2014

Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide for shooting and killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The conviction was later upgraded to murder; Pistorius was released on parole in January 2024.

Also on this date:

1797

The U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as “Old Ironsides,” was christened in Boston’s harbor.

1805

A British fleet commanded by Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed.

1940

Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was first published.

1944

U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen — the first German city to fall to American forces in World War II.

1959

The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum opened in New York.

1966

144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.

2013

A seventh grader at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nevada, shot and killed a teacher and wounded two classmates before taking his own life.

2021

Actor Alec Baldwin was pointing a gun on a movie set in New Mexico when it went off and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. Charges of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin were dropped in July 2024.