On this day in 1949, the defeated Nationalist forces of the Republic of China established a new capital on the island of present-day Taiwan.

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On this day in 1972, five hours after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, the crew aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft captured a rare image of the Earth in its entirety.

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On this day in 1877, at his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, inventor Thomas Edison made the first recording on his newly completed phonograph.

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On this day in 1791, Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at the age of 35.

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On this day in 1961, the director of exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art realized that a picture had been hanging upside down for the past 57 days.

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On this day in 1979, at a concert for the British rock band The Who, eleven people were crushed to death by a crowd of overeager fans trying to get inside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum.

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On this day in 1867, British author Charles Dickens began his first American reading tour at Tremont Temple in Boston, Massachusetts.

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On this day in 1959, twelve nations signed the Antarctic Treaty, which prohibited military activity on the continent and ensured it would be used only for scientific research and exploration.

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On this day in 1966, the east Caribbean island of Barbados gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

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On this day in 1775, physician and amateur chemist James Jay invented a new kind of invisible ink, which was later put to use in the American War of Independence.

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