On this date in history:

In 1534, the Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Church of England, is passed by Parliament.

In 1817, Simon Bolivar established the independent government of Venezuela.

In 1864, Last Chance Gulch delivered gold for four prospectors in Montana and the town of Helena was born.

In 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East and bringing about the dismantling of the more than 600-year-old kingdom.

In 1938, Orson Welles triggered some radio listeners to panic with a realistic dramatization of a martian invasion, based on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

In 1953, National Security Council Paper No. 162/2 is signed by President Dwight Eisenhower. The top secret document affirmed that the nuclear arsenal of the United States was to maintained and expanded in an effort to counter the Soviet Union.

In 1961, the massive, 50 megaton hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba was detonated by the Soviet Union over Novaya Zemlya.

In 1972, two commuter trains crashed in Chicago, killing 45 people and injuring more than 300. It was the country's worst rail disaster in 14 years and it wouldn't be eclipsed for another two decades.

In 1974, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman slugged it out in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), in The Rumble in the Jungle.

In 1975, with dictator Francisco Franco near death, Prince Juan Carlos assumed power in Spain. Franco died three weeks later.

In 1983, the Rev. Jesse Jackson announced plans to become the first African American to mount a full-scale campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the United States.

In 1995, by a narrow margin, Quebec voters decided to remain a part of Canada.

In 2005, Indian authorities sent army divers to look for people trapped in a derailed train near Veligonda during massive flooding. Officials said 112 died in the train wreck and another 100 in floods.

In 2008, the U.S. gross domestic product dropped 0.3 percent, government officials said. It was the first decrease in the GDP in 17 years.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he would end the U.S. travel and immigration restrictions on people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In 2010, security screening of cargo and air passengers in the United States, Britain and Canada was stepped up after bombs were found in packages from Yemen to two Chicago synagogues.

In 2018, notorious Boston mob boss James Whitey Bulger was found dead at high-security USP Hazelton one day after he was transferred to the Brockton Mills, W.Va., prison. A medical examiner said he died from blunt-force injuries to his head -- likely from a fellow prisoner beating him with a prison lock inside a sock.

In 2020, a 7-magnitude earthquake in the Aegean Sea rocked Turkey and Greece, killing some 119 people and leaving 15,000 homeless.

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