – Ruskin Bond, Indian author
- 1938 – Girish Karnad, Indian author, screenwriter, actor, and director
- 1942 – Gary Kildall, American computer scientist, founded Digital Research Inc. (d. 1994)
- 1955 – James Gosling, Canadian-American computer scientist, created Java
- 1964 – Murali, Indian actor (d. 2010)
- 1965 – Cecilia Bolocco, Chilean model and television host, Miss Universe 1987
- 1978 – Marcus Bent, English footballer
- 1980 – Tony Hackworth, English footballer
- 1984 – Marcedes Lewis, American football player
- 2002 – Riccardo Calafiori, Italian footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
- Greek Genocide Remembrance Day (Greece)
- Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day (Turkey, Northern Cyprus)
- Malcolm X Day (United States of America)
- National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (United States)
- Hepatitis Testing Day (United States)
- Mother’s Day (Kyrgyzstan)
