Today:
917 – Byzantine forces suffered a major defeat by the First Bulgarian Empire at the Battle of Achelous. The victory helped establish Bulgaria as one of the dominant powers in southeastern Europe.
1619 – A ship carrying captive Africans arrived at Point Comfort in the English colony of Virginia. Their arrival is commonly associated with the beginnings of African slavery in England’s North American colonies, although the legal status of these first arrivals was complex.
1741 – Danish explorer Vitus Bering sighted Alaska during his expedition across the North Pacific. The voyage helped establish European knowledge of the connection between Siberia and North America.
1858 – Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers describing evolution through natural selection were published in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.
1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declared the American Civil War over, proclaiming that peace had been restored throughout the United States.
1911 – The first Around-the-World Air Race began when newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize to the first aviator who could fly around the world within 30 days. No one succeeded in claiming the prize.
1940 – Leon Trotsky was attacked in Mexico City by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader, who struck him in the head with an ice axe. Trotsky died from his injuries the following day.
1960 – Senegal withdrew from the Mali Federation and declared its independence, establishing itself as a separate sovereign nation.
1975 – NASA launched the Viking 1 spacecraft toward Mars. It reached Mars the following year, and its lander became the first U.S. spacecraft to successfully land on the planet and transmit images from its surface.
1977 – NASA launched Voyager 2 on its extraordinary journey through the outer solar system. It eventually flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and remains the only spacecraft ever to have visited Uranus and Neptune.
