Today:
1. 224 AD – The Battle of Hormozdgān: Ardashir I defeats and kills Artabanus V, effectively ending the Parthian Empire and leading to the rise of the Sassanian Empire in Persia.
2. 1789 – The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred, where acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led a revolt against Captain William Bligh on the British ship HMS Bounty in the South Pacific.
3. 1945 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured and executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.
4. 1952 – The Treaty of San Francisco went into effect, officially ending the occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers and restoring full sovereignty to Japan.
5. **1965** – The United States began Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
6. 1967 – Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army due to his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War, resulting in his arrest and the stripping of his boxing titles.
7. 1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France following a defeat in a national referendum, marking the end of his influential leadership in French politics.
8. 1986 – The Soviet reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine, suffered a catastrophic meltdown, leading to one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
9. 1994 – Former CIA official Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia, marking one of the most damaging espionage incidents in American history.
10. 2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist, traveling to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.