Swedish Canadian Gideon Sundback received a U.S. patent this day in 1913 for the modern “hookless” zipper, which improved on the clasp locker exhibited by Whitcomb Judson at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
| 1992: | | Riots erupted in Los Angeles in response to the verdict of a highly publicized trial of four white Los Angeles police officers who were acquitted of charges related to the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist who had resisted arrest. |
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| 1945: | | The U.S. Seventh Army liberated tens of thousands of inmates at the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. |
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| 1936: | | | Orchestral conductor Zubin Mehta was born in Bombay (Mumbai), India. |
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| 1916: | | About 10,000 British troops surrendered to Ottoman Turks at Al-K┗t, Iraq, following a five-month siege during World War I. |
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| 1899: | | | American composer, bandleader, and pianist Duke Ellington, among the most significant figures in jazz history, was born. |
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| 1429: | | French national heroine Joan of Arc and her troops entered the besieged city of Orléans during the Hundred Years' War. |
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