UK abolishes wartime identity cards (1952), and Soviet spacecraft Luna 20 lands on the Moon (1972). Born on this day: Robert Mugabe, Harald V and Alan Rickman. Died: Benedict de Spinoza, Malcolm X and Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov.
34 events, 68 births and 61 deaths on this date.
Churchill's government scrapped the identity cards that had been compulsory since the Second World War, with the aim of freeing citizens from state paperwork. The move reversed a wartime measure that many Britons had grown to resent.
Public domainLuna 20 touched down on the lunar surface and later drilled soil samples and returned them to Earth. It was an uncrewed probe, so the sample return was a robotic achievement rather than a human one.
Kurt Eisner, the socialist who led the revolution that ended Bavaria's monarchy and made it a republic, was shot dead in Munich. His killing deepened the instability that followed the First World War in Germany.
Israeli forces withdrew from the canal's western shore under a truce agreed with Egypt. The waterway links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and remains a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
Nixon's trip ends years of hostility between Washington and Beijing, a thaw that reshapes Cold War diplomacy. It opens the door to closer ties between the two countries and sets the stage for his wider détente with the Soviet Union.
Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. (ca. 1974 - 05/15/1984) · Public domain
The League ordered that foreigners who had joined Spain's civil war as fighters be barred from taking part. It was an attempt to stop a local conflict drawing in other nations, though the League had no army to enforce it.
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Robert Mugabe led ZANU through the guerrilla war against Ian Smith's white-minority government in Rhodesia. He then ruled independent Zimbabwe, first as prime minister and later as president, until 2017.
Press Service of the President of Russia · CC BY 4.0
Before taking the throne in 1991, Harald had sailed for Norway at three Olympic Games. As monarch he was known for steering the country through national crises, and he later served as honorary president of World Sailing.
Harry Johansen / Sámediggi Sametinget · CC BY 2.0
Alan Rickman was a British actor with a deep, distinctive voice, best known for playing Severus Snape across the Harry Potter films. He first gained wide notice as the villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Marie-Lan Nguyen · CC BY 2.0
Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher who was expelled from his Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 and then supported himself grinding lenses. His book Ethics equated God with nature, and his ideas on scripture and democracy shaped later thinking.
anonymous · Public domain
Malcolm X became a leading voice for the Nation of Islam after discovering it in prison, later turning to Sunni Islam. He was assassinated in 1965, while a controversial but widely admired advocate for racial justice.
Marion S. Trikosko · Public domain
Sholokhov was a Soviet novelist who wrote about Don Cossacks through revolution, civil war and collectivisation. His epic And Quiet Flows the Don won him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
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