1522: After a five-month siege by the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Venetians surrender Rhodes to the Ottomans.
1820: The state of Missouri introduces legislation requiring unmarried men aged 21 to 25 to pay a one-dollar tax.
1860: South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States, following the election victory of Republican Abraham Lincoln.
1880: Electric lights are installed on Broadway in New York.
1915: Aziz Nesin, Turkish writer, is born.
1917: The Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force, is established.
1922: Fourteen republics form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
1946: An earthquake strikes Japan’s Nankaido island, killing more than 1,300 people.
1946: American rocker Patti Smith is born.
1957: Singer Anna Vissi is born.
1963: Intercommunal violence breaks out in Cyprus following the accidental death of a Turkish Cypriot woman from police gunfire.
1967: Ian Anderson and Glenn Cornick form the rock band Jethro Tull.
1968: John Steinbeck, leading American author, dies.
1970: In Greece, dictator Georgios Papadopoulos declares that elections will be held when he, as the bearer of the Greek people’s mandate, deems it appropriate.
1971: Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists found the international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris.
1973: ETA assassinate the Spanish Prime Minister and close associate of Franco, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, using around 100 kilos of dynamite.
1982: Conductor and pianist Arthur Rubinstein dies at the age of 95.
1989: The United States invades Panama in order to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega.
1990: The OECD predicts difficult times ahead for Greece.
1993: In the United States, it is revealed that during the 1940s researchers administered radioactive pills to pregnant women to study long-term effects on children.
1997: In Greece, an Air Force C-130 aircraft taking part in the search for a Ukrainian Yakovlev plane that had disappeared from Thessaloniki radar three days earlier crashes in Oinoi. All five crew members are killed.
2009: Yiannis Moralis, Greek painter, dies.
2016: At least 30 people are killed in a series of explosions at a fireworks market a few kilometres from Mexico City.
This article was originally published on Polignosi.