First Afghan presidential elections
On this day in 2004, for the first time in Afghanistan‘s history, voters went to the polls to choose a president, selecting Hamid Karzai, who had served as the interim president after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. 2004.
A Taliban gunman shot 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, a vocal opponent of the ultraconservative group’s prohibition on the education of girls. Despite being struck in the head, she survived the assassination attempt, and she went on to win a Nobel Prize in 2014. 2012.
Italian playwright Dario Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1997.
Anna Freud, psychoanalyst, author, and daughter of Sigmund Freud, died in London. 1982.
Built between 1848 and 1884 and dedicated in 1885, the Washington Monument—a marble-faced granite obelisk that honours the first U.S. president, George Washington—opened to the public in Washington, D.C. 1888.
