1941 – A non-aggression pact is signed between the USSR and Japan. This pact was a neutrality pact signed between the Soviet Union and Japan, two years after the end of the Soviet-Japanese Border War. The agreement means that for most of World War II, the two nations fought against each other’s allies. In 1945, late in the war, the Soviets lifted the pact and joined the war against Japan.
1945 – Fejzi Alizoti, clerk of the Ottoman Empire, prime minister and several times minister of the Albanian state, financier in the Austrian administration located in Shkodra and under the Italian occupation, civil commissioner of the Free Lands in the Vërlaci government, dies. He is tried by the Special Court, sentenced to death and shot. In the 1927 government led by the Minister of Justice Petro Poga, during the period of the Republic of Albania, he served as Minister of Finance and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the Italian occupation, in April 1939 he was appointed Minister of State for Finance in the government of Shefqet Vërlac, until he was replaced by Qemal Vrioni almost a year after he resigned. At the suggestion of Vërlac, he was appointed Minister of State in the Kingdom of Italy. On June 3, 1939 he was among the signatories of the Basic Statute of the Kingdom of Albania revised by the Italians. In 1940 he participated in the Commission for Albanian Claims, headed by Xhemil Dino, Mustafa Kruja, Dhimitër Beratti, Tahir Shtylla and Alizoti himself. He would head a subdivision, that of the Committee for Claims in the former Vilayet of Manastir or the Committee of Macedonia, and would be a member of the Committee for Claims in the former Vilayet of Shkodra or the Committee for Borders with Montenegro. In December 1941, with the administration of the Kruja government, the post of civil commissar was suspended and the Ministry of Free Land was created, at the head of which Tahir Shtylla was appointed. By alternate decree of Alberto Pariani, on June 1, 1943 he was appointed a member of the Central Council of the Corporate Economy, while on May 16, 1943 he was chairman of the Fascist Supreme Corporate Council, until August 4, 1943. He was arrested in November 1944, was sentenced to death by the Special Court, 1945 on charges of “collaborationist” and “saboteur of the war against the invaders”. He was shot in Tirana on April 13, 1945.
1951 – Diana Çuli, a politician and Albanian writer and journalist, is born. In 1990 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Albania. Since 2006, she has been Albania’s representative in the Council of Europe Assembly. She is a Civil Society activist for women’s rights, gender equality, and the fight against trafficking in women and girls. Diana Çuli was appointed president of the Albanian Women’s Federation. In the late 1970s, she published her first short story “Consciousness”. She has published eight novels and is the author of several screenplays for films such as: “Shadows Left Behind” (1985), “Circle of Memory” (1987) and “Sharp Shore” (1988).
1953 – CIA Director Allen Dulles launches Project MKUltra. The MKUltra project also called the CIA Mind Control Program, is the coded name, given a program of experiments on human subjects that were drafted and undertaken by the US Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system. The system was mainly used by the US Navy to provide accurate information on the location of the Polaris ballistic missile submarine. This system was also used as a navigation system by Marina’s surface ships, as well as for hydrographic surveying and geodetic surveying.
1963 – Garry Kasparov is born in Baku. Kasparov is a great Russian chess master, former world champion, chess player, writer, and political activist, who is considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked No. 1 in the world for 225 of 228 months and 255 months in general for his career.
1975 – An attack by the Falangist resistance kills 26 members of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine militia, marking the beginning of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. The bloody civil war in Lebanon would cost the lives of nearly 200,000 people who would die, mostly in fighting, between rival factions. This conflict would ruin the reputation of this country, which was considered a pearl of Mediterranean tourism.
1987 – Portugal and China sign an agreement in which Macau returns to China in 1999. In 1887, Portugal gained permanent colonial rights for Macau in the Beijing Sino-Portuguese Treaty. The colony remained under Portuguese rule until 1999, when it returned to China. As a separate administrative region, Macau maintains separate governance and economic systems from those of mainland China.
1999 – William Stoph dies at the age of 65. Stoph, was a politician of East Germany. He served as Prime Minister (Chairman of the Council of Ministers) of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1964 to 1973, and again from 1976 to 1989. Stoph also served as Chairman of the State Council (Head of State) from 1973 to in 1976.
– Bedri Dedja died, he was a man of Albanian letters, a writer for children and an academician of psychology and pedagogy of children’s literature. He went to primary school in Shkodër, while he finished high school in the city of Durrës. He then studied at the University of Moscow and graduated with honors in 1953 in the disciplines of pedagogy, psychology and children’s literature. After completing his university studies, for 40 years he was a lecturer and titular Professor of the subjects of psychology and pedagogy at the University of Tirana and for a period of 5 years (1975-1980) at the Higher Pedagogical Institute of Elbasan. Bedri Dedja, academician and professor in the field of pedagogy and psychology, has been a multifaceted personality in Albanian literary creativity for children and scientific creativity for adults: poet and prose writer, storyteller and dramatist, storyteller and publicist, novelist and novelist, translator, journalist and critic, researcher of psychology, pedagogy, history of education and Albanian pedagogical thought, researcher and theorist of the history of Albanian children’s literature. Winner of many literary awards, “Honorary Citizen” of Berat, holder of the “Republic Award”, “Naim Frashëri Order” and the title “Grand Master”, Dedja has also been appreciated by the International Center of Biographies in Cambridge, taking place in Volume XVI of biographies as an outstanding author of the century.
2017 – The United States launches the largest non-nuclear weapon ever produced in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province. The bomb is designed to be delivered by a C-130 Hercules aircraft, mainly Combat Talon I or Combat Talon II variants. MOAB was first tested in combat during an airstrike on April 13, 2017 against an Islamic State tunnel complex in Iraq and the province of Levant-Khorasan (ISIS) in Afghanistan.
