MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2008: At the Olympics in Beijing, American swimmer Michael Phelps helped his team win the 4 × 100-metre medley relay, becoming the first athlete to win eight medals at a single Games. [Sort fact from fiction in our swimming quiz.]

1999: A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck near İzmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving some 500,000 homeless. [ Take our quiz about natural disasters.]

1945: English author George Orwell published Animal Farm, an anti-utopian satire that became a classic. [ Test your knowledge of famous novels.]

1943: Robert De Niro, an American actor known for his uncompromising portrayals of violent and abrasive characters, was born. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about A-list actors.]

1887: Marcus Garvey—a charismatic Black leader who helped found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a Black-governed nation—was born in Jamaica.

1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II. [Test your knowledge of aviation.]