Person report

★12 May 1942
World War II: Soviet forces under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine, only to be encircled and destroyed by German troops two weeks later.

★14 Oct 1943
World War II: During the second raid on Schweinfurt, the U.S. 8th Air Force suffered so many losses that it lost air supremacy over Germany for several months.

★23 Aug 1944
King Michael dismissed the pro-Axis government of General Ion Antonescu, putting Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of World War II.

★21 Oct 1959
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in New York City.

★14 Dec 1962
NASA's Mariner 2 became the world's first spacecraft to successfully conduct a planetary encounter when it flew by Venus.

★05 Oct 1963
The U.S. temporarily suspended the Commercial Import Program, its main economic support for South Vietnam, in response to oppression of Buddhism by President Ngo Dinh Diem.

★27 May 1967
Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous Australians in the national census and for the government to make laws for their benefit.

★28 Aug 1973
Swedish police used gas bombs to end a seven-day hostage situation in Stockholm; during the incident the hostages had bonded with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".

★19 May 1991
With the local Serb population boycotting the polls, voters in Croatia passed a referendum supporting independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

★06 Dec 1992
The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, was destroyed by Hindu Kar Sevaks, who believed that it was built on the birthplace of Rama.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.