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Events

218 BC - Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia - Hannibal's Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.

1352 - Innocent VI is elected Pope.

1787 - New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1793 - Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by Frech royalists to Lord Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.

1892 - The first performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

1900 - The Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook Narrow-gauge (2 ft 6 in or 762 mm) Railway (now the Puffing Billy Railway) in Victoria, Australia opened for traffic.

1926 - The first performance of Leo? Janá?ek's opera The Makropulos Affair is held in Brno, Czechoslovakia.

1935 - The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Sri Lanka.

1961 - Indonesia invades Netherlands New Guinea.

1966 - Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.

1969 - Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghan's motion to remove the limit on the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, which suspended the death penalty in England, Wales and Scotland for all crimes, except treason, piracy with violence, and certain crimes under the jurisdiction of the armed forces for a period of five years, is carried by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

1973 - Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union.

1996 - The Oakland, California school board passes a resolution officially declaring "Ebonics" a language or dialect.

 
 

1997 - HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.

1999 - NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.

2001 - The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City, is damaged by fire.

2002 - 2003 California recall: Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier.

 
 

 

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