EVENTS:
- 1783 – A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France.
- 1870 – US Congress created the United States Department of Justice
- 1941 – Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
- 1957 – The Soviet Union launches an R-12 missile for the first time (in the Kapustin Yar).
- 1962 – An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashes in bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies, killing 113.
- 1978 – Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by American astronomer James W. Christy.
- 1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport.
- 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response.
- 2015 – The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All 6 of the gunmen are killed, with 18 people injured
- 2022 – An earthquake occurs in eastern Afghanistan resulting in over 1,000 deaths.
BIRTHS:
- 1713 – Lord John Sackville, English cricketer and politician (d. 1765)
- 1910 – John Hunt, Baron Hunt, Indian-English army officer and mountaineer (d. 1998)
- 1910 – Konrad Zuse, German computer scientist and engineer, invented the Z3 computer (d. 1995)
- 1932 – Amrish Puri, Indian actor (d. 2005)
- 1939 – Don Matthews, American-Canadian football player and coach
- 1956 – Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistani politician, 25th Minister of Foreign Affairs for Pakistan
- 1956 – Markus Schatte, German footballer, manager, and coach
- 1957 – Kevin Bond, English footballer and manager
- 1991 – Giuseppe De Luca, Italian footballer
- 1996 – Mikel Merino, Spanish footballer
