MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2017: Catalonia's parliament voted to declare the region independent from Spain, resulting in the central government's dismissing that legislative body and calling for new elections, in which the majority of seats were claimed by the pro-independence movement. [ Take our quiz about Europe.]

2014: American singer Taylor Swift released 1989, which she described as her first “official pop album”; it was a blockbuster hit and won the Grammy Award for album of the year. [How much do you know about Taylor Swift?]

2004: The Boston Red Sox ended the “Curse of the Bambino”—an alleged hex on the team that resulted from its 1920 sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees—by defeating the St. Louis Cardinalsto win the World Series title, the team's first in 86 years. [Test your knowledge of baseball.]

2000: At a concert near Tel Aviv, the music of German composer Richard Wagner, which many associate with the Nazi regime, was played for the first time in public in Israel. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about music composers.]

1979: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, an island country lying within the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea, achieved its independence. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about islands.]

1968: Physicist Lise Meitner, whose research (along with that of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann) led to the discovery of nuclear fission, died in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England. [Take our physics quiz.]