843: Icon veneration is officially reinstated at Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople

1502: Founder of the Safavid dynasty, Ismail I, is crowned Shah of Persia (rules till 1524)

1966: Military coup led by Indonesian General Suharto breaks out

1985: Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader

2011: 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami that kills thousands and causes the second worst nuclear accident in history at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

2018: China’s National People’s Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, allowing Xi Jinping to be president for life

2020: COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths

Source: Onthisday.com