EVENTS:
- 1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
- 1936 – Australian cricketer Jack Fingleton becomes the first player to score centuries in four consecutive Test innings.
- 1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.
- 1988 – Spitak earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills more than 25,000, injures 30,000 and leaves 500,000 homeless out of a population of 3,500,000.
- 1988 – Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
- 1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
- 2006 – A tornado strikes Kensal Green, North West London, seriously damaging about 150 properties.
- 2015 – The JAXA probe Akatsuki successfully enters orbit around Venus five years after the first attempt.
- 2016 – Syrian army continues large-scale attack and controls the revival (Sheikh Lutfi, Marja, Bab al-Nairab, Maadi, Al-Salhin) in the east of Aleppo backed by Russian Air Forceand Iranian militias.
- 2016 – Pakistan International Airline‘s flight PK661, a domestic passenger flight from Chitral to Islamabad, operated by ATR-42-500 crashed near Havelian killing all 47 on board.
BIRTHS:
- 1921 – Pramukh Swami Maharaj, Indian guru and scholar
- 1923 – Intizar Hussain, Indian-Pakistani author and scholar
- 1942 – Alex Johnson, American baseball player (d. 2015)
- 1952 – Eckhard Märzke, German footballer and manager
- 1965 – Colin Hendry, Scottish footballer and manager
- 1973 – Terrell Owens, American football player and actor
- 1975 – Jamie Clapham, English footballer and coach
- 1976 – Brent Johnson, Canadian football player
- 1976 – Alan Faneca, American football player
- 1980 – John Terry, English footballer
- 1984 – Aaron Gray, American basketball player
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
