On this day in 1895, angered by the Qing court’s decision to cede Taiwan to Japan under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, people in Taiwan declared independence and formed the Democratic Taiwan Nation to resist the Japanese takeover. Tang Ching-sung was nominated as president.
On this day in 1935, Jesse Owens, a 21-year-old black student athlete from Alabama, set five world records and equaled a sixth in a single hour at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
On this day in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the new post of executive president of the Soviet Union.
And on this day in 2008, NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, the first time in 32 years that the US space agency landed a probe on the Red Planet using retrorockets.