180 – 6 inhabitants of Carthage, North Africa executed for being Christians. Earliest record of Christianity in this part of the world.
1203 – Siege of Constantinople begins during the fourth Crusade, Crusaders aboad a Venetian fleet attack the city
1762 – Catherine II becomes tsarina of Russia following the murder of Peter III
1918 – The Romanov royal family and several of their retainers are executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in the basement of Ipatiev House, in Yekaterinburg, Siberia
1936 – Spanish generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola lead a right-wing uprising, starting the Spanish Civil War
1945 – Potsdam Conference: Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill hold 1st post-World War II meeting
1950 – Suppression of Communism Act comes into force in South Africa
1964 – ANC leader Nelson Mandela, recently sentenced to life imprisonment, is awarded the Joliot Curie Gold Medal for Peace
1974 – John Lennon is ordered to leave US in 60 days
1995 – Forbes Magazine announces Bill Gates is the richest man in world with a net worth of $12.9 billion dollars
2013 – 7 people are killed by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria
2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Eastern Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board
2016 – 17 works by Swiss architect Le Corbusier included in UNESCO World Heritage sites list as “an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement”
2018 – Barack Obama gives speech honoring Nelson Mandela and warning of “strongman politics” in Johannesburg, South Africa
2019 – Mexican drug cartel head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years in New York
2020 – India becomes the third country to record 1 million cases of COVID-1, 56% concentrated in Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu
Film & TV:
1959 – “North by Northwest” directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint premieres in Los Angeles
Music:
1717 – George Frideric Handel’s “Water Music” premieres on the river Thames in London
Sport:
1976 – 21st modern Olympic games opens in Montreal: 25 African teams (later rising to 33 nations) boycott the games due to New Zealand playing rugby in apartheid South Africa
Via Britannica / On This Day
