1728: The Edinburgh Musical Society is founded, the first of its kind.
1858: At the Rotenturmtor, work begins to dismantle Vienna’s city fortifications, ordered by Emperor Franz Joseph I in December 1857.
1868: Premiere of the opera “Don Carlos” by Giuseppe Verdi in Darmstadt.
1943: Himmler orders the deportation of all Dutch Gypsies to Auschwitz.
1958: The premiere of Max Frisch’s comedy “Biedermann und die Brandstifter” takes place in Zurich.
1973: With the withdrawal of the last soldiers, the USA ends its military presence in Vietnam.
1983: Helmut Kohl (CDU) is re-elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
1993: More than 2,300 people can be evacuated from the eastern Bosnian city of Srebrenica in UN trucks during a ceasefire.
1998: The longest bridge in Europe, the 17.2 km long Vasco da Gama Bridge, is ceremoniously inaugurated near the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.
2003: Iraq War: First suicide attack on US troops. Four soldiers are killed.
2008: Serious bus accident in Upper Austria on the Westautobahn (A1): After a suspected microsleep, the vehicle leaves the road and falls over an embankment. One inmate dies, 43 people are injured, some of them critically.
birthdays: Gustav Manker, Austria director, set designer and theater director (1913-1988); Pearl Bailey, US actress/singer (1918-1990); Joachim Unmack, German actor (1923-1998); Hans Heinz Hahnl, Austria. Journalist/Writer (1923-2006); John Major, British politician (1943); Eric Idle, British actor, film producer, director, composer and author; Monty Python (1943); Vangelis (aka Evangelios Odysseus Papathanassiou), Greek electronic instrumentalist, composer, keyboardist and producer (1943-2022); Elle MacPherson (aka Eleanor Nancy Gow), Austral. Model and actress (1963).
days of death: Timm Kröger, German writer (1844-1918); Pola Gojawiczyńska, Polish writer (1896-1963); Wolf Schwarz, German film producer (1917-2003); Hans J. Dujsik, Austria entrepreneurs; Founder of Shopping City Süd (SCS) (1924-2003); Josef Mikl, Austria painter/graphic artist (1929-2008); Enzo Jannacci, Italian singer-songwriter (1935-2013); Richard Griffiths, British actor (1947-2013); Carlo Urbani, Italian doctor and disease expert of the WHO; 1999 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the organization “Doctors Without Borders”; In 2002 he discovered the causative agent of the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome” (SARS) and died from it (1956-2003).