2021
Zanzibar born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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2020
Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier, and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”.
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2014
A Spanish nurse became the first person to contract Ebola outside of West Africa.
The cause was blamed on substandard PPE.
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2008
Swedish music streaming service Spotify was launched by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
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2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California.
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1998
A gay student, Matthew Shepard, was brutally beaten and left to die in Wyoming, US.
Shepard was found the next day by two cyclists. He was tied to a fence and died a few days later.
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1996
Fox News Channel began broadcasting.
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1993
Author Toni Morrison won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature for her work and essays about the Black American experience.
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1986
British Newspaper “The Independent” was first published.
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1959
The Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 allowed the world to look at the far side of the moon for the first time.
The images returned were of poor quality compared to later photos, but it was our first glance at the other side of the moon and was met with great excitement worldwide.
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1944
The Sonderkommandos, prisoners who took care of the bodies at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, protested their pending mass murder.
Several female Jews smuggled gunpowder from the camp’s munitions factory to the workers in Crematorium IV. Those workers planned to use the gunpowder to destroy the crematorium but had their plans cut short when they learned their workforce was due to be executed. Instead, they attacked the guards in revolt, killing only a handful but dying themselves. A total of 452 Sonderkommandos were either killed in the revolution or executed after, along with four of the woman smugglers.
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1931
The first-ever infrared photo was taken in Rochester, New York.
The photo was taken in complete darkness and was a group of many men sitting in a theater. But of course, the picture wasn’t black; the men in the theatre were clear in the photo.
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1840
Willem II became King of the Netherlands.
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1691
The Massachusetts Charter was signed, which established the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
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1542
Portuguese explorer Juan RodrÃguez Cabrillo discovers Catalina Island off the coast of California.
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