MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2014: Scottish voters rejected a referendum that would have made Scotland an independent country. [Test your knowledge of U.K. geography.]

2001: For the second straight day, Typhoon Nari pounded Taiwanwith record rainfalls, causing massive flooding and killing 79 people. [Sort fact from fiction in our natural disasters quiz.]

1970: American rock guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix—who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image—died of an overdose of barbiturates in London. [ Is 27 an especially deadly age for musicians?]

1965: Japanese astronomers Ikeya Kaoru and Seki Tsutomu discovered Comet Ikeya-Seki. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about space objects.]

1961: UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash that generated much speculation; a 2017 investigation found that “it appears plausible that an external attack or threat may have been a cause of the crash.”

1948: A local communist commander seized power in Madiun, Indonesia, as part of a rebellion effort against the Sukarnogovernment in an incident known as the Madiun Affair. [Take our plots and revolutions quiz.]