EVENTS:
- 1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
- 1571 – The Royal Exchange opens in London.
- 1789 – Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.)
- 1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
- 1855 – The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake and tsunami leaves nine dead in New Zealand.
- 1973 – A volcanic eruption devastates Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyjar chain of islands off the south coast of Iceland.
- 1997 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
- 2014 – A fire breaks out in a L’Isle-Verte, Quebec elderly home, killing 28 people.
- 2018 – A 7.9 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities.
- 2018 – A double car bombing in Benghazi, Libya, kills at least 33 people and wounds “dozens” of others. The victims include both military personnel and civilians, according to local officials.
- 2022 – Mutinying Burkinabè soldiers led by Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba depose and detain President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré amid widespread anti-government protests.
- 2024 – Northwestern Air Flight 738 crashes after takeoff from Fort Smith Airport, killing six people.
BIRTHS:
- 1809 – Surendra Sai, Indian activist (d. 1884)
- 1876 – Otto Diels, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)
- 1894 – Jyotirmoyee Devi, Indian author (d. 1988)
- 1897 – Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian activist and politician (d. 1945)
- 1907 – Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
- 1915 – W. Arthur Lewis, Saint Lucian-Barbadian economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1991)
- 1918 – Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
- 1926 – Bal Thackeray, Indian journalist, cartoonist, and politician (d. 2012)
- 1929 – John Polanyi, German-Canadian chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1930 – Derek Walcott, Saint Lucian poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1942 – Abdur Razzak, Indian-Bangladeshi actor and producer
- 1952 – Omar Henry, South African cricketer
- 1954 – Trevor Hohns, Australian cricketer
- 1977 – Kamal Heer, Indian singer-songwriter
- 1990 – Martyn Waghorn, English footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
