A snapshot of history featuring inventors, artists, world events, space missions and cultural milestones
1832: Alexandre Gustave Eiffel is born. The French civil engineer would later design the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris.
1852: Antoine Henri Becquerel is born. He discovered radioactivity and gave his name to its unit of measurement. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.
1892: American billionaire Jean Paul Getty is born. He would go on to own more than 100 oil companies and become one of the richest individuals of his era.
1914: A gas explosion at a coal mine in Kyushu, Japan, kills 687 people.
1926: Greek film director Nikos Koundouros is born, later becoming one of the most influential figures in Greek cinema.
1939: The legendary film Gone with the Wind premieres in Atlanta.
1952: China rejects an Indian proposal for a ceasefire in the Korean War.
1960: Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis submits a proposal to Parliament introducing the “source of wealth” declaration, applying to prime ministers, party leaders and their close relatives.
1961: Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organisers of the Holocaust, is sentenced to death by the war crimes court in Tel Aviv.
1965: NASA’s Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 spacecraft rendezvous in space and orbit the Earth together for more than five hours.
1966: American cartoonist and film producer Walt Disney dies at the age of 65. A long-standing urban legend later claims he was cryogenically frozen in the hope of future revival.
1970: The unmanned spacecraft Venera 7 lands on Venus and, before being destroyed by extreme heat and pressure, transmits valuable data to Earth for 23 minutes.
1990: Secretary General of the Council of Europe Catherine Lalumière holds talks in Athens on the Cyprus issue.
1991: Vasily Zaitsev, Russian soldier and renowned World War II sniper, dies.
1993: Foreign ministers of the European Economic Community approve the GATT agreement on global trade.
1993: MTV broadcasts Nirvana’s iconic Unplugged performance.
1994: Sweden’s Parliament approves the country’s accession treaty to the European Union.
2001: After 11 years of restoration work, the Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens to the public.
2008: American financier Bernard Madoff is exposed for a $50 billion fraud, the largest financial scam in history.
2012: Elections are held in Egypt, during which violent unrest breaks out.
