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10,045 illustrations — Lessons from history, biography, and world events
11/9 (1936): American fashion designer Ruth Harkness encounters and captures a nine-week-old panda cub in Sichuan; it becomes the first live giant panda to enter the United States.
SermonWise.ai generates complete sermon outlines for any passage across 17 theological traditions.
Generate a sermon →7/20 (1997): The fully restored USS Constitution (a.k.a. Old Ironsides) celebrates its 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.
5/8 (2025): The 2025 papal conclave elects Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, taking the name Leo XIV as the 267th Pope of the Catholic Church.
3/17 (1985): Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles murder spree.
1/1 (1834): Most of Germany forms the Zollverein customs union, the first such union between sovereign states.
11/22 (1989): NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-33, a classified mission for the United States Department of Defense.
4/1 (1969): The Hawker Siddeley Harrier, the first operational fighter aircraft with Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing capabilities, enters service with the Royal Air Force.
4/9 (1939): African-American singer Marian Anderson gives a concert at the Lincoln Memorial after being denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
10/12 (1799): Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute.
12/25 (1989): Romanian Revolution: Deposed President of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, are condemned to death and executed after a summary trial.
1/20 (1991): Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.
11/22 (1574): Spanish navigator Juan Fernández discovers islands now known as the Juan Fernández Islands off Chile.
7/20 (2013): Seventeen government soldiers are killed in an attack by FARC revolutionaries in the Colombian department of Arauca.
11/22 (1718): Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard attacks and boards the vessels of the British pirate Edward Teach (best known as "Blackbeard") off the coast of North Carolina. The casualties on both sides include Maynard's first officer Mister Hyde and Teach himself.
4/1 (1999): Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories.
8/6 (1914): World War I: U-boat campaign: Two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
11/22 (1307): Pope Clement V issues the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.
1/1 (1985): The first British mobile phone call is made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone.
4/22 (1945): World War II: Sachsenhausen concentration camp is liberated by soldiers of the Red Army and Polish First Army.
7/20 (1738): Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.
11/9 (2011): The first national test of the Emergency Alert System is activated in the United States at 2:00 p.m.
1/15 (1966): The First Nigerian Republic, led by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa is overthrown in a military coup d'état.
1/1 (1988): The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America comes into existence, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States.