MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2000: The first season of the U.S. version of the reality TV game show Survivor ended, with Richard Hatch being pronounced the winner; the hugely popular series was credited with launching the reality TV fad of the early 21st century. [Take our quiz about American reality TV.]

1978: American basketball player Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA 's leading players in the early 21st century, was born in Philadelphia. [How much do you know about basketball?]

1849: English poet, critic, and editor William Ernest Henley, who introduced the early work of many of the great English writers of the 1890s in his journals, was born in Gloucester. [Name that author in our quiz.]

1939: Germany and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pactdividing eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. [ Sort fact from fiction in our World War II quiz.]

1927: Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for murder in Massachusetts, despite a mishandled trial and the widespread belief that they were innocent. [Read about 10 “trials of the century,” including the Sacco-Vanzetti case.]

1926: “The Great Lover,” motion-picture actor Rudolph Valentino , died suddenly at age 31, prompting widespread public grief from his fans.