On this day in 1341, Italian scholar and poet Petrarch took the title poet laureate at a ceremony in Rome.
On this day in 2005, over four million people attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
On this day in 2013, two Sunni Muslim Islamic extremist groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Al-Nusra Front, merged to become the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS.