The Canada Act, also known as the Constitution Act, took effect on this day in 1982, establishing certain individual rights, preserving parliamentary supremacy, and making Canada a wholly independent, fully sovereign state.
| 2003: | | Anneli Jäätteenmäki was sworn in as prime minister of Finland, which thereby became the second country (after New Zealand) to install a woman as head of both state and government. |
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| 1975: | | Cambodia's ruling Lon Nol government collapsed, and the communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh and forcibly dispersed its citizenry into rural areas. |
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| 1961: | | | Cuban leader Fidel Castro's forces repelled the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was led by recent Cuban exiles and financed by the U.S. government during the Cold War. |
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| 1956: | | Cominform, the international Communist Information Bureau founded in 1947, was disbanded as part of a Soviet program of reconciliation with Yugoslavia. |
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| 1895: | | The Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded the first Sino-Japanese War, which ended in China's defeat. |
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| 1521: | | | Martin Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to defend his ideas on church reform. |
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| 1194: | | | Richard I (the Lion-Heart) was crowned king of England for the second time, after earlier surrendering his kingdom to the Holy Roman emperor Henry VI. |
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