Joe Biden is confirmed as the 46th US president (2020), and Uprising led by Colonel Abu Taher ousts Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf in Bangladesh (1975). Born on this day: Marie Curie, Albert Camus and Leon Trotsky. Died: Leonard Cohen, Eleanor Roosevelt and Alfred Russel Wallace.
31 events, 48 births and 43 deaths on this date.
Biden was confirmed as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, beating the incumbent Donald Trump after a close and contested count. He had previously spent decades in the US Senate and as vice president under Barack Obama.
Adam Schultz · Public domainSoldiers and civilians rose up in Bangladesh, overthrowing and killing Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf. The revolt freed Ziaur Rahman, the army chief held under house arrest, who later became president.
With American troops moving into Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, Iraq's interim government declared a two-month state of emergency. The assault was part of a push to reclaim cities held by armed groups before national elections planned for January.
Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took power from Habib Bourguiba, who had led Tunisia since independence from France in 1956. The change was carried out by declaring the ageing president medically unfit, a move that ended his three decades in office.
This was the last of Columbus's four Atlantic voyages sponsored by Spain's Catholic Monarchs. Those trips opened the Americas to widespread European exploration and colonisation.
Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio · Public domain
Oil turned up in the Caspian Sea near Azerbaijan's coast, and the find led to Neft Daşları. It is usually counted as the first platform built to produce oil from open water.
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Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist who won two Nobel Prizes, in physics and in chemistry, the only person to win in two different sciences. She pioneered research into radioactivity, a term she coined, and helped found major medical research centres in Paris and Warsaw.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Born in French Algeria, Camus became a novelist and philosopher, remembered for The Stranger and The Plague. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, aged 44.
Photograph by United Press International · Public domain
Born Lev Bronstein, he became one of the leading figures of the 1917 October Revolution and the Red Army's first commander. He was later driven out of the Soviet Union by Stalin and killed in Mexico in 1940.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter and poet whose songs, including Hallelujah, explored faith, love, loss and regret. He wrote novels and poetry before turning to music in 1966, and his work became known far beyond Canada.
Rama · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr
Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving first lady of the United States...
FDR Presidential Library & Museum · CC BY 2.0
He reached the theory of natural selection independently of Darwin, and his paper on it spurred Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species. In the Malay Archipelago he mapped the Wallace Line, the boundary between Asian and Australian animal life.
London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company (active 1855-1922) · Public domain
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