1287: Sea defences collapse in the Netherlands, flooding large parts of the country and causing the deaths of 50,000 people.
1895: Paul Éluard is born, a French poet and one of the founders of Surrealism.
1900: Professor Max Planck of the University of Berlin formulates the quantum theory for the first time, proposing that energy is expressed in discrete units related to the fundamental particles of matter.
1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions reach the South Pole, beating the British expedition led by Robert F. Scott.
1920: The British House of Lords approves the partition of Ireland into two separate entities.
1943: John Harvey Kellogg dies. He was an American physician and a pioneer of health-focused nutrition.
1962: NASA’s Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
1980: Yoko Ono calls for a ten-minute silence in memory of John Lennon, who had been murdered six days earlier. Around 100,000 people gather in Central Park, New York.
1989: Andrei Sakharov dies. He was a Soviet physicist and human rights activist who fought for civil liberties in his country and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he declined.
1991: For the first time, a United Nations statement explicitly refers to the Turkish occupation of Cyprus.
1995: The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris, bringing an end to the war in Yugoslavia.
2008: George W. Bush makes his final visit to Iraq as President of the United States. During a press conference in Baghdad, journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi throws two shoes at him, but misses.
2013: Irish actor Peter O’Toole dies.
This article was originally published on Polignosi.