Established by Israel’s Knesset as Holocaust Day in remembrance of the estimated six million Jews killed by Nazis.
EVENTS
- 1954 – Hank Aaron hits his first major league home run.
- 1956 – Elvis Presley makes his first appearance in Las Vegas, Nevada.
- 1971 – The Rolling Stones release Sticky Fingers. The album is often considered one of the British rock band’s best. It includes hits like “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”.
- 1984 – The discovery of the virus causing AIDS is announced. French virologists Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the HIV virus.
- 1985 – Coca-Cola releases New Coke. The new formula was so unpopular that the original Coke was re-introduced as Coca-Cola Classic soon afterward.
- 1988 – Kanellos Kanellopoulos flies across the Aegean Sea in a human-powered aircraft. The Greek Olympic cyclist flew a record-breaking 115 km (71 mi) from Crete to Santorini in the MIT Daedalus aircraft, which was named after the mythological inventor of aviation.
- 2001 – Intel introduces the Pentium 4 Processor.
- 2005 – The first YouTube video is posted. The 18-second clip “Me at the zoo” shows co-founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo. It has been viewed more than 84.8 million times (2020).
BIRTHDAYS
- 1564 – William Shakespeare (Writer)
- 1775 – J.M.W Turner (Artist)
- 1791 – James Buchanan (15th US President)
- 1858 – Max Planck (Scientist)
- 1891 – Sergei Prokofiev (Russian pianist, composer, conductor)
- 1928 – Shirley Temple (Actress)
- 1936 – Roy Orbison (Singer)
- 1940 – Lee Majors (Actor)
- 1960 – Valerie Bertinelli (Actress)
- 1961 – George Lopez (Actor and comedian)
DEATHS
- 1616 – William Shakespeare (English playwright, actor)
- 1992 – Satyajit Ray (Indian director, producer, screenwriter)
- 1993 – Cesar Chavez (American activist)
- 1998 – Konstantinos Karamanlis (Greek politician, 3rd President of Greece)
- 2007 – Boris Yeltsin (Russian politician, 1st President of Russia)