frouman.net

After a nearly yearlong journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars this day in 1976 and began relaying information about the planet's atmosphere and soil as well as colour photographs of the rocky surface.

More Events on this day:

1894: Labor Day was celebrated as a legal holiday in the United States for the first time.

1658: English soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell died in London.

1609: English navigator Henry Hudson, in a quest for a passage to India on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, sailed into the harbour of present-day New York City and up the river that now bears his name.

Louis Sullivan

"Form ever follows function."

Louis Sullivan

Born this day in 1856, architect Louis Sullivan—identified with early skyscraper design and considered the spiritual father of modern American architecture—remade the image of the architect as a creative personality.

For RSS subscribers The Britannica Store presents a special 20% discount on the Concise Encyclopedia and free CD-ROM. This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Britannica's most popular publication worldwide is a one-volume encyclopedia containing 28,000 articles accompanied by colorful photographs, diagrams, maps, and flags. The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia has comprehensive coverage on a variety of subjects including, arts, business, geography, history, literature, philosophy, politics, pop culture, science, sports, and more. The book features an easy-to-use format, pronunciation help, relevant tables, and international maps. To see the special price, add the product to your Shopping Cart.

On this day in 1666 the Great Fire of London began accidentally in the house of the king's baker; it burned for four days and destroyed a large part of the city, including Old St. Paul's Cathedral and about 13,000 houses.

More Events on this day:

1945: World War II came to an end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

1945: Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France.

1898: Anglo-Egyptian forces under Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener (later Lord Kitchener) defeated the Sudanese forces of the Mahdist leader 'Abd Allh in the Battle of Omdurman.

1792: The September Massacres—mass killings of prisoners in Paris—began. The massacres were instigated by beliefs that political prisoners during the French Revolution were going to rise up in their jails to join a counterrevolutionary plot.

31 : Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) won a decisive victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium.

Jimmy Connors

American tennis star Jimmy Connors, born this day in 1952, captured the U.S. Open title five times and in 1974 won three grand slam events (U.S., Australian, and Wimbledon) but was barred from competing in the French Open.

The lethal combination of German blitzkrieg tactics, French inactivity, and Russian perfidy doomed Poland to swift defeat this day in 1939, when Adolf Hitler invaded the country and sparked World War II.

More Events on this day:

1985: The wreck of the Titanic was found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres).

1969: A group of young army officers led by Muammar al-Qaddafi deposed the king and made Libya a republic.

1951: Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed the ANZUS Pact.

1930: The Young Plan, the second renegotiation of Germany's World War I reparation payments, went into effect.

1923: A great earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area; the death toll from the shock was estimated at 142,800.

1914: The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati (Ohio) Zoo.

1870: The French army suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-German War.

1864: The Charlottetown Conference, the first of a series of meetings that ultimately led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada, convened at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Joaquín Balaguer

Lawyer, writer, and diplomat Joaquín Balaguer, born in the Dominican Republic this day in 1907, served as Hector Trujillo's vice president (1957–60) and subsequently as president of the country (1960–62; 1966–78; 1986–96).

During the American Civil War, the Confederate evacuation of Atlanta began this day in 1864, shortly before Union troops led by William Tecumseh Sherman occupied the city, providing a much-needed victory for the North.

More Events on this day:

1991: Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan declared independence from the Soviet Union.

1966: The Harrier “jump-jet” fighter-bomber made its first flight.

1895: The first American professional gridiron football game was played in the township of Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

1850: King Kamehameha III officially declared Honolulu a city and the capital of his kingdom.

1751: Robert Clive of Britain seized Arcot, India, and then withstood a 53-day siege that began a few weeks later.

Diana, princess of Wales

"The world is too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel landmines are causing among some of the poorest people on Earth."

Diana, Princess of Wales

On this day in 1997, Princess Diana died in Paris following an automobile accident—first thought to be caused by paparazzi but later blamed on the driver—that also claimed the lives of her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver.

U.S. astronaut Guion S. Bluford, Jr., became on this day in 1983 the first African American to travel into space, serving as a mission specialist aboard the shuttle orbiter Challenger, and later flew on three other missions.

More Events on this day:

1862: During the American Civil War, the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) ended with a decisive Confederate victory.

1800: Gabriel, an African American bondsman, assembled an army of about 1,000 slaves outside Richmond, Virginia, in the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history.

1637: Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her liberal viewpoints and criticism of the Puritans.

1282: The Aragonese landed at Trapani in support of the Sicilian revolt against Charles I, Angevin king of Naples-Sicily, which had begun with the Sicilian Vespers, a massacre of the French.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires, was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and so overwhelming, that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result."

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born this day in 1797, was the English Romantic novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein (1818), which recounts the consequences that arise after a scientist builds a human being.

On this day in 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast and devastated the area, especially New Orleans, which experienced catastrophic flooding after its levees were breached the following day.

More Events on this day:

1877: Brigham Young, American religious leader and second president of the Mormon church, died in Salt Lake City, Utah.

1862: Union Major General John Pope opened the Second Battle of Bull Run (also called Second Manassas) with heavy but futile attacks on Confederate General Stonewall Jackson during the American Civil War.

1842: China signed the Treaty of Nanjing, providing for the cession of Hong Kong to Great Britain, the opening of five treaty ports, the rights of British nationals accused of criminal acts in China to be tried in British courts, and a limitation on duties on imports and exports.

Michael Jackson

"When I get onstage I don't know what happens, honest to God. It feels so good, it's like the safest place in the world."

Michael Jackson

Born this day in 1958, American entertainer Michael Jackson became a worldwide superstar with his music videos and best-selling albums, especially Thriller (1982), but later earned more attention for his eccentric lifestyle.

On this day in 1963, some 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., an event that became a high point of the civil rights movement, especially remembered for the famous “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.

More Events on this day:

1993: The spacecraft Galileo took pictures of the asteroid Ida.

1914: The first major engagement of the British and German navies during World War I occurred at the Battle of Helgoland Bight.

1850: Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin was performed for the first time, at Weimar, Germany.

1793: The Siege of Toulon in the French Revolutionary Wars began.

476: The fall of the Western Roman Empire was completed as Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the German warrior Odoacer.

Paul Martin

Liberal politician Paul Martin—who, as prime minister of Canada (2003–06), fostered economic growth and introduced progressive social policies but lost power amid a financial scandal in his party—was born this day in 1938.

Titian, the greatest Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school, who was once described as “the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of the world,” died this day in 1576.

More Events on this day:

1979: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

1939: German Ernst Heinrich Heinkel's He 178, a turbojet-powered aircraft, made the first jet flight.

1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed between France and the United States in a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I.

1776: During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated George Washington and the American Continental Army in the Battle of Long Island.

Mother Teresa

"Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength."

Mother Teresa

Baptized in Macedonia this day in 1910, Mother Teresa founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor, and later received the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace.

In preparation for an attack on Paris, part of Charles VII's campaign to drive the English from French soil, Joan of Arc and her soldiers reached the city's outskirts on this day in 1429, but the assault ultimately failed.

More Events on this day:

1978: Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected pope as John Paul I, but he died of a heart attack 33 days later.

1936: The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty established Egypt as a sovereign state after 50 years of British occupation.

1920: The Nineteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution of the United States, giving women the right to vote.

1914: During World War I the Battle of Tannenberg, fought between the Germans and the Russians, began.

1883: The volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia began to erupt, and 36,000 people were killed by the eruption and the resulting tsunami.

1629: English Puritan stockholders of the Massachusetts Bay Company pledged to emigrate to New England under the terms of the Cambridge Agreement.

1071: Seljuq Turk forces under Alp-Arslan vanquished the Byzantine army and captured the emperor Romanus IV Diogenes at the Battle of Manzikert.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

Born this day in 1743, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was a prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen.

On this day in 1944, some two months after the Allied invasion of Normandy, Paris was liberated from German occupiers as the Free French 2nd Armoured Division under General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc entered the city.

More Events on this day:

1945: John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and U.S. Army intelligence officer, was killed by Chinese communists, which later inspired the foundation of the John Birch Society—a private organization that considered Birch to be the first hero of the Cold War.

1900: German Classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture Friedrich Nietzsche died.

1530: Ivan IV (the Terrible), grand prince of Moscow and first tsar of Russia, was born.

325: The Council of Nicaea—the first ecumenical council of the Christian church—brought to an end the controversy of Arianism, concluding that God the Father was of equal status with God the Son.