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1902: Curies isolate radium
On this day, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate the radioactive substance radium from the mineral pinchblende in their laboratory in Paris. The Curies discovered radium in 1898, along with another element that Marie named polonium, in honour of her native Poland. For their groundbreaking work on radioactivity, the Curies were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1906, Pierre Curie died, but Marie continued her work, isolating pure radium in 1910, which earned her a second Nobel, the 1911 prize in chemistry. Marie Sklodowska Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, had become the first person to win it twice. Radium was later used to treat cancer and was important in the development of nuclear physics.
2005
Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, resigns in order to try and form a new coalition government.1999
Two American high school students go on a shooting spree in Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado - 15 people are killed, including the two attackers.1978
Soviet aircraft force a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veers into Russian airspace. Two people are killed and several others injured after the jet was forced to make an emergency landing. .1974
The 1000th victim of the conflict in Northern Ireland is claimed.1968
Right-wing Tory MP, Enoch Powell, makes his famous ‘rivers of blood speech’, attacking the British government's immigration policy.1953
During the Korean War, one hundred United Nations prisoners are freed under Operation “Little Switch.”1945
The Second World War: Allied bombers in Italy begin a three-day attack on the bridges over the rivers Adige and Brenta to cut off German lines of retreat on the peninsula.1871
Congress authorises American President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan.1821
Edgar Allan Poe's book, ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue’, considered to be the world's first modern detective story, is published in America.1689
The former British King, James II, begins a siege of Londonderry in Northern Ireland.
1657
The Spanish Fleet is destroyed in the Battle of Santa Cruz by an English Fleet commanded by Admiral Blake.