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Ruhollah Khomeini

Shi'ite cleric Ruhollah Khomeini—born this day in 1900, it is believed—led the 1979 revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and for the next 10 years served as Iran's ultimate political and religious authority.

On this day in 1954, lawyer Thurgood Marshall scored a landmark victory as the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

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1918: Swedish operatic soprano Birgit Nilsson was born in Västra Karup.

1875: The first Kentucky Derby was run at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, and the winning horse was Aristides.

1866: French composer Erik Satie was born in Honfleur.

1792: Meeting on what is now Wall Street in New York City, 24 businessmen took the initial steps to forming the New York Stock Exchange.

1510: Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, one of the greatest painters of the Florentine Renaissance, died.

Olga Korbut

Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, born this day in Belorussia (now Belarus) in 1955, earned three gold medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany, where she captivated audiences with her charm, youth, and diminutive size.

On this day in 1943, Nazi troops quelled the month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in which Polish Jews, led by Mordecai Anielewicz and the Jewish Fighting Organization, resisted deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp.

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1975: Tabei Junko of Japan, accompanied by Ang Tsering of Nepal, became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1961: The military seized power in South Korea, overthrowing the Second Republic, as General Park Chung Hee took over the government machinery, dissolved the National Assembly, and imposed a strict ban on political activity.

1920: Joan of Arc, national heroine of France, was canonized as a saint by Pope Benedict XV.

1763: In London, Samuel Johnson met James Boswell, who published his famous biography, Life of Johnson, in 1791.

Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright, born this day in Prague in 1937, earned a reputation as a savvy defender of American interests while a UN ambassador (1993–97) and was the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state (1997–2001).

On this day in 1991, Edith Cresson of the Socialist Party became the first female premier of France, but she lost the office less than a year later because of rising unemployment and declining support from within her party.

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1918: The first regular airmail route in the United States opened between New York City and Washington, D.C.

1914: Mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, who, with Sir Edmund Hillary, was the first person to stand atop the summit of Mount Everest, was born in Tshechu, Tibet.

1886: American poet Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Massachusetts.

495 : On the Aventine Hill in Rome, the temple of the Roman god Mercury was dedicated.

Margaret of Valois

Born this day in 1553, Margaret of Valois, whose 1572 marriage to the king of Navarre failed to end fighting between Catholics and Protestants, earned fame for her licentiousness and her Mémoires, an exposé of life in France.

Israel declared its independence this day in 1948 and was quickly recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and numerous other countries, fulfilling the Zionist dream of an internationally approved Jewish state.

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1973: Skylab, the first U.S. space station, was launched.

1796: Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox.

1643: Four-year-old Louis XIV ascended the throne of France.

1607: The first permanent British settlement in North America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia.

Georges Braque

Born this day in 1882, French painter Georges Braque revolutionized the art world by creating, with Pablo Picasso, Cubism and became in 1961 the first living painter to have his work exhibited in the Louvre Museum.

Tensions between Mexico and the United States—stemming from the U.S. annexation of Texas (1845)—led the U.S. Congress on this day in 1846 to approve overwhelmingly a declaration of war against its southern neighbour.

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1993: A methane gas explosion in a coal mine in Secunda, South Africa, claimed the lives of 50 miners.

1981: Pope John Paul II survived an assassination attempt in Vatican City, in which he was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish national.

1960: A Swiss expedition led by Max Eiselin reached the summit of Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas.

1943: The Somali Youth Club—a precursor to the Somali Youth League, which in 1960 helped to form Somalia's first independent government—was formed in Mogadishu.

1917: Three children—Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto—reported seeing the Virgin Mary near Fátima, Portugal.

1871: With the Law of Guarantees, the Italian government attempted to settle the question of its relationship with the pope, who had been deprived of his lands in the process of Italian national unification.

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Born this day in 1907, American actress Katharine Hepburn brought a spirited individuality and depth of character to her roles that made her one of Hollywood's most dynamic leading ladies and earned her four Academy Awards.

Aboard the semirigid airship Norge, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, American scientist Lincoln Ellsworth, and Italian engineer Umberto Nobile made the first undisputed flight over the North Pole on this day in 1926.

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1949: The Soviet Union lifted its blockade of Berlin.

1937: King George VI of the United Kingdom was crowned following the abdication of Edward VIII.

1925: American baseball player, manager, and coach Yogi Berra was born in St. Louis, Missouri.

1845: French composer Gabriel Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège.

1820: English nurse Florence Nightingale, who founded trained nursing as a profession for women, was born in Florence, Italy.

1780: During the American Revolution, Major General Benjamin Lincoln of the Continental Army was forced to surrender with 7,000 troops at Charleston, South Carolina.

Salvador Dalí

Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, a leading Surrealist painter noted for his depiction of dreamworlds in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed or deformed in a bizarre and irrational fashion, was born this day in 1904.

On this day in 330, Constantine the Great dedicated Byzantium (Constantinople; now Istanbul) as the new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, an act that helped transform it into a leading city of the world.

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1943: U.S. troops invaded Attu, one of the Aleutian Islands captured by the Japanese in 1942.

1918: American theoretical physicist Richard P. Feynman was born in New York City.

1910: Glacier National Park was established in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of northwestern Montana.

1885: American jazz cornetist King Oliver was born in Abend, Louisiana.

1846: U.S. President James K. Polk asked Congress to declare war on Mexico.

Fred Astaire

Ann Miller

Fred Astaire, born this day in 1899, is considered one of the greatest American popular-music dancers and is especially remembered for his partnership with Ginger Rogers in a series of highly successful musical comedy films.

Nelson Mandela, whose efforts to end apartheid led to his imprisonment (1962–90) and earned him a share (with F.W. de Klerk) of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, became president of South Africa this day in 1994.

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1940: Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands.

1869: The tracks of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were joined at Promontory, Utah, to form the first transcontinental railway in the United States.

1865: Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.

1857: The Indian Mutiny erupted in Meerut in reaction to the increased pace of Westernization in India and a military crackdown on Indian troops by their British officers.

1838: American actor John Wilkes Booth, who would assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was born near Bel Air, Maryland.

1818: American patriot Paul Revere died in Boston.

1775: The Green Mountain Boys, under the joint command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, captured the British-controlled Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution.

Howard Carter

Howard Carter, telegram to Lord Carnarvon following the discovery of the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb, November 5, 1922

British archaeologist Howard Carter, who made one of the richest and most celebrated contributions to Egyptology—the discovery (1922) of the largely intact tomb of King Tutankhamen—was born this day in 1873.

On this day in 1502, master navigator and admiral Christopher Columbus, long considered the “discoverer” of the New World, set sail from Cádiz, Spain, on his fourth and final voyage, hoping to find a passage to Asia.

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1974: The U.S. House Judiciary Committee launched a formal impeachment investigation of President Richard M. Nixon.

1960: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first birth-control pill.

1939: American track-and-field athlete Ralph Boston, the first man to jump more than 27 feet (8.23 metres), was born in Laurel, Mississippi.

1936: Seven months after invading Ethiopia and driving Emperor Haile Selassie I into exile, Italy annexed Ethiopia as part of Italian East Africa.

1860: Dramatist Sir James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland.

1800: American abolitionist John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut.

Paul Gauguin

French painter Paul Gauguin, who sought to achieve a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work and who was noted for his artistic experimentation, died in the Marquesas Islands this day in 1903.

Following Germany's unconditional surrender, World War II in Europe officially ended at midnight on this day in 1945, although the war in the Pacific continued until the Japanese surrender in September.

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1942: In the Battle of the Coral Sea, the USS Lexington became the first U.S. aircraft carrier to be sunk during World War II.

1884: Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States (1945–53), was born in Lamar, Missouri.

1846: U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor defeated a Mexican force under General Mariano Arista in the Battle of Palo Alto, the first clash of the Mexican War (1846–48).

1737: English historian Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, Surrey.