Today:
1533 – Atahualpa, the last effectively ruling emperor of the Inca Empire, was executed by Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizarro in Cajamarca, Peru.
1756 – Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Saxony, an action that helped ignite the European phase of the Seven Years’ War.
1786 – Shays’ Rebellion began in Massachusetts as financially distressed farmers protested high taxes, debts, and foreclosures. The uprising helped expose weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation and strengthened calls for a new U.S. Constitution.
1831 – Michael Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction, discovering that a changing magnetic field could produce an electric current. The principle became fundamental to electric generators and transformers.
1842 – The Treaty of Nanking was signed aboard HMS Cornwallis, ending the First Opium War between Britain and China. Among its provisions, China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain.
1898 – The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Frank Seiberling. The company was named in honor of Charles Goodyear, who had developed the process of vulcanizing rubber.
1949 – The Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, known as RDS-1, at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. The test ended the United States’ monopoly on nuclear weapons.
1958 – Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana. He began performing with his brothers as a child and went on to become one of the most commercially successful and influential entertainers in popular music history.
1966 – The Beatles performed their final paid concert before a live audience at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Afterward, the group largely abandoned touring to concentrate on increasingly sophisticated studio recordings.
2005 – Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Catastrophic flooding followed in New Orleans after levees and floodwalls failed, and the disaster ultimately caused more than 1,300 deaths and enormous destruction across Louisiana and Mississippi.