1494: Piero the Unfortunate of the de’ Medici family, ruler of Florence, loses power and flees the state

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte pulls off a coup and becomes the dictator of France under the title of First Consul

1867: Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th and last Tokugawa Shogun in Japan, resigns due to intense political pressure from pro-imperial factions

1980: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares a holy war against Iran

1989: East Berlin opens its borders at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing when thousands arrive after East German government official Günter Schabowski mistakenly announces that restrictions on travel to the West will be lifted “immediately, without delay”

1994: Darmstadtium, chemical element 110, is discovered at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany

1998: Brokerage houses are ordered to pay $1.03 billion to NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing, the largest civil settlement in US history

2020: Drugmakers BioNTech and Pfizer announce their COVID-19 vaccine is over 90% effective in a first look at the results from their phase 3 trial involving nearly 44,000 people

Source: Onthisday.com