A selection of notable moments that shaped culture, politics, science and world affairs.
1809: French educator Louis Braille is born. Blinded at the age of three, he later developed the Braille reading and writing system that bears his name.
1847: Samuel Colt presents his first revolver to the US government.
1884: The Fabian Society is founded in London, laying the intellectual groundwork for the creation of the Labour Party.
1885: The first-ever appendectomy is performed in Iowa, United States.
1954: Elvis Presley makes his first recording, producing a two-song acetate as a birthday gift for his mother.
1960: French writer and philosopher Albert Camus, winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, is killed in a car accident.
1963: New Yorker James Plimpton invents the quad roller skate, featuring four wheels.
1973: Artwork valued at $2 million, including a $1 million painting by Rembrandt, is stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
1995: Iran’s parliament bans satellite dishes indefinitely, citing concerns over content deemed harmful to Islamic values.
1999: The creation of the euro is approved, with the single European currency set to be introduced initially in 11 EU member states.
2002: Italian Antonio Todde, from Sardinia, dies at the age of 112, at the time recognised as the world’s oldest living person.
2010: The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, officially opens in Dubai.
2011: Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi dies from injuries sustained after setting himself on fire, an act that helped spark the Tunisian uprising and the wider Arab Spring.
2014: Islamist militant groups affiliated with ISIL seize control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
