Ponce de León sails from Puerto Rico toward Florida with colonists (1521), and Protesters topple giant statue of Enver Hoxha in Tirana (1991). Born on this day: Rihanna, Gordon Brown and Kurt Cobain. Died: Maria Goeppert Mayer, Henri Moissan and Martin V.
31 events, 83 births and 50 deaths on this date.
Ponce de León left San Juan with roughly 200 would-be settlers, aiming to plant a colony on the Florida coast he had charted years earlier. The venture was cut short, and he died of an arrow wound later that year after fighting Calusa warriors in Florida.
Jacques Reich (based on an earlier work by another artist) · Public domainCrowds pulled down a huge figure of Enver Hoxha, who had governed Albania for decades under communist rule. The scene showed how quickly the old order was losing its grip as the country turned away from one-party government.
Mir stayed in orbit for fifteen years, and crews lived aboard it for roughly ten of those. Its long working life made it a landmark in long-term human spaceflight.
A quake split open the Sinila crater on Indonesia's Dieng Plateau, letting out toxic hydrogen sulphide. The gas killed 149 villagers living in the surrounding Central Java area.
Lodrisio Visconti led his St George's Mercenaries into battle against the Milanese army at Parabiago, near Milan. Visconti was defeated, and his force was beaten on the field that day.
American figure skater Tara Lipinski won Olympic gold at 15, the youngest Winter Olympic gold medallist up to that point. Her win showed how young the sport's top competitors could be at the highest level.
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Barbadian singer, songwriter and businesswoman whose hits include Umbrella and Diamonds, and who has sold over 250 million records. She has also built a fashion label and a beauty brand, and has taken on acting roles.
U.S. Embassy Bridgetown · Public domain
Gordon Brown is a British Labour politician who was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, and before that spent a decade as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has also worked as a television journalist and a biographer, and later served as a United Nations envoy for global education.
Unknown photographer · OGL 3
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer, guitarist and main songwriter of Nirvana, the grunge band behind Nevermind and Smells Like Teen Spirit. Many saw him as a voice of his generation, a role he said made him uneasy.
P.B. Rage from USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born theoretical physicist who won a share of the 1963 Nobel Prize for her work on the shell structure of atomic nuclei. She was only the second woman to take the physics prize, after Marie Curie.
Nobel foundation · Public domain
French chemist who pulled fluorine free from its compounds, earning the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He also discovered moissanite and helped develop the electric arc furnace.
sv:Generalstabens litografiska anstalt · Public domain
Elected in 1417, he ended the Western Schism, when rival claimants competed for the papal throne. He ruled the Papal States until his death, and no pope has since taken the name Martin.
Sailko (photographer); Lorenzo di Bicci (artist) · CC BY 3.0
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