On This Day

Bookmark this page. You can visit it everyday to know about the important events of the day.

Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

9 May

🇮🇳 In India

1540 Maharana Pratap, king of Mewar from the Sisodia dynasty, was born in Kumbhalgarh, Rajasthan. He became a folk hero for his military resistance against the expansionism of the Mughal Empire under Akbar through Guerrilla warfare which proved inspirational for later rebels against Mughals including Shivaji.

1866 Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Indian 'moderate' political leader and a social reformer during the Indian independence movement, was born. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and the founder of the Servants of India Society.

1874 The first horse-drawn tram car started in Bombay (now Mumbai) between Colaba and Parel.

1986 Tenzing Norgay, Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer, died in Darjeeling. He was one of the first two people known to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which he accomplished with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953.

1999 Pakistani soldiers began heavy shelling to make cover for the infiltrators entering Indian soil along the Line of Control.

🌎 Elsewhere

1265 Dante Alighieri, Italian poet, writer and philosopher, and author of Divine Comedy, was born.

1502 Christopher Columbus set sail from Cádiz, Spain, on his fourth and final voyage, hoping to find a passage to Asia.

1860 James Matthew Barrie, novelist, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland.

Select another date and know its important events:

View all important days of this month