On his 37th birthday in 1997, Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona announces his retirement from the game.
However, the soccer legend's career was tarnished by two high-profile bans for drug usage, and he has frequently struggled with health issues after retirement. The issues that plagued Maradona later in his career persisted after he retired.
Related On This Day
Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer and navigator who found the "New World" for Spain and launched European colonialism, was born in the Republic of Genoa on or around this day in 1451.
Rajiv Gandhi becomes India's sixth Prime Minister in 1984, succeeding his mother Indira Gandhi, who was killed.
Vallabhbhai Patel, an Indian independence warrior and statesman, was born in Gujarat, India, in 1875.
Diego Maradona, an Argentine soccer forward, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1960.
In 1926, magician Harry Houdini [Erich Weisz] dies in Detroit from gangrene and peritonitis caused by a burst appendix.
In 2019, Kashmir formally loses its autonomous status, flag, and constitution as India reasserts federal sovereignty over the region, thus abolishing its statehood.
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia provides civil rights and approves the first Duma in the "October Manifesto" of 1905. (Parliament)
A radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," narrated by Orson Welles, supposedly sparks a worldwide panic in 1938.
In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is killed at her residence in New Delhi by her bodyguards Satwant Singh and Beant Singh.
The Statue of Unity, the world's largest statue of Indian independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, was unveiled in Gujarat state in 2018 at a height of 182 meters.