1783: Men fly over Paris
French inventor Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the Marquis d' Arlandes, make the first manned hot-air balloon flight, travelling five miles over
Paris in 25 minutes. Their cloth balloon was crafted by French papermaking brothers Jacques Étienne and Joseph Michel Montgolfier, who believed that smoke, not hot air, caused balloons to rise. Fuelling the balloon’s burner with a combination of damp straw and rags, Pilâtre and d'Arlandes, took off from the Chateau de la Muette and ascended as high as 3,000 feet before returning safely to earth. The previous September, the Montgolfiers sent a sheep, a rooster, and a duck aloft in one of their balloons in a prelude to the first un-tethered manned flight. The barnyard animals stayed afloat for eight minutes and landed safely two miles from the launch site.
2004
The Second round of the
Ukrainian Presidential elections is held. In what was regarded a fraudulent result, Viktor Yanukovych is eventually declared the winner, sparking what become known as the Orange Revolution.
1995
Serbia, Bosnia and
Croatia agree to a U.S. brokered peace deal, the
Dayton Accord, to end the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1995
Toy Story, the first entirely computer-animated film, is released.
1985
The Geneva
summit between American and the
Soviet Union ends amicably but without a formal agreement on weapons reduction.
1985
Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, is arrested on charges of illegally passing classified U.S. security information about Arab nations to
Israel. 1980
350 million people around the world tune into the popular American television programme Dallas to find out who shot J. R. Ewing?
1979
The U.S. embassy in Islamabad,
Pakistan is destroyed and one U.S. marine killed as an angry bomb set fire to the embassy.
1974
In England,
IRA bombs planted in two separate Birmingham pubs kill 21 people and injury a further 180.
1971
India defeats Pakistan at the Battle of Garibpur during the
Bangladesh Liberation War.
1934
Cole Porter’s musical, Anything Goes, opens in New York, U.S.A.
1922
Rebecca Latimer Felton becomes the first female U.S. Senator.
1916
The ship the Britannic sinks the Aegean Sea killing 30 people, it is thought that it hit a mine.
1916
Habsburg Emperor Franz Josef dies aged 86.
1877
American inventor Thomas Eddison announces the invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound.
1789
North Carolina ratifies the U.S. Constitution becoming the 12th state in
the Union. 
