EVENTS:
- 1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.
- 1835 – Melbourne is founded.
- 1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen.
- 1909 – Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
- 1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War (“Turkish War of Independence”).
- 1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.
- 1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
- 1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.
- 2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho Tom Thabane flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.
- 2021 – The last remaining American troops leave Afghanistan, ending U.S. involvement in the war.
- 2023 – Gabonese coup d’état: After Ali Bongo Ondimba’s reelection, a military coup ousted him, ending 56 years of Bongo family rule in Gabon.
BIRTHS:
- 1852 – Jacobus Henricus van ‘t Hoff, Dutch chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)
- 1871 – Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-English physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1937)
- 1884 – Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
- 1903 – Bhagwati Charan Verma, Indian author (d. 1981)
- 1912 – Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
- 1913 – Richard Stone, English economist and statistician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1991)
- 1916 – Shailendra, Pakistani-Indian songwriter (d. 1968)
- 1934 – Baloo Gupte, Indian cricketer (d. 2005)
- 1942 – Pervez Sajjad, Pakistani cricketer
- 1967 – Justin Vaughan, New Zealand cricketer
- 1980 – Derrick Ward, American football player
- 1984 – Anthony Ireland, Zimbabwean cricketer
