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In 1405, Pope Pius II was born as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini.
He became pope in 1458 and tried to unite Europe in a crusade
against the Turks.
In 1697, Canaletto, an Italian artist famous for his views of
Venice, London and English country homes, was born as
Giovanni Antonio Canal.
In 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, negotiated largely by
Britain and France, ended the Austrian War of Succession.
In 1860, British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan, the imperial
summer palace in Beijing, to the ground.
In 1865, Lord Palmerston, British statesman and politician,
died. He was prime minister twice between 1855 and 1865.
In 1867, the U.S. flag flew for the first time at Sitka,
following the purchase of Alaska from Russia.
In 1871, Charles Babbage, British mathematician and inventor
who pioneered the forerunner of the computer, died.
In 1893, Sir Sidney Holland, a New Zealand statesman who
became leader of the National Party in 1940 and prime
minister in 1949, was born.
In 1905, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, president of the Republic of
the Ivory Coast from 1960-93, was born.
In 1912, Italy and Turkey signed a peace treaty at Lausanne,
Switzerland, whereby Cyrenaica and Tripoli gained autonomy
and the Dodecanese Islands were restored to Turkey.
In 1919, Canadian statesman Pierre Elliott Trudeau was born.
He was prime minister 1968-79 and 1980-84.
In 1922, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was formed
in England.
In 1925, Melina Mercouri, a Greek actress who became a
politician and Minister of Culture, was born.
In 1931, Thomas Alva Edison, an American inventor, died. In
his lifetime he held over 1,000 patents, including the
electric lamp, the phonograph and the motion picture
projector.
In 1939, Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of President
John F. Kennedy, was born.
In 1956, Martina Navratilova was born. The Czech-born tennis
player received political asylum in the U.S.
In 1963, Harold Macmillan resigned as British prime minister
and was replaced by Lord Home, who renounced his peerage and
became Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
In 1967, the Soviet Venera 4 spacecraft entered the
atmosphere of Venus and transmitted data back to Earth before
losing contact 27km above the surface.
In 1970, in Canada, the body of Pierre Laporte, the Quebec
Minister of Labor, was found following his kidnap by the
Quebec Liberation Front.
In 1977, three Palestinian hijackers were killed when a
German anti-terrorist squad stormed a Lufthansa aircraft at
Mogadishu Airport. All 86 passengers who had been held
hostage for five days were freed.
In 1989, East Germany leader Erich Honecker stepped down,
officially on health grounds, and was replaced by Egon Krenz.
In 1989, Hungary's parliament purged the constitution of its
Stalinist elements to create a Western-style basic law for a
return to multiparty democracy.
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