- Muslim holiday - Day of Standing on the Arafa Mountain - The Arafa Day.
- 1769 - Andre Jacque GARNERIN, a French aeronaut, the world's first parachute jumper who pioneered high-altitude air balloon flights, was born 235 years ago; he made the first ever parachute jump from the height of 1,000 meters, using a parachute of his own design; Andre-Jacque died in 1823 in one of his numerous aeronautics experiments.
- 1924 - Tenghiz ABULADZE, an outstanding Georgian film director, was born 80 years ago (died in 1994); he authored such films as "I, my Granny, Iliko and Illarion", "Prayer", "The Tree of Desire", and "Repentance".
- 1929 - Rudolf Ludwig MOSSBAUER, a German physicist, was born 75 years ago; in 1958 he discovered the phenomenon of nuclear gamma-quantum resonance absorption in solid bodies causing no loss of the body's inner energy (the Mossbauer effect). A Nobel Prize winner in 1961.
- 1938 - BEATRIX (Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard von Oranien-Nassau), the Queen of the Netherlands, was born 66 years ago.
- 1974 - Samuel Goldwyn, an American movie producer, died 30 years ago (born in 1879); together with the theater producer Jessie Lasky he founded a motion picture production company which in 1924 was incorporated in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
- 2000 - 4 years ago, a Kenyan A-310 airliner crashed shortly after take-off from Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire) international airport. 169 people died in the crash.
IN RUSSIA:
- 1714 - 290 years ago, the Kunstkamera, the first Russian museum set up in St.Petersburg by Peter the Great's decree in 1704, opened its doors to the public. At present, it is the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.
- 1919 - 85 years ago, the Bolsheviks shot the Great Princes Pavel Alexandrovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich and Georgy Mikhailovich of the Romanov royal dynasty in the cells of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd (Emperor Nicholas II changed the name of Russia's capital city from St.Petersburg, of German origin, to Petrograd, of Russian origin), after the outbreak of WWI when Russia and Kaiser's Germany were fighting on the opposite sides of the front).
- 1924 - 80 years ago the 2nd Congress of the Soviets approved the first Constitution of the Soviet Union.
- 1928 - Mikhail Sholokhov's first novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" was published 76 years ago.
- The Orthodox Church celebrates the day of Sts. Athanasius and Cyril, the Archbishops of Alexandria.
