United States begins construction of Panama Canal (1904), and Theodore Kaczynski sentenced in Sacramento after plea deal (1998). Born on this day: Audrey Hepburn, Hosni Mubarak and Umm Kulthūm. Died: Josip Broz Tito, Carl von Ossietzky and Christian René de Duve.
31 events, 64 births and 51 deaths on this date.
Work started on a cut across the Isthmus of Panama, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Ships otherwise had to sail around the tip of South America, and the canal would spare them that long, hazardous voyage.
User:Stan Shebs · CC BY-SA 3.0Theodore Kaczynski, the bomber known as the Unabomber, accepted a plea deal that spared him execution. The federal judge in Sacramento sentenced him to several life terms, plus decades more on top.
Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher took office after her party won the general election, starting a push towards privatisation and against trade union power. She led the country until 1990, and her policies gave their name to Thatcherism.
His spare novella about an old Cuban fisherman won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its clipped, understated style helped make him one of the most influential writers of his century, and he took the Nobel Prize in Literature the next year.
Lloyd Arnold · Public domain
A former White House aide, Oliver North was found guilty on three counts linked to the secret arms-for-hostages dealings and funding of Nicaraguan rebels. He was cleared of nine other charges, and an appeals court later overturned the convictions.
Israel's prime minister and the Palestine Liberation Organisation's leader put their names to an accord giving Palestinians self-rule in Gaza and Jericho. It was a first concrete step towards Palestinian self-government.
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Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian, best known for Roman Holiday, which won her an Academy Award, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. She later devoted much of her life to UNICEF work with children in poorer countries.
Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
Hosni Mubarak was an Egyptian air force officer who became president in 1981 after Anwar Sadat's assassination. He ruled for three decades, offering stability but presiding over repression, until the 2011 revolution forced him from office.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Her father first had her sing religious hymns dressed as a boy, since singing in the countryside was frowned on for girls. After moving to Cairo in the 1920s she became Egypt's best-loved vocalist, famed for long, intricate songs that still get played today.
Production company · Public domain
Tito led Yugoslavia for decades, first as prime minister and later as president, and helped found the Non-Aligned Movement that kept his state independent of both superpower blocs. He is best known for leading the Partisan resistance against German occupation during the Second World War.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
The German journalist and pacifist who exposed Germany's secret rearmament and won the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, which he was forbidden to travel to Norway to accept. Weakened by years of abuse in Nazi camps, he succumbed to tuberculosis in a Berlin hospital.
Sohst, Walter / Kurzbein, Heiner · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Belgian biochemist who discovered peroxisomes and lysosomes, two structures inside cells, and shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on how cells are organised. He died in Nethen, near Brussels, aged 95.
Julien Doornaert · CC BY 2.5
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