The colonial government waged a war on rats that began with professional rat hunters, but soon expanded to offering a bounty to the public: a penny for each rat killed. You might be able to see where this is going, and you'd be right. No matter how many bounties were paid, the rats only multiplied. Read the story of the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre at Atlas Obscura.It turns out that when Doumer’s colonial government laid more than nine miles of sewage pipe beneath Hanoi, it inadvertently created nine miles of cool, dark rodent paradise, where the pests could breed without fear of predators. And when they got hungry, the rats had direct access to the city’s ritziest real estate via a subterranean superhighway. Under the streets of French Hanoi, rats multiplied exponentially—and then skittered to the surface.
As if it wasn’t enough that these furry invaders disrupted the colonists’ illusion of European tranquility in Asia, cases of the bubonic plague started popping up, and rats were suspected of carrying the disease. Something had to be done.
| 1498 | Christopher Columbus leaves on his third voyage of exploration. | |
| 1546 | The Peace of Ardes ends the war between France and England. | |
| 1654 | Louis XIV is crowned king of France. | |
| 1712 | The Pennsylvania Assembly bans the importation of slaves. | |
| 1767 | Daniel Boone sights present-day Kentucky. | |
| 1775 | The United Colonies change their name to the United States. | |
| 1863 | Mexico City is captured by French troops. | |
| 1900 | The Boxer rebels cut the rail links between Peking and Tientsin in China. | |
| 1903 | Professor Pierre Curie reveals the discovery of Polonium. | |
| 1914 | The first vessel passes through the Panama Canal. | |
| 1932 | Over 7,000 war veterans march on Washington, D.C., demanding their bonus pay for service in World War I. | |
| 1942 | The Japanese invade Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands. | |
| 1968 | In Operation Swift Saber, U.S. Marines sweep an area 10 miles northwest of Da Nang in South Vietnam. | |
| 1981 | Israeli F-16 fighter-bombers destroy Iraq’s only nuclear reactor. | |
| 1994 | The Organization of African Unity formally admits South Africa as its fifty-third member. |
| 1523 | Gustav Vasa becomes king of Sweden. | |
| 1641 | Spain loses Portugal. | |
| 1674 | Sivaji crowns himself King of India. | |
| 1813 | The United States invasion of Canada is halted at Stony Creek, Ontario. | |
| 1862 | The city of Memphis surrenders to the Union navy after an intense naval engagement on the Mississippi River. | |
| 1865 | Confederate raider William Quantrill dies from a wound received while escaping a Union patrol near Taylorsville, Kentucky. | |
| 1918 | U.S. Marines enter combat at the Battle of Belleau Wood. | |
| 1924 | The German Reichstag accepts the Dawes Plan, an American plan to help Germany pay off its war debts. | |
| 1930 | Frozen foods are sold commercially for the first time. | |
| 1934 | President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission. | |
| 1941 | The U.S. government authorizes the seizure of foreign ships in U.S. ports. | |
| 1944 | D-Day: Operation Overlord lands 400,000 Allied American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy in German-occupied France. | |
| 1961 | Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of modern psychiatry, dies. | |
| 1966 | African American James Meredith is shot and wounded while on a solo march in Mississippi to promote voter registration among blacks. | |
| 1982 | Israel invades southern Lebanon. | |
| 1985 | The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil. |
