Pope John Paul II visits Canterbury Cathedral (1982), and Egypt and the United States sign F-16 parts manufacturing agreement (1989). Born on this day: John F. Kennedy, Peter Higgs and Charles II. Died: Mary Pickford, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Bahāʾ Allāh.
34 events, 59 births and 70 deaths on this date.
John Paul II became the first pope to visit Canterbury Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the mother church of the Anglican Communion. The visit was a notable step in relations between the Catholic and Anglican churches.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 plEgypt agreed with the United States that its factories could make parts for the F-16 Falcon fighter jet. The deal let Egypt build military aircraft components locally rather than importing every piece.
Veterans of the First World War gathered in the US capital as the Bonus Army, asking for cash they had been promised but which was not due until 1945. They wanted it paid now, rather than waiting more than a decade.
Wisconsin was admitted to the Union on this day, joining as the thirtieth state after years as part of the Northwest Territory. Its settlers, many from Germany and Scandinavia, shaped a state now known as America's Dairyland.
Rhode Island, a small state that had held out of the new federal system, finally signed on and became one of the United States. Its vote completed the union of the original colonies, leaving none outside the new federal government.
Organisers staged the beauty contest in Sarajevo while the city was under siege during the Bosnian war. Its defiant choice to go ahead drew worldwide attention to the suffering of residents trapped there.
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Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy became the first Catholic US president and the youngest ever elected. He led the country through tense Cold War standoffs before his assassination in Dallas in 1963.
Cecil W. Stoughton · Public domain
Peter Higgs was a British theoretical physicist whose 1964 work predicted the particle now called the Higgs boson, which explains how other particles acquire mass. He shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with François Englert.
Bengt Nyman · CC BY 2.0
Charles II is remembered as the king whose return in 1660 restored the monarchy after the republic led by Oliver Cromwell. He spent nearly a decade in exile in France and the Dutch Republic before being welcomed back to London.
Peter Lely · Public domain
Canadian-born actress who became one of the biggest stars of the silent era, earning the nickname America's Sweetheart. She also co-founded United Artists and won an Academy Award for Coquette.
Rufus Porter Moody · Public domain
Juan Ramón Jiménez was a Spanish poet who won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature for lyric poetry in Spanish. He championed the idea of 'pure poetry', stripping verse down to its essential music and imagery.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Bahāʾ Allāh, born Ḥusayn-ʻAlí, was the Iranian founder of the Bahá'í Faith, which taught the unity of humanity and religious renewal. He spent most of his later life exiled and imprisoned in the Ottoman Empire, and died near Acre.
passport photo taken in Adrianople (present day-Edirne) when He was under house arrest, published in William Miller’s Baha’i Faith (1974). · Public domain
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