1812.- An earthquake destroys the cities of Caracas, La Guaira and San Felipe, all of them located in the territory of present-day Venezuela.
1827.- Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer, dies.
1845.- Spain recognizes Venezuela as a sovereign and independent nation.
1848.- Conato of uprising in Madrid. The Government of Narváez orders the imprisonment of several military and political personnel.
1871.- Serafín Alvarez Quintero, Spanish playwright, is born.
1883.- National tribute to Benito Pérez Galdós in Madrid.
1892.- Walt Whitman, American poet, dies.
1893.- Palmiro Togliati, Italian communist leader, is born.
1899.- The German archaeologist Robert Koldewey discovers the walls of ancient Babylon.
1901.- The Bank of Biscay is founded in Bilbao.
1902.- Cecil Rhodes, British politician and South African politician, dies.
1905.- Viktor Frankl, Austrian scientist, father of logotherapy, was born.
1907.- Nicaraguan troops cause a new defeat to those of Honduras and El Salvador and enter Tegucigalpa.
1911.- Tennessee Williams, American playwright, is born.
1913.- Balkan War: Bulgarians storm and take the city of Adrianopolis to the Turks.
1925.- They arrive in Madrid, from Riga, the mortal remains of the Spanish writer Angel Ganivet.
1929.- The Spanish aircraft “Jesús del Gran Poder”, piloted by Captains Ignacio Jiménez Martínez and Francisco Iglesias Brage, lands in Bahia (Brazil), after a flight over the Atlantic of 6,745 kilometers.
1932.- Premiere of “Luisa Fernanda”, zarzuela by maestro Moreno Torroba, at the Calderón theatre in Madrid.
1956.- The last French troops in Vietnam leave Saigon.
1969.- The Communist Party in Venezuela is legalized.
1971.- General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse was appointed chairman of the Argentine Board of Commanders, following the fall of General Levingston.
1978.- Two hundred thousand people are manifested in the Basque Country in the first legal Aberri Eguna, which passed normally.
1979.- Israel and Egypt signed the treaty agreed in 1978 at Camp David that seals peace between the two countries.
1980.- Roland Barthes, French writer, dies.
1985.- Argentine film director Luis Puenzo wins with “La historia oficial”, the first Oscar to achieve a Spanish-American film.
1989.- Historical elections in the USSR to elect 1,500 territorial deputies from its new Congress, with an 80 percent stake.
1991.- In Asunción (Paraguay) the republics of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay sign the Treaty of Assumption and constitute the Common Market of the South (Mercosur).
– The President of Mali, Musa Traoré, is overthrown by a National Reconciliation Council, which repeals the Constitution and dissolves Parliament.
1995.- Europe without borders is born for seven Community countries: Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Some 215 million people can travel through the “Schengen area” without border controls.
1997.- 39 young men from the Heavens Gate sect were found dead, who committed suicide at a ranch in Santa Fe, California, USA.
– Snipers murder at least five members of the youth for democracy group in Paraguay during a demonstration.
2000.- Pedro Almodóvar gets the Oscar for best film in the non-English language for “All About My Mother”.
2001.- The Argentine Congress grants extraordinary powers to the Executive to implement deep economic reforms.
2003.- Interpol issues a formal arrest warrant against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, a refugee in Japan.
2006.- The Party of Regions of the former prime minister, Victor Yanukovich, is prevailing in the parliamentary elections held in Ukraine.
2007.- Protestant Ian Paisley of the Unionist PARTY DUP and Catholic Gerry Adams of the Republican Sinn Fein reach a historic agreement that will allow the formation of government in Northern Ireland.
2009.- Griselda Alvarez Ponce de León, first governor of a state in Mexico, dies.
2010.- 46 sailors from the South Korean warship “Cheonan” die while patrolling in waters near North Korea, in a incident described as a war attack by international investigators, a winger denied by the North Korean authorities.
Original source in Spanish
