1494 – Piero the Unfortunate of the de’ Medici family, ruler of Florence, loses his power and flees the state
1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte pulls off a coup and becomes the dictator of France under the title of First Consul
1938 – Beginning on this night, called Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night” or “Night of Broken Glass”), some 48 hours of Nazi-orchestrated anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout Germany and Austria, resulting in the destruction and vandalizing of synagogues and Jewish businesses and the deaths of at least 91 Jews.
1943 – The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was created by a 44-nation agreement.
1953 – Cambodia became independent from France.
1980 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares holy war against Iran
1989 – Long a symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 and eventually extending 28 miles (45 km) to divide the western and eastern sectors of Berlin, was opened by the East German government on this day in 1989.
1994 – Darmstadtium, Chemical element 110, discovered at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany
1998 Brokerage houses are ordered to pay 1.03 billion USD to NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing – largest civil settlement in US history
2005 – Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
2012 – An Algerian C-295 military transport plane crashes near Avignon, France, killing 6 people
2014 Asia-Pacific countries, including China and the United States, announce plans to co-operate more closely in the fight against corruption
2019 – Unprecedented 70 bush fires in New South Wales, Australia, destroys 100 homes killing three people with seven missing
2019 – Prominent Russian history professor Oleg Sokolov discovered with severed arms of his murder victim in his backpack when rescued from Moika River, St Petersburg
2020 – 2020 becomes busiest Atlantic hurricane season ever as tropical storm Theta named record 29th storm
2020 – US Attorney General William Barr controversially approves federal investigations into voter fraud for the US elections
Births & Deaths:
1922 – American singer and film actress Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress, was born.
2004 – Swedish writer and activist Stieg Larsson died from a heart attack in Stockholm, a year before The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first installment in his internationally acclaimed Millennium series, was published.
Film & TV:
1984 – Wes Craven’s horror film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” premieres in the US
Music:
1858 – 1st performance of NY Symphony Orchestra
Sport:
1985 – Garry Kasparov becomes the youngest ever world chess champion (22), with a 13-11 win over fellow Russian Anatoly Karpov
1996 – Evander Holyfield scored a technical knockout of Mike Tyson to win the heavyweight boxing championship for a third time.
2012 – 25 people are killed and 62 injured after a train carrying liquid fuel bursts into flames in Burma
2015 – World Anti-Doping Agency commission report recommends Russian Federation be banned from athletics competitions for running a “state-supported” doping programme
Via Britannica / On This Day
