Birthdays
- 1898 Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China, born in Huai’an, China (d. 1976)
- 1918 James Tobin, American economist, Nobel laureate (d. 2002)
- 1934 Daniel Kahneman, Israeli economist and Nobel laureate (2002), born in Tel Aviv, Israel
Events
- 363 Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign that brings about his own death
- 1770 Boston Massacre (Incident on King Street): British soldiers kill 5 men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones and sticks at them. African American Crispus Attucks 1st to die; later held up as early black martyr. Massacre galvanizes anti-British feelings
- 1864 1st track meet between Oxford & Cambridge
- 1904 Nikola Tesla describes the process of the ball lightning formation in Electrical World and Engineer
- 1923 Montana & Nevada become 1st states to enact old age pension laws, providing precedent for Social Security 10 years later
- 1931 Gandhi & British viceroy Lord Irwin sign pact
- 1933 FDR proclaims 10-day bank holiday
- 1933 Germany’s Nazi Party wins majority in parliament (43.9%-17.2M votes)
- 1946 Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, popularizes the term and draws attention to the division of Europe
- 1971 “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin first played live at Ulster Hall, Belfast by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones
- 1976 British pound falls below $2 for 1st time
- 1995 Graves of Tsar Nicholas II and family found in St Petersburg
- 2013 The Dow Jones surpasses its 2007 pre-financial crisis levels for the first time
- 2013 Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolás Maduro assumes the presidency after the death of Hugo Chávez
- 2018 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets South Korean officials for the first time since taking office, hosting a dinner in Pyongyang