624 – Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army. 1591 – Battle at Tondibi: Moroccan army under Judar defeats Sultan Askia Ishaq II of Songhai. 1781 – William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus. 1884 – Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins by Mahdist forces, lasts 10 months. 1903 – Fall of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria, the British claim supremacy on over 500,000 square miles. 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory. 1996 – A gunman invaded a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shot to death 16 young children and their teacher before turning a gun on himself; the school shooting resulted in various changes to British gun laws. 2003 – The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy. 2013 – Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected pope of the Roman Catholic Church; taking the name Francis I, he succeeded Benedict XVI, who had resigned. 2019 – US grounds all Boeing 737 Max aircraft after bans by others countries following the plane type’s second crash in Ethiopia.
Births & Deaths: 1906 – Susan B. Anthony, an American social reformer and women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement, died in New York.
TV & Film: 1956 – “The Searchers” American western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood is released.
Sport: 1894 – J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate.
Music: 2004 – Luciano Pavarotti performs in his last opera at New York Metropolitan Opera’s “Tosca”.
