[You see, kids... Once upon a time there was an American president who cared about peace in the Middle East. I know, I know, you think I'm shitting you, but it's really true! Look - here's a picture to prove it.]
1026 - Pope John XIX crowned Conrad II - first King of the Salian Dynasty - as Holy Roman Emperor.
1130 - Norway's King Sigurd I died without a legitimate male heir, precipitating a civil war that persisted until 1240; in the meantime he was succeeded by his illegitimate son Magnus IV and his half-brother Harald IV.
1212 - Portugal's King Sancho I died, at which time he was succeeded by his eldest son, who reigned as Afonso II.
1552 - Guru Amar Das became the third of eleven Sikh Gurus, following in the footsteps of Guru Angad Dev.
1636 - Holland's Utrecht University was founded.
1812 - An earthquake destroyed Caracas in the midst of the Venezuelan War of Independence.
1839 - The Henley Royal Regatta was first proposed by Captain Edmund Gardiner.
1958 - The US Army launched Explorer 3 to explore the Van Allen radiation belt.
1969 - American novelist John Kennedy Toole - best remembered today for his epic work A Confederacy of Dunces, for which he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 - committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning near Biloxi, Mississippi.
1971 - East Pakistan declared its independence from Pakistan to form the People's Republic of Bangladesh, inciting the Bangladesh Liberation War.
1975 - The Biological Weapons Convention entered into force.
1976 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sent out the first royal email - from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment - apparently.
1979 - Following the Camp David Accords Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, DC.
1982 - The groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was held on Washington, DC's National Mall.
1990 - American fashion designer Halston - an icon of the 1970s - died in San Francisco of AIDS-related complications following a lifetime of legendary debauchery.
1997 - Thirty-nine bodies were found in a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, belonging to members of the Heaven's Gate cult; the followers of Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles had been brainwashed into believing that a spaceship following the Comet Hale-Bopp would take their souls with them. Whatever you believe, they were definitely taken for a ride...
1998 - During Algeria's Oued Bouaicha massacre 52 people were killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.
1999 - The so-called Melissa worm infected Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems around the world, but not those of Apple. Suckers...
2005 - The Taiwanese government called on 1 million of its citizens to demonstrate in Taipei, in opposition to the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China; between 200,000 and 300,000 actually attended the walk.
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