Commanding 270 men and five creaking ships, Magellan set out from Spain seeking a western route to the Spice Islands. He would be killed in the Philippines before the voyage's end, but one battered ship, the Victoria, limped home three years later having proven the earth could be sailed around.
With Napoleon's forces occupying Spain and the legitimate monarchy in disarray, Santiago's cabildo established a governing junta that swore loyalty to Ferdinand VII while quietly assuming self-rule. The move, echoing similar juntas across Latin America, opened a process that would culminate in full Chilean independence in 1818.
The 1960 General Assembly session became known as the 'Year of Africa' session, admitting a wave of former colonies including Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Somalia, and others in rapid succession on September 20. The mass admission reshaped the UN's membership and voting blocs almost overnight, giving newly decolonized nations a collective voice on the world stage.
Engineers at Shugart Associates unveiled the 5.25-inch flexible disk drive, designed after executives reportedly sized the format against a cocktail napkin at a bar. The smaller, cheaper format became the standard storage medium for early personal computers throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, enabling the home computer boom.
Phalangist militia fighters, allowed into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Israeli Defense Forces surrounding Beirut, killed hundreds to thousands of civilians in retaliation for the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel. The massacre, which ended around this date, provoked international outrage and a subsequent Israeli commission found military leaders indirectly responsible.
