Back to browsingToday in History · July 20, 1969
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface.
The lunar module Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility, and Armstrong stepped out hours later, watched by an estimated 600 million people.
The mission fulfilled President Kennedy’s goal of a crewed Moon landing before the end of the decade.
British expeditions photograph stars near the eclipsed Sun and confirm general relativity.
Fire tears through Paris’s great cathedral, toppling the spire and destroying the medieval roof.
Nicholas II abdicates amid revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule over Russia.
The Lateran Treaty ends a sixty-year standoff between Italy and the papacy, creating the world’s smallest independent state.
After 27 years in prison, Mandela is released, signalling the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Soviet troops reach Auschwitz-Birkenau, revealing the scale of the largest Nazi death camp.
The United States drops the first atomic bomb used in war on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
A fire in a Pudding Lane bakery spreads across the medieval City of London.
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, marking the beginning of the Space Age.
Parisian women march to the royal palace demanding bread, changing the course of the French Revolution.
The Jazz Singer premieres in New York, helping usher in the age of synchronized sound in motion pictures.
The Holy League and the Ottoman fleet clash in the Gulf of Patras in one of history’s largest galley battles.
A fire on the city’s southwest side spreads across Chicago. In its wake, a new metropolis will rise from the ashes.
The revolutionary is executed in Bolivia, becoming one of the most enduring—and contested—symbols of the twentieth century.
East Germany opens its border crossings, and Berliners begin tearing down the wall.
Orville and Wilbur Wright fly their Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
A Taliban gunman attacks the schoolgirl campaigning for girls’ education; she survives and wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yang Liwei orbits the Earth aboard Shenzhou 5, making China the third nation to launch a human into space on its own.
