EVENTS:
- 1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León first sights land in what is now Florida.
- 1902 – “Electric Theatre”, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles.
- 1911 – The Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts the country’s first national census.
- 1912 – The ill-fated RMS Titanic begins sea trials.
- 1956 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiere on CBS-TV. The two soaps become the first daytime dramas to debut in the 30-minute format.
- 1962 – The first official panda crossing is opened outside London Waterloo station.
- 1972 – Actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s.
- 1973 – Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal research service.
- 1975 – Construction of the CN Tower is completed in Toronto, Canada. It reaches 553.33 metres (1,815.4 ft) in height, becoming the world’s tallest free-standing structure.
- 1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm (who had resigned) as Premier of British Columbia.
- 2011 – India won the 2011 Cricket World Cup, defeating Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the final in Mumbai, thus becoming the first country to win the Cricket World Cup final on home soil.
- 2012 – A mass shooting at Oikos University at Oakland, California, leaves seven people dead and three injured.
- 2015 – Gunmen attack Garissa University College in Kenya, killing at least 148 people and wounding 79 others.
- 2015 – Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London’s Hatton Garden area in what has been called the “largest burglary in English legal history.”
- 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: The total number of confirmed cases reach one million.
- 2021 – At least 49 people are killed in a train derailment in Taiwan after a truck accidentally rolls onto the track.
- 2021 – A Capitol Police officer is killed and another injured when an attacker rams his car into a barricade outside the United States Capitol.
- 2024 – Viertola school shooting: A 12-year-old pupil is killed and two others injured by a shooter of the same age in Vantaa, Finland.
BIRTHS:
- 1614 – Jahanara Begum, Indian daughter of Shah Jahan (d. 1681)
- 1862 – Nicholas Murray Butler, American philosopher and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947)
- 1891 – Tristão de Bragança Cunha, Indian nationalist and anti-colonial activist from Goa (d. 1958)
- 1898 – Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Indian poet, actor and politician (d. 1990)
- 1942 – Roshan Seth, Indian-English actor
- 1969 – Ajay Devgan, Indian actor, director, and producer
- 1981 – Michael Clarke, Australian cricketer
- 1989 – Midhun Jith, Indian martial artist
- 1995 – Abdou Nef, Algerian footballer (d. 2013)
- 2000 – Rodrigo Riquelme, Spanish footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
