On this day in 1910, Francisco Madero launched a failed revolt that nonetheless sparked the Mexican Revolution by inspiring hope in such leaders as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who then mobilized their ragged armies.
| 1998: | | American tobacco companies signed an agreement with the governments of 46 U.S. states to settle the states' claims for reimbursement of Medicaid funds they had expended to treat smoking-related illnesses, the settlement costing the tobacco manufacturers $206 billion beyond the $40 billion they had agreed to pay four other states in 1997. |
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| 1975: | | Francisco Franco, ruler of Spain since his overthrow of the democratic government in 1939, died in Madrid. |
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| 1917: | | For the first time, tanks were used effectively in warfare, by the British at the Battle of Cambrai. |
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| 1910: | | | Russian author Leo Tolstoy, suffering from pneumonia, died of heart failure at the railroad station of Astapavo. |
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| 1858: | | | Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman and first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born. |
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| 1815: | | In the final phases of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia renewed the Quadruple Alliance to prevent further French aggression. |
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