This day in history

1840: Date of birth of Marko Kropyvnytsky, a prominent Ukrainian drama actor, stage director, playwright, one of the founders of Ukraine’s first independent professional drama company.

1861: The remains of Taras Shevchenko are transferred to a grave at the top of Chernecha Hill near Kaniv.

1887: Yekaterinoslav (currently Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) launches Russia’s first blast furnace at the Aleksandrovsk Steel Works owned by a joint stock company in Bryansk.

1954: Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rules to confer the Order of Lenin on Kyiv, the capital city of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

1957: Nikita Khrushchev addresses a meeting of agricultural workers in Leningrad, delivering his catch-up-with-and-overtake-America program report.

1997: President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland ends his visit to Ukraine after signing the bilateral Reconciliation Act.