Today:
1551 – The National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.
1780 – The Cumberland Compact is signed by American settlers in what is now Nashville, Tennessee, establishing a provisional government.
1797 – Napoleon Bonaparte conquers Venice, ending over 1,000 years of Venetian independence.
1820 – Florence Nightingale, pioneer of modern nursing, is born in Florence, Italy.
1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge becomes the first aircraft to fly over the North Pole.
1932 – The body of kidnapped infant Charles Lindbergh Jr. is found in Hopewell, New Jersey.
1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer, in Berlin.
1949 – The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin, ending the Berlin Blockade after almost a year.
2002 – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit, becoming the first U.S. president (in or out of office) to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution.
2008 – A magnitude 7.9 earthquake strikes Sichuan province in China, killing tens of thousands and leaving millions homeless.