Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, “Il Duce,” who, after a series of military misadventures, became unpopular even among his fellow Fascists, was captured while trying to flee Italy and was executed on this day in 1945.
| 2004: | | | American television network CBS broadcast photographs depicting harsh treatment of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in U.S.-occupied Iraq, initiating a national debate on torture and the Geneva Conventions. |
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| 1969: | | | French leader Charles de Gaulle resigned his presidency. |
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| 1952: | | The Allied occupation of Japan came to an end after seven years of rapid social and economic change following the country's surrender in World War II. |
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| 1878: | | American actor Lionel Barrymore was born in Philadelphia. |
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| 1789: | | Captain William Bligh of the British ship Bounty and 18 of his men were set adrift by mutinous sailors led by the master's mate Fletcher Christian. |
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| 1758: | | | James Monroe, who was the fifth president of the United States (1817–25) and who asserted a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, was born. |
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| 1442: | | King Edward IV of England was born in Rouen, France. |
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