Diplomats signed the Treaty of Paris, concluding the Crimean War, a conflict that killed an estimated 600,000 soldiers, many from disease rather than combat. The treaty neutralized the Black Sea, forced Russia to cede territory, and exposed the inefficiency of European militaries, spurring reforms including Florence Nightingale's revolution in battlefield nursing.

At 4 a.m. after an all-night negotiating session, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward and Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl signed a treaty transferring Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, roughly two cents an acre. Critics derided the purchase as a frozen wasteland, but the discovery of gold and later oil made it one of history's great real-estate bargains.

On his birthday, Vincent van Gogh remained committed at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy, painting fields and cypresses visible through the barred window of his cell. Despite recurring breakdowns, this period produced some of his most celebrated canvases, including versions of 'The Starry Night.'

After the breakdown that led him to cut off part of his left ear in Arles, Vincent van Gogh checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. There, in a cell with barred windows, he would paint some of his most celebrated works, including versions of 'The Starry Night,' turning confinement into one of the most productive periods of his career.

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to working-class Slovak immigrants. He would go on to found the Pop Art movement, transforming Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, and Coca-Cola bottles into icons of American consumer culture and reshaping the boundary between fine art and mass media.

North Vietnam launched the Nguyen Hue Offensive, known in the West as the Easter Offensive, its largest conventional assault of the war. More than 120,000 troops backed by tanks and artillery struck across the Demilitarized Zone and from Cambodia, testing the strategy of 'Vietnamization' as American ground troops had largely withdrawn, leaving South Vietnamese forces to bear the brunt with U.S. air support.

A Beijing court sentenced Wei Jingsheng, a young electrician turned dissident writer, to fifteen years in prison for counterrevolutionary activity after he posted essays on the capital's 'Democracy Wall' demanding political liberalization alongside Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. His trial marked an early crackdown on dissent under China's post-Mao leadership.

Just 69 days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was struck by a bullet that ricocheted off his limousine and lodged near his heart, fired by John Hinckley Jr. outside a Washington Hilton hotel. Press Secretary James Brady suffered a severe brain injury. Reagan underwent emergency surgery and joked with doctors beforehand, quipping, 'I hope you're all Republicans.'