Today:
1831: Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia.
1858: The first of the famous Lincoln–Douglas debates was held in Ottawa, Illinois.
1911: The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was recovered two years later.
1940: Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico.
1944: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference began, where delegates from the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China met to lay the groundwork for the United Nations.
1959: Hawaii was officially admitted as the 50th state of the United States.
1968: Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the “Prague Spring” reforms.
1983: Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated at Manila International Airport.
1991: Latvia declared its full independence from the Soviet Union.
2017: A total solar eclipse was visible across the continental United States for the first time since 1918.