On This Day

This Day in History

1. 2024A religious gathering in Uttar Pradesh, India, suffered a stampede that resulted in at least 121 deaths and left 150 other individuals injured.
2. 2020The deadliest mining disaster in the history of Myanmar occurred when a landslide at a Hpakant jade mine killed between 175 and 200 miners.
3. 2013A magnitude 6.1 strike-slip earthquake struck the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, Indonesia, killing at least 35 people and injuring 276 others.
4. 2013The International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto's fourth and fifth discovered moons were officially named Kerberos and Styx.
5. 1998Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, written by J. K. Rowling as the second installment in the Harry Potter book series, was published.
6. 1990During the Singing Revolution, the Soviet Union ended its economic blockade of Lithuania after the Lithuanian parliament voted to temporarily suspend its statehood re-establishment act.
7. 1976Over a year following the conclusion of the Vietnam War, North and South Vietnam formally unified under communist governance to establish the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
8. 1964The Civil Rights Act was enacted into law, prohibiting segregation across American schools, workplaces, and public facilities.
9. 1941A German SS unit entered Vilnius, Lithuania, commencing the systematic murder of up to 100,000 people over the subsequent three-year period.
10. 1881Charles J. Guiteau shot United States President James A. Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C., inflicting a fatal wound.
11. 1816The French frigate Méduse ran aground off modern-day Mauritania, leaving survivors to flee on a improvised raft, an event depicted in Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.
12. 1779During the American Revolutionary War, French military forces disembarked close to St. George's, Grenada, initiating their takeover of the island.
13. 1724Bach conducted the premiere of Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10, a work based on the German Magnificat, on the Feast of the Visitation.
14. 1644In the First English Civil War, allied English Parliamentarian and Scottish Covenanter armies triumphed over Royalist forces at the Battle of Marston Moor.
15. 706The remains of Empress Wu Zetian and Emperor Gaozong of Tang were entombed together within the Qianling Mausoleum.
16. 626Li Shimin orchestrated a coup to claim the Tang Chinese imperial throne, leading his troops to assassinate his rival brothers.