1960- Togo gains independence from France.
1968- Explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurs in Ukraine, leaving environmental disaster.
1994- South Africa holds first non-racial democratic elections.
Born Today:
1879- Sir Owen Willans Richardson, a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928.
Passed away:
1879- Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, a French poet and inventor.