On This Day in History

Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, assumed the office of premier.

Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, an oil pipeline spanning the length of Alaska, began.

The Washington Metro (rolling stock pictured), the second-busiest rapid transit system in the U.S., opened to commuters.

Brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt failed in their attempt to corner the world silver market, causing panic in commodity and futures exchanges.

The Solidarity movement in Poland staged a warning strike, the largest in the history of the Eastern Bloc, in which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs for four hours.

Jiang Zemin succeeded Yang Shangkun to become President of the People's Republic of China.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil (chemical structure pictured), better known by the trade name Viagra, as the first treatment approved in the United States for erectile dysfunction.

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: A U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft was shot down by a Yugoslav Army unit.

Second Intifada: A suicide bomber killed around 30 Israeli civilians and injured about 140 others in Netanya, triggering Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale counter-terrorist military incursion into the West Bank.

A failure of the dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang, Indonesia, caused floods that killed at least 100 people.

Himeji Castle, the largest and most visited Japanese castle, re-opened after five years of restoration work.

North Macedonia became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Forty people are killed in a fire at a migrant detention facility in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.