In one of the strangest episodes in papal history, Pope Stephen VI ordered the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, dressed in papal vestments, and put on trial before a synod in Rome. Formosus was found guilty of various canonical violations, his papal acts and ordinations declared invalid, and his body mutilated and thrown into the Tiber River.
Mendoza's colony, named Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre, struggled against hostile indigenous groups and starvation, and was abandoned within five years. The city would be permanently refounded in 1580 by Juan de Garay, but Mendoza's initial landing marks the earliest European claim on what became Argentina's capital.
At Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, Captain William Hobson and Māori rangatira signed a treaty establishing British sovereignty while promising Māori rights over their land. Discrepancies between the English and Māori texts sowed disputes that persist today, but the treaty remains New Zealand's founding constitutional document, commemorated annually as Waitangi Day.
Raised partly in a Catholic reform school for troubled boys, Ruth emerged as a dominant pitcher before the Boston Red Sox and then the New York Yankees converted him into the game's first true power hitter. His 714 career home runs and outsized personality transformed baseball's strategy and popularity, making him arguably the sport's most legendary figure.
Born above a bakery in a small Illinois town, Reagan moved from radio sports announcing to a Hollywood film career before entering politics as Governor of California and later President from 1981 to 1989. His presidency reshaped American conservatism through tax cuts, a hardline stance against the Soviet Union, and a communicator's gift that earned him the nickname 'the Great Communicator.'
Negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference, the treaty fixed ratios of capital-ship tonnage among the five powers and halted construction of new battleships for a decade. It represented the first major disarmament agreement of the 20th century, though its restrictions would ultimately unravel in the 1930s as Japan and other signatories pursued rearmament.
Using a six-iron head attached to a lunar sample-collecting tool, Shepard swung one-handed in his bulky spacesuit on the Fra Mauro highlands. His first swing was a whiff into the dust; the second sent a ball sailing what he joked went 'miles and miles' in the low lunar gravity, a lighthearted coda to America's third crewed Moon landing.
The Altair 8800, a build-it-yourself kit built around Intel's 8080 microprocessor and sold by MITS for under $400, appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics' February issue. Hobbyists flooded MITS with orders, and the machine's success prompted two young programmers, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to write a BASIC interpreter for it, launching the company that became Microsoft.
Aaliyah was born in Brooklyn and raised in Detroit, releasing her debut album 'Age Ain't Nothing But a Number' at age 15. She became a critically acclaimed R&B and pop artist and actress before her death in a 2001 plane crash in the Bahamas at age 22, cutting short a career already shaping the sound of a generation.