More Events on this day:

1990: The spacecraft Galileo flew past Venus on its way to Jupiter.

1962: U.S. airman Francis Gary Powers, captured pilot of the U-2 plane downed by the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged for jailed Soviet informant Rudolf Abel.

1846: The British conquered the Sikhs in northwestern India in the Battle of Sobraon, the most decisive engagement of the First Sikh War.

1837: Russian author Aleksandr Pushkin was killed in a duel defending his wife's honour.

"There's nothing better in the world, when you're trying to be the best in the world, than to actually say, ‘I am the world record holder. I am the best in the world.'"

Mark Spitz, 1999

American swimmer Mark Spitz, born this day in 1950, became the first athlete to capture seven gold medals in a single Olympics, winning four individual and three team events at the 1972 Games in Munich, West Germany.