On this day in 1800, the Library of Congress, the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
On this day in 1967, the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the first human to die during a spaceflight.
On this day in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in mission STS-31.
On this day in 2003, the Executive Yuan ordered closure of the Taipei City Hospital’s Heping Branch over an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) among its medical staff.
And on this day in 2013, some 1,100 people were killed and 2,500 injured when Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building, collapsed in the Greater Dhaka Area in Bangladesh. Most of the victims in the deadliest artificial structural failure in modern history were low-pay garment factory workers.