MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2012: 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. [ Read about six teenagers, including Malala Yousafzai, who made history.]

2001: The United Service Organizations (USO) appointed entertainer Wayne Newton as its official celebrity front man, replacing Bob Hope, who had served in that capacity since the early 1950s.

1888: 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. [ Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about U.S. presidents.]

1997: Italian playwright Dario Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. [Test your knowledge of Nobel laureates in literature.]

1990: David Souter took his seat as a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. [ Why are there nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court?]

1982: Anna Freud, psychoanalyst, author, and daughter of Sigmund Freud, died in London. [Take our famous authors quiz.]