1 February 2026 (МИА)

1834 – Kuzman Sapkarev, considered one of the most important collectors and publishers of Macedonian folk literature, is born in Ohrid. His most famous work is titled “Anthology of folk literature and science”. He died on 18 March 1909.

1884 – The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary A–Ant, was published.

1946 – A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.

1960 – Four black college students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth’s, Greensboro, N.C.

1968 – During the Vietnam War, a Viet Cong officer was executed with a pistol shot to the head by Saigon’s police chief and the image captured in a famous news photograph.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after 15 years of exile.

1994 – The Government of the Republic of Macedonia approves the establishment of diplomatic relations between Macedonia and Finland.

1996 – The UN Security Council approves a proposal of the UN General Secretary stipulating that UNPREDEP (United Nations Preventive Deployment Force) should become a fully independent operation in the Republic of Macedonia.

2003 – The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it tried to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere after a sixteen-day mission in space. All seven members of the crew were lost.

2009 – Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is elected as the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, becoming the first openly gay Head of Government in the modern world.

2018 – Archaeologists announce discovery of thousands of undetected structures in Mayan lowland civilisation, Guatemala, using Lidar, suggests population of 10 million.

2019 – US President Donald Trump confirms US withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty because of Russia’s violation of the treaty.

2021 – Wisdom the albatross, the world’s oldest known bird, hatches a chick at 70 at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge, North Pacific.

2022 – Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, ‘Nobel Prize for Engineering’ awarded to Masato Sagawa for inventing the neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnet.