Michael Phelps wins eighth gold medal at Beijing Olympics (2008), and Vietnamese Catholics report a Marian apparition in Quảng Trị (1798). Born on this day: Robert De Niro, Herta Müller and V.S. Naipaul. Died: Frederick II, Otto Stern and José de San Martín.
29 events, 75 births and 51 deaths on this date.
American swimmer Michael Phelps took his eighth gold of the Beijing Games, beating Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven golds at a single Olympics. It was the most golds ever won at one Games by an athlete.
Agência Brasil Fotografias · CC BY 2.0Vietnamese Catholics in Quảng Trị reported a vision of the Virgin Mary, now known as Our Lady of La Vang. The story remains an important part of the country's Catholic faith.
The Himno Nacional, the Dominican Republic's national anthem, was heard in public for the first time on this day. The country was then still recovering from decades of civil strife and foreign interference, so a shared song was a meaningful step.
Scotland's parliament cut ties with the Pope and overturned the Catholic Church's standing in the kingdom, making Protestantism the official faith. It marked a sharp break with the Catholic Church, which had been the dominant religion there for centuries.
A short novel about farm animals who overthrow their human owner, only to watch the pigs who lead them become as tyrannical as he was. Orwell aimed it at Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Moisei Uritsky, a leading revolutionary in the Bolshevik party, was shot dead. The killing came during the Russian Civil War, when the Bolsheviks were fighting to hold power.
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Robert De Niro is an American actor and producer remembered for his screen performances and two Academy Awards. He won Best Supporting Actor for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, his lines delivered in Italian, and later took Best Actor for Raging Bull.
Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0
Romanian-born German novelist and poet who wrote about violence and repression under Ceaușescu's regime. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009.
Bernhard Holub · CC BY-SA 4.0
Trinidad-born writer whose comic early novels about Trinidad and bleaker later fiction of alienation won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He also wrote travel chronicles and was knighted in 1990.
Faizul Latif Chowdhury · CC BY-SA 4.0
Frederick II was the Hohenzollern ruler who turned Prussia into a major European military power and became known as Frederick the Great. He was also a patron of music, philosophy and the arts, and a supporter of enlightened absolutism.
Anton Graff · Public domain
Otto Stern was a German-American experimental physicist who worked on beams of molecules. In 1943 he was awarded the physics Nobel for that method and for measuring how strongly the proton responds to magnetism.
Nobelprize.org · Public domain
Argentine general who led the southern campaigns for independence from Spain, crossing the Andes to free Chile before helping liberate Peru. He died in exile in France in 1850, having stepped back from power in Peru in 1822 rather than share it with Simón Bolívar.
The exact author is disputed. Some sources attribute it to Jean Baptiste Madou, others to the art teacher of San Martin's daughter, and others suspect it to be the work of many different people. · Public domain
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