Today:
1680 – Pueblo peoples captured Santa Fe during the Pueblo Revolt, forcing Spanish colonists out of much of present-day New Mexico for more than a decade.
1770 – James Cook formally claimed the eastern coast of Australia for Great Britain, naming the territory New South Wales.
1858 – The first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates took place in Ottawa, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debated slavery and its expansion during their campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.
1911 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian employee of the museum. The painting was recovered in Italy more than two years later.
1942 – U.S. Marines defeated a major Japanese ground attack at the Battle of the Tenaru on Guadalcanal, one of the first significant land battles of the Guadalcanal campaign during World War II.
1959 – Hawaii officially became the 50th state of the United States. President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the proclamation admitting Hawaii to the Union.
1961 – Motown released “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes. It later became Motown’s first record to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
1968 – Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces consolidated their occupation of Czechoslovakia after invading the country the previous night, bringing the reform movement known as the Prague Spring to an end.
1986 – A massive release of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon swept through nearby villages, killing approximately 1,700 people and thousands of livestock.
1991 – Latvia declared the restoration of its full independence from the Soviet Union as the failed Soviet coup in Moscow collapsed.
