Edward VIII, failing to win acceptance for his desire to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson, became the only British sovereign to voluntarily resign the crown, his abdication formally approved this day in 1936.
| 1998: | | The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recommended three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, adding a fourth article the following day, for actions taken in connection to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. |
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| 1994: | | Russian troops invaded Chechnya in an effort to suppress a rebel Chechen government led by Dzhokhar Dudayev. |
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| 1941: | | | Adolf Hitler declared that Germany was at war with the United States following the Japanese attacks on the U.S., British, and Dutch positions in the Pacific and in East Asia. |
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| 1911: | | Egyptian novelist and screenplay writer Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Cairo. |
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| 1845: | | The Sonderbund was formed by the seven Roman Catholic conservative Swiss cantons (Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais) to oppose anti-Catholic measures by Protestant liberal cantons. |
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