1920 – Joan of Arc (Jeanne D’arc) canonized a saint
1943 – Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs
1944 – 1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz
1968 – Earthquake kills 47 in Japan
1971 – Bulgaria adopts its constitution
1989 – Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift
1990 – Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creators of the M16 rifle and the AK-47 rifle respectively, meet in Washington, D.C.
1991 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes 1st British monarch to address US congress
2007 – Nicolas Sarkozy becomes the 23rd President of France
2009 – India’s General Election results announced: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) under Manmohan Singh returned with an increased mandate
2013 – Bill Gates regains his position as the world’s richest man with $72.7 billion after losing the position in 2008
2013 – Human stem cells are successfully cloned
2019 – British people get drunk more than any other nation, 51 times year according to the Global Drug survey, with English-speaking countries drinking the most
2019 – US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency over IT threats, banning US companies from using foreign technology without a license
Film & TV:
1929 – 1st Academy Awards: “Wings”, Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor win
1986 – “Top Gun”, directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise premieres
2002 – “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones” directed by George Lucas, starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman opens in cinemas
Music:
1946 – “Annie Get Your Gun” musical by Irving Berlin, Dorothy and Herbert Fields opens at Imperial Theater NYC, starring Ethel Merman and featuring “There’s no Business Like Show Business”
1980 – Paul McCartney releases “McCartney II” album
Sport:
1948 – First chess world championship since WWII; Russian player Mikhail Botvinnik wins a 5-player tournament to begin 20-year Russian domination
