Today:
79 AD: The Roman volcano Mount Vesuvius is believed to have begun stirring, with its famous eruption destroying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum the following day.
1305: Scottish knight William Wallace was executed for treason by the English in London. He had led the Scottish resistance during the Wars of Scottish Independence.
1833: The United Kingdom abolished slavery throughout most of its colonies, freeing about 700,000 enslaved people. The abolition was the result of decades of campaigning by anti-slavery activists.
1904: Harry D. Weed of Canastota, New York, was granted a patent for the automobile tire chain, an invention designed to improve a car’s traction on slippery or snowy roads.
1927: Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts. Their trial and execution sparked international outrage and protests, with many believing they were unfairly convicted due to their political beliefs.
1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that secretly divided spheres of influence in Eastern Europe between the two powers.
1944: During World War II, Romania switched its allegiance from the Axis powers to the Allies after a coup d’état removed its pro-Axis government. This move is believed by some historians to have shortened the war by several months.
1966: NASA’s robotic spacecraft, Lunar Orbiter 1, took the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon. The black-and-white image showed a crescent Earth floating in space.
1990: Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union. This was a crucial step toward its full sovereignty, which it achieved a year later in 1991.
2023: India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon, making India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface and the first to land in the south polar region.