1770 – Captain James Cook, still holding the rank of lieu- tenant, sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia.
1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI of France in a proxy wedding.
1818 – French physicist Augustin Fresnel signs his prelimi- nary “Note on the Theory of Diffraction” (deposited on the fol- lowing day). The document ends with what we now call the Fresnel integrals.
1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a king- dom and guarantees its neutrality.
1903 – The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev (Bessarabia) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Palestine and the Western world.
1943 – Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time, three days after having discovered its effects on April 16.
1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.
1975 – India’s first satellite Aryabhata launched in orbit from Kapustin Yar, Russia.
1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia’s national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, first starting with Good Night.
2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected to the papacy and becomes Pope Benedict XVI.
