Ethnic Russians riot in Tallinn, Estonia, after the decision to move the Bronze Soldier monument. The riots lasted for two nights and claimed the life of one person. The Bronze soldier is a Soviet World War II war memorial about the liberation of Tallinn by Soviet forces.

Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon, ending their 29 year old military presence in that country.

Robert Steinhauser, a 19 year old student in Erfurt, Germany entered the grounds of his school (from which he had been expelled) and murdered 17 people before turning his gun on himself.

The first multiracial elections took place in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC political party, was elected as the country's first black President.

A China Airlines passenger jet crashed at Nagoya airport in Japan. All 264 passengers died in the crash.

A nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in the Ukraine, exploded, resulting in the world's worst nuclear disaster. The Soviet Union attempted to keep the accident under wraps, but it was detected the next day by personnel of the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, when the workers there started detecting radioactive particles on their clothes. The Swedish plant was approximately one thousand kilometres from the Chernobyl plant.

The town of Guernica, Spain was bombed by the German Luftwaffe, during the Spanish civil war. This is the event that inspired Pablo Piccasso to paint one of the worlds most known paintings, The Guernica. The attack was carried out by Nazi forces that had been contributed to Francisco Franco's forces by the Germans. It was the first ever aerial bombardment of a civilian target.

The Nazi secret police, The Gestapo, was established.

American geophysicist and inventor, Charles Richter, was born in Hamilton, Ohio. He was the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which is used to measure the strength of earthquakes.

Nazi official, Rudolf Hess, was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He was as Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party and became a controversial figure when he parachuted over Scotland in an attempt to sow the seeds of peace between Britain and Germany. He was subsequently arrested and tried in Nuremberg where he was sentenced to death. He was the sole remaining prisoner of the Spandau prison for 21 years, until his suicide in 1987. The prison was later demolished in order to avoid its becoming a shrine for neo-nazi's.

French painter, Eugene Delacroix, was born in the Rhone-Alpes Region of France. He is considered as one of the great painters of all time and one of the leaders of the Romanticism movement.

Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was born in Rome. He is considered to be the last of the great Roman emperors.