Today:
1793 – France declares war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, marking the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars.
1861 – Texas secedes from the United States and joins the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
1884 – The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary (A–Ant) is published.
1893 – Thomas Edison completes the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria, in West Orange, New Jersey.
1918 – Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping 13 days and aligning its date system with much of the Western world.
1960 – Four African American college students stage a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking a wave of civil rights protests.
1978 – Director Roman Polanski flees the United States to avoid sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.
2004 – Facebook is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates at Harvard University.
2021 – Myanmar’s military stages a coup, detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other government officials.