Today:
1284 – According to legend, the Pied Piper of Hamelin led 130 children away from the town of Hamelin, Germany, where they mysteriously disappeared.
1661 – Dom Luís I of Portugal was born. He would later reign as King of Portugal from 1861 to 1889.
1806 – Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor abdicated the imperial throne, officially dissolving the Holy Roman Empire after nearly 1,000 years of existence.
1825 – Bolivia declared its independence from Spain, taking its name in honor of Simón Bolívar.
1890 – At Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler became the first person executed using the electric chair.
1926 – Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to successfully swim across the English Channel.
1945 – The United States dropped the atomic bomb known as Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, resulting in unprecedented destruction and loss of life.
1962 – Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom, becoming a sovereign nation within the Commonwealth.
1991 – Tim Berners-Lee made files describing the World Wide Web publicly available on the internet, helping launch the modern web.
2012 – Curiosity rover, part of NASA‘s Mars Science Laboratory mission, successfully landed on Mars in Gale Crater, beginning one of the most productive planetary exploration missions in history.