On this day:
2004: SpaceShipOne completes the world’s first manned private spaceflight
1921: The UK, the Dominions, and India, become the British Commonwealth of Nations
1948: Lord Mountbatten resigns as Governor General of India (formerly the last Viceroy)
1991: P.V. Narasimha Rao becomes Prime Minister of India as head of the Congress minority government
Born on this day:
1905: Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, writer
Gone on this day:
1527: Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian, philosopher