On This Day in History

In Major League Baseball, the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", a game-winning home run, to win the National League pennant.

The First Battle of Maryang-san, widely regarded as one of the Australian Army's greatest accomplishments during the Korean War, began.

The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.

Vancouver's Holy Rosary Cathedral was dedicated by Archbishop William Mark Duke, fifty-three years after it first opened.

Mercury-Atlas 8, the fifth United States crewed space mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying astronaut Wally Schirra (pictured).

Oswaldo López Arellano replaced Honduran president Ramón Villeda Morales in a violent coup, initiating two decades of military rule.

A hunger strike by Irish republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended after seven months and ten deaths.

Major Moisés Giroldi of the Panama Defense Forces failed in his attempt to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega.

Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sinéad O'Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television.

Roy Horn of the American entertainment duo Siegfried & Roy (both pictured) was mauled by a tiger during a performance at the Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, was enacted.

A boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, resulting in more than 360 deaths.