1927 – The Treaty of Jeddah is signed, in which the United Kingdom recognizes King Ibn Saud’s sovereignty over the kingdoms of Hejaz and Nayd, which later become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The two regions joined the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. In return, Ibn Saud agreed to stop his forces from attacking and harassing neighboring British protectorates.
1940 – Verner von Heidenstam dies at the age of 80. Von Heidenstam, was a Swedish poet, novelist and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1912. His poems and works in prose are filled with a great joy of life, sometimes permeated by a love of Swedish history and landscape, especially its physical aspects.
1946 – Born in El Centro, Cherilyn Sarkisian known as Cher. Cher is an American singer, actress and TV personality. Usually referred to by the media as the “Queen of Pop”, she has been described as the epitome of female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. Cher is known for her distinctive voice and for the work she has done on various TV shows.
1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first hydrogen bomb in the United States is dropped on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Operation Redwing was a series of U.S. missiles with 17 nuclear test blasts from May to July 1956. They were carried out in the Bikini and Enewetak atolls by the Task Force 7 of the Air Force. The coded names of these explosions were assigned in honor of the native tribes.
1964 – Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias discover cosmic background radiation. The cosmic background of the microwave is electromagnetic radiation as a remnant of an early phase of the universe, also known as “relic radiation.” The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1964 by American astronomers Penzias, and Wilson, was the culmination of work begun in the 1940s, and the discoverers won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
1971 – In the Chuknagar massacre, Pakistani forces execute thousands of people, mostly Bengal Hindus. The exact number of people killed in the massacre is unknown. Academician Sarmila Bose refutes claims that 10,000 were killed, arguing that their reported number could have shot no more than a few hundred people. Most of the people killed in this massacre were men, although an unknown number of women and children were also killed.
1980 – In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects, with 60 percent of the vote, a government proposal to move towards independence from Canada. This was the first popular referendum not only in this region but throughout Canada. A second referendum on sovereignty, held in 1995, also refused to pursue secession, albeit with a much smaller margin (50.58 percent to 49.42 percent).
2002 – Independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, officially ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of interim UN administration (Portugal itself was the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976). East Timor is a country in Southeast Asia. It includes the eastern half of Timor Island, the nearby islands of Atauro, Jaco, and Oecusse, on the northwest side of the island surrounded by West Indonesian Timor.
