2021
Turner Art Prize awarded to activist group Array Collective for installation including mock Irish pub – first Northern Irish artists to win.
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2021
Tel Aviv named the world’s most expensive city for the first time ahead of Singapore and Paris, with Damascus the cheapest.
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2020
Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Telescope collapsed less than a month after being decommissioned.
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2018
The computer-animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” premiered in Los Angeles.
It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2019.
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2018
The Japanese broadcaster NHK launched the world’s first super-high definition 8K television channel.
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2003
The final film in the Lord of the Rings series “The Return of the King,” directed by Peter Jackson, premiered in Wellington, New Zealand.
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1999
Jay-Z stabbed Lance Rivera.
At another artist’s album release party, Jay-Z accused Lance Rivera of bootlegging his album before it was released and stabbed him. Jay-Z pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation.
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1988
The first-ever World AIDS day started in effort to raise awareness of the AIDS global epidemic.
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1984
NASA intentionally crashed a Boeing 720 aircraft to test new safety technology.
Known colloquially as the Crash in the Desert, the experiment was a joint project between NASA and the US Federal Aviation Administration. It took more than four years to prepare for the test, which was conducted via remote control systems. It was determined that only a quarter of the passengers would have survived the crash. It took more than an hour to extinguish the enormous blaze.
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1960
Paul McCartney and Pete Best were arrested.
While in Hamburg, Germany, a misunderstood incident of Paul and Pete using fire as a light source resulted in them being arrested and deported for an accusation of attempted arson. They were given 5 minutes to pack their belongings, and Pete Best had to leave his drums behind.
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1955
Rosa Parks was arrested.
When she refused to move to the back of the bus and give her seat to a white passenger, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama.
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1941
Japanese Emperor Hirohito approved plans set forward by his advisors to go to war against the United States of America.
Emperor Hirohito later reflected that he personally didn’t wish to go to war with the West. When he was a young man, he had visited Great Britain and came away thinking that cooperation with the West would be beneficial for Japan. Hirohito approved the war plans anyway, as he believed he would have been assassinated if he hadn’t.
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1919
Lady Nancy Astor was sworn in, making her the first female member of British Parliament.
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1918
The Kingdom of Iceland was first established.
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1903
The Great Train Robbery, the first-ever Western film, was released.
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1865
Shaw University, the first historically Black university in the southern United States, was founded.
A historically Black university is a university founded before the Civil Rights movement of 1964 specifically for African-American students. Shaw University was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, a former Confederate State.
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1834
Slavery in Cape Colony, Britain’s colony in South Africa, was abolished by the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
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1822
Peter I was crowned Emperor of Brazil.
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