2020
Bill Gates left the Microsoft board after founding the company four decades prior.
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2014
Marvel’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” premiered in Los Angeles.
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2004
Luciano Pavarotti’s final opera took place at New York Metropolitan Opera.
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1996
Sixteen primary school children and one teacher were killed in a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland.
Known as the Dunblane massacre, it occurred at Dunblane Primary School when Thomas Hamilton shot and killed seventeen people. He injured fifteen others before killing himself. This remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.
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1980
Prolific killer John Wayne Gacy was given the death sentence for the murder of 33 young men and boys.
Gacy was given a lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
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1969
Apollo 9 and its crew returned to Earth after a 10-day mission orbiting Earth.
During their mission, astronaut Russell L. Schweickart walked in space on the fourth day, and many tasks were performed to mimic the future Apollo 11 mission that would land and lift off the moon.
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1942
The US army enlisted its first female colonel, Julia Flikke.
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1930
Clyde Tombaugh announced the discovery of Pluto.
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1915
American baseball catcher Wilbert Robinson tried to claim a record by catching a ball dropped from a plane 525 feet above him.
The aviator forgot the ball, and instead, she brought a grapefruit with her. The fruit splattered all over Robinson’s face, much to the amusement of his teammates.
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1877
Earmuffs were patented.
Chester Greenwood created earmuffs with the help of his grandmother when he was just 15 years old. He came up with the idea because his ears were cold when he was ice skating. Their creation provided many jobs in Maine, US, for almost sixty years.
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1826
Pope Leo XII renewed the prohibition of members of the Catholic Church from joining the Freemasons.
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1781
Astronomer William Herschel first observed Uranus.
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