1945 – At the end of World War II, the Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany. The Potsdam Declaration, setting out the terms for the Japanese surrender, was a declaration demanding the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. It was drafted by the Allied powers.
1947 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act into law in the United States, creating the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council of the United States.
1952 – King Farouk of Egypt abdicates in favor of his son Fuad. Farouk I was the tenth ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the penultimate king of Egypt and Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 1936. Their dynasty would be overthrown by a military coup led by future leader Gamal Nasser.
1958 – During the Explorer program, Explorer 4 is launched. Explorer 4 was an American satellite launched on July 26, 1958. It was designed by Dr. James Van Allen’s group. Explorer 4 was a cylindrical satellite instrumented to make the first detailed measurements of charged particles trapped in the Earth’s radiation belts.
1967 – Jason Statham is born in Shirebrook. Statham is an English actor and film producer. He is known for his active and exciting roles and portrays tough, uncompromising, and Machiavellian characters. Throughout his film career, Statham has regularly performed his own stage fights, with stunts.
1977 – The National Assembly of Quebec mandates the use of French as the official language of the provincial government. Quebec is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is also the only one with a predominantly French-speaking population, with French as the sole official provincial language.
2018 – Adem Demaçi dies at the age of 82. Demaçi was a prominent Kosovo Albanian writer and publicist. Demaçi was first arrested in 1958, sentenced to three years in prison. He was then re-imprisoned in 1964 for 10 years and sentenced in 1975 to 15 years in prison. On April 21, 1990, by order of the Presidency of the former Yugoslavia, he was released five and a half months before serving his full sentence. His words after leaving prison are proverbial: Since April 21 of this year, I have been in the largest prison in the world known to the history of humanity – in the prison of Kosovo, where more than two million Albanians have been deprived of all their basic human and national freedoms and rights by the hegemonic-chauvinist-terrorist regime. As the most indomitable fighter for freedom of thought, as the most persistent defender of freedoms and human rights, the European Parliament, on December 4, 1991, awarded him the Sakharov Prize. It should be noted that this prize had previously been awarded to: Sakharov, whose name it bears, Dubcek, Nelson Mandela, Marchenko, Aung Sun, some of whom (Mandela, Aung Su) later became Nobel Prize winners. On this occasion, in the European Parliament, Demaçi said that by honoring me, you have honored my long-suffering, but always freedom-loving, peace-loving and proud people. In February 1994, five members of the Norwegian Parliament nominated the writer Adem Demaçi for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In September 1994, he was nominated again – this time for the Nobel Peace Prize, on which occasion he emphasized that this is an honor for me and a gratitude for the Albanian people. Meanwhile, on December 14, 1995, Adem Demaçi was awarded the Human Rights Prize of the University of Oslo.
