This Day in History
Marie-Antoinette guillotined
1793: After the French Revolution began, Marie-Antoinette, queen consort of Louis XVI, was targeted by agitators who, enraged by her extravagance and attempts to save the monarchy, ultimately guillotined her on this day in 1793.
1964: China, eager to join the nuclear race, successfully detonated its first atomic bomb.
1946: Ten of the twelve defendants sentenced to death at the Nürnberg trials were executed.
1859: John Brown, a militant abolitionist, made his legendary raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
1846: William Thomas Green Morton first demonstrated the use of ether as a general anesthetic before a gathering of physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
1813: Napoleon led his troops against an allied force of Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Swedish troops during the Battle of Leipzig. |
