2025: Thieves steal crown jewels worth about €88 million from the Louvre. In a daytime raid that took only minutes, the thieves used a truck-mounted lift to reach a window of the Paris museum's Apollo Gallery and made off with pieces from the French crown jewels, valued at roughly $102 million. It ranks among the costliest museum thefts in history, and arrests followed in the weeks afterward.
2003: Pope John Paul II beatifies Mother Teresa. The ceremony in St. Peter's Square came six years after the death of the nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta and won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor. Pope Francis declared her a saint in 2016.
1987: Stocks crash on “Black Monday” as the Dow plunges nearly 23 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 508 points, still its largest one-day percentage drop. Markets around the world tumbled as well, and computerized program trading was widely blamed for speeding the selloff.
1952: French doctor Alain Bombard sets out to cross the Atlantic in a small inflatable boat. Leaving the Canary Islands with almost no supplies, he set out to prove that shipwreck survivors could live off the sea by eating fish and plankton and drinking small amounts of seawater. He reached Barbados about two months later, badly weakened but alive.
1914: The First Battle of Ypres begins in Belgium. British, French, and Belgian forces fought the German army in western Flanders for about a month, ending the so-called race to the sea. The bloody stalemate helped set the pattern of trench warfare that defined the Western Front for the rest of World War I.
1897: Railroad sleeping car inventor George M. Pullman dies in Chicago. The industrialist, who was 66, built his fortune on the Pullman sleeping car and founded the company town of Pullman, Illinois. His reputation was badly damaged by the bitter Pullman Strike of 1894.
1864: Confederate raiders from Canada rob three banks in St. Albans, Vermont. About two dozen Confederate soldiers who had slipped into the town from Canada took roughly $200,000 and fled back across the border, hoping to stir alarm in the North. It was the northernmost land action of the Civil War, and Canada declined to hand the raiders over.
1814: Franz Schubert composes “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” his first setting of a Goethe poem. The 17-year-old composer drew the text from Goethe's Faust, and it was about his 30th song. The piece is often cited as a turning point that helped establish the German art song, or lied.
1812: Napoleon begins his disastrous retreat from Moscow. After occupying the largely abandoned and burned city for about five weeks without winning peace from the czar, the French emperor led his Grande Armée west. Bitter cold, hunger, and Russian attacks destroyed most of the army, which lost hundreds of thousands of men.
1789: John Jay is sworn in as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Founding Father had been appointed by President George Washington. Jay later negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain and left the court in 1795 to become governor of New York.
1781: Lord Cornwallis surrenders to George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. Trapped by American and French troops on land and a French fleet offshore, the British general gave up an army of about 8,000. The defeat effectively ended the American Revolution, and the Treaty of Paris confirmed U.S. independence in 1783.
1745: Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, dies in Dublin. The Anglo-Irish satirist, who was 77, had long served as dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Besides Gulliver's Travels, he is remembered for A Tale of a Tub and the savage essay A Modest Proposal.
Born on This Day
1992: Lil Durk, American rapper Turns 34. Chicago rapper who won a Grammy for “All My Life” with J. Cole.
1983: Rebecca Ferguson, Swedish actress Turns 43. Known for the Mission: Impossible films, Dune, and the series Silo.
1982: Gillian Jacobs, American actress Turns 44. Played Britta Perry on the sitcom Community.
1977: Jason Reitman, Canadian American filmmaker Directed Juno, Up in the Air, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
1972: Pras, American rapper Member of the Fugees with Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean.
1970: Chris Kattan, American comedian and actor Turns 56. Saturday Night Live star known for Mango and the movie A Night at the Roxbury.
1969: Trey Parker, American animator and writer Turns 57. Co-creator of South Park and the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon.
1966: Jon Favreau, American actor and director Turns 60. Directed Elf and Iron Man and created The Mandalorian.
1964: Ty Pennington, American TV host Host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
1962: Evander Holyfield, American boxer Turns 64. Four-time heavyweight champion famous for his fights with Mike Tyson.
1960: Jennifer Holliday, American singer and actress Won a Tony for Dreamgirls and its showstopper “And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going.”
1956: Steve Doocy, American TV host Longtime co-host of Fox & Friends.
1948: Patrick Simmons, American rock musician Guitarist and singer for the Doobie Brothers who wrote “Black Water.”
1946: Philip Pullman, English author Wrote the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, which begins with The Golden Compass.
1945: John Lithgow, American actor Turns 81. Star of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dexter, and The Crown.
1945: Jeannie C. Riley, American country singer Topped the pop and country charts in 1968 with “Harper Valley PTA.”
1944: Peter Tosh, Jamaican reggae musician Founding member of the Wailers with Bob Marley, known for “Legalize It.”
1940: Michael Gambon, Irish British actor Played Professor Dumbledore in six of the Harry Potter films.
1932: Robert Reed, American actor Played dad Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch.
1931: John le Carré, English novelist Spy novelist behind Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.
