2019
German fashion designer and photographer Karl Lagerfeld—the creative power behind the modern revival of Chanel, the legendary French fashion house founded by Coco Chanel in the early 20th century—died in Paris.
2016
American author Harper Lee—who was nationally acclaimed and revered for her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), which movingly depicts small-town life and racial prejudice—died in Monroeville, Alabama.
2008
Fidel Castro formally resigned as president of Cuba; he was succeeded by his brother Raúl.
1997
Deng Xiaoping, who introduced economic reforms to China in 1978, died in Beijing.
1963
American author and activist Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a landmark work that was a catalyst for the second-wave feminist movement.
1942
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
1881
Kansas became the first U.S. state to include the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in its state constitution.
1878
American inventor Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.
