MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2004: The search engine company Google Inc. raised $1.66 billion in its initial public offering; in an unusual move, the shares were sold in a public auction intended to put the average investor on an equal footing with financial industry professionals. [Test your knowledge of tech companies.]

1994: American theoretical physical chemist Linus Pauling—the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes (Chemistry, 1954; Peace, 1962)—died at age 93. [Take our Nobel Prize quiz.]

1960: American pilot Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years' confinement by the Soviet Union for espionage following the U-2 Affair , but he was later released (1962) in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. [Read about 10 famous names in the espionage game.]

1945: A commando force formed by Vo Nguyen Giap, under Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, entered the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi .

1936: Soviet officials began the Great Purge of prominent Old Bolsheviks—real or potential political rivals and critics of Joseph Stalin—as the first show trial opened, resulting in the execution of Lev Kamenev and others. [Test your knowledge of Russian history.]

1934: Some 90 percent of German voters approved a referendum that made Adolf Hitler “Führer und Reichskanzler” (“leader and chancellor”). [Nine things you may not know about Adolf Hitler.]