1707: The last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji takes place in Japan.
1773: Residents of Boston dump the cargo of three British ships carrying tea into the harbour in protest against British taxation. The event becomes known as the Boston Tea Party and is considered the beginning of the American War of Independence.
1775: English novelist Jane Austen is born.
1803: Sixty, according to some accounts twenty-two, women from Souli perform the Dance of Zalongo and leap from the cliff with their children, choosing death over capture.
1859: Wilhelm Carl Grimm, German folklorist and one of the Brothers Grimm, dies.
1866: Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky is born.
1898: Pavel Tretyakov, Russian businessman and major art collector, dies.
1915: German-born Jewish physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein formulates the Theory of Relativity.
1917: English writer Arthur C. Clarke is born.
1920: An earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale devastates China’s Gansu province, killing approximately 200,000 people.
1923: In the last Greek elections conducted using voting beads, Eleftherios Venizelos secures a landslide victory.
1939: Swedish actress Liv Ullmann is born.
1957: The launch of the first American satellite fails, leaving the United States unable to respond immediately to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik.
1959: Archbishop Makarios thanks the government and people of Greece for their support in the struggle of the Cypriots.
1974: Poet and prose writer Kostas Varnalis dies at the age of 90.
1989: Lee Van Cleef, actor known for villain roles in American cinema, dies.
1991: The Russian parliament decides to nationalise the property of the Supreme Soviet.
1993: Members of the European Community, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark, recognise Skopje diplomatically under the name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
1995: The decision to introduce the common European currency, the euro, in the early 2000s and to advance Economic and Monetary Union is taken, among other measures, at the EU Summit in Madrid.
1997: The 38th episode of Pokémon, titled Electric Soldier Porygon, is broadcast in Japan. Visual effects trigger severe seizures, sending 685 people to hospital, while more than 12,000 report symptoms nationwide. The incident becomes known as the “Pokémon Shock”.
2012: A brutal gang rape case in India shocks the world. A 23-year-old woman is repeatedly assaulted and beaten while travelling on a bus by six men. She dies 13 days later, sparking global outrage.