During the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion of the German air force, supporting the Nationalists, bombed the Basque city of Guernica on this day in 1937, an event memorialized in Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica.
| 1961: | | | Sierra Leone achieved independence within the British Commonwealth. |
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| 1960: | | | After several years as an autonomous republic in the French Union, the West African country of Togo became independent. |
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| 1828: | | The London Zoo opened in Regent's Park. |
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| 1791: | | | Samuel F.B. Morse, an American painter and the inventor of an electric telegraph and the Morse Code, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. |
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| 1521: | | Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan was killed during a fight with inhabitants of Mactan Island, Philippines. |
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| 1296: | | King Edward I of England, seeking suzerainty over the Scots, invaded Scotland and removed the coronation stone of Scone to Westminster, England. |
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