EVENTS:
- 1800 – The Septinsular Republic is established.
- 1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.
- 1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law.
- 1912 – Opening day for baseball‘s Tiger Stadium in Detroit, and Fenway Park in Boston.
- 1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.
- 1978 – Korean Air Lines Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.
- 2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.
- 2012 – One hundred twenty-seven people are killed when a plane crashes in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan.
- 2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya’an, in China’s Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.
- 2015 – 10 people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland.
- 2020 – For the first time in history, oil prices drop below zero, an effect of the 2020 Russia-Saudi Arabia oil price war.
- 2021 – State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin: Derek Chauvin is found guilty of all charges in the murder of George Floyd by the Fourth Judicial District Court of Minnesota.
- 2023 – SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, launches for the first time. It explodes 4 minutes into flight.
BIRTHS:
- 1889 – S. W. Harrington, American football player, coach, and physician (d. 1975)
- 1918 – Kai Siegbahn, Swedish physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2007)
- 1927 – K. Alex Müller, Swiss physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1945 – Steve Spurrier, American football player and coach
- 1960 – Rodney Holman, American football player and coach
- 1964 – John Carney, American football player
- 1980 – Arin Paul, Indian director and screenwriter
- 1983 – Greg Smith, South African cricketer
- 1991 – Luke Kuechly, American football player
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
