Cartier charts the Saint Lawrence River for Europe (1534), and Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria (1967). Born on this day: Peter I (the Great), Peter I and Johnny Depp. Died: Charles Dickens, Nero and Miguel Ángel Asturias.
28 events, 54 births and 61 deaths on this date.
Breton explorer Jacques Cartier is credited with being the first European to chart the river and its gulf. He also gave the region the name Canada, drawn from local Iroquoian words for the settlements he visited.
Théophile Hamel / After François Nicholas Riss · CC BY-SA 4.0During the Six-Day War, Israeli forces seized the Golan Heights, a high plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria. The territory remained under Israeli control for decades and remains a deeply contested border area.
Soviet forces moved into East Karelia and the part of Karelia Finland had held since 1941. The attack hit land Finland had held for three years, during the Second World War.
Following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a nationwide day of mourning. The shooting, in Los Angeles, came just two months after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder and deepened a sense of national grief.
Arnold Newman · Public domain
The island region's new parliament met for the first time in Mariehamn, its capital, marking the start of self-rule within Finland. Today the date is kept as Åland's Self-Government Day.
Rome's emperor Nero took his own life, reciting a line from Virgil's epic as he did it. With him gone, the Julio-Claudian dynasty was over and a civil war broke out, which historians call the Year of the Four Emperors.
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Peter I, known as the Great, modernised Russia by founding its navy, winning a Baltic coastline and building Saint Petersburg on the Neva. He moved the capital there from Moscow and took the title of emperor, turning a tsardom into an empire.
Attributed to Jean-Marc Nattier · Public domain
Peter I, known as Peter the Great, ruled Russia for decades and pushed it towards Western ideas, science and industry. He founded Saint Petersburg and moved the capital there in 1712, a city he called a window to the West.
Attributed to Jean-Marc Nattier · Public domain
Johnny Depp is an American actor, musician and filmmaker who began in amateur rock bands before becoming a teen idol on 21 Jump Street. He is best known for his eccentric screen roles, especially Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Harald Krichel · CC BY-SA 3.0
Charles Dickens, the Victorian novelist behind Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, died at his home in Kent, aged 58. He was among the most widely read writers of his age, and his serial novels changed how fiction reached readers.
Jeremiah Gurney · Public domain
The last emperor of Rome's Julio-Claudian line, Nero is remembered for ordering the murder of his own mother. He appeared publicly as an actor, poet and charioteer, scandalising the aristocracy, before taking his own life in 68.
Jastrow · Public domain
The Guatemalan writer whose novel El Señor Presidente, about a ruthless dictator, helped earn him the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature. Spent years abroad after opposing dictatorship, he was also a diplomat and a champion of Mayan culture.
Dominique Roger · CC BY-SA 3.0 igo
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