Today:
1368 – Zhu Yuanzhang ascended to the throne as the Hongwu Emperor, founding China’s Ming dynasty.
1556 – The Shaanxi earthquake, one of the deadliest earthquakes in history, struck China, killing an estimated 830,000 people.
1570 – James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray and regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, was assassinated in Linlithgow.
1719 – The Principality of Liechtenstein was created within the Holy Roman Empire.
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her MD by the Geneva Medical College in New York, becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.
1897 – Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, leading to one of the few cases where a ghost’s testimony was used in court.
1943 – British forces captured Tripoli in Libya during World War II.
1950 – The Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved the Law of Return, granting every Jew the right to immigrate to Israel.
1960 – The bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest known point on Earth’s seabed.
1973 – President Richard Nixon announced that a peace accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War.