On This Day

This Day in History

1. 2022Queen Elizabeth II's coffin was moved from Buckingham Palace on a King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery gun carriage to Westminster Hall for a four-day lying in state, drawing a queue of mourners stretching miles along the River Thames.
2. 2019Drone attacks on key processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais forced Saudi Arabia to reduce its oil production by more than half.
3. 2019Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for an attack carried out against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.
4. 2015The initial observation of gravitational waves occurred, which was later announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016.
5. 2008Aeroflot Flight 821 crashed while landing at Perm International Airport in Russia because an intoxicated pilot was unfamiliar with the aircraft.
6. 2007Amid the late-2000s financial crisis, Northern Rock obtained a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England, causing the United Kingdom's first bank run in 150 years.
7. 1992The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that the breakaway Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia was unconstitutional.
8. 1989After taking an erratic path across the Western Pacific and causing widespread damage, Typhoon Sarah dissipated, leaving 71 dead across Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Gotō Islands.
9. 1979Afghan president Nur Muhammad Taraki was overthrown and subsequently killed on the orders of Hafizullah Amin, who succeeded him.
10. 1960At a conference in Baghdad, the governments of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela established OPEC to coordinate their petroleum policies and influence global oil prices.
11. 1914HMAS AE1, the first submarine of the Royal Australian Navy, was lost at sea, and its wreck was not discovered until 2017.
12. 1901Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest United States president ever at age 42, eight days after William McKinley was fatally wounded in Buffalo, New York.
13. 1863During the American Civil War, the Little Rock campaign concluded when the Union Army captured Little Rock, Arkansas.
14. 1723António Manoel de Vilhena, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, laid the initial stone of Fort Manoel in Malta.
15. 919Amid Viking activity in the British Isles, a coalition of native Irish led by Niall Glúndub failed to expel the Uí Ímair Vikings from Ireland.
16. 81Domitian, the final Flavian emperor of Rome, was confirmed by the Senate as the successor to his brother Titus.