22 September 1956

The NASA spacecraft MAVEN entered into orbit around Mars to study the planet's atmosphere.

Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan, was attacked by two suicide bombers who killed 127 people.

Dolphin, the first emulator for the GameCube that could run commercial video games, was released.

The Nordhordland Bridge, crossing Salhusfjorden between Klauvaneset and Flatøy in Vestland, and Norway's second-longest bridge, officially opened.

A tugboat towing a barge collided with a rail bridge in Mobile, Alabama, U.S., deforming the tracks and causing the derailment of a passenger train eight minutes later, which killed 47 people and injured an additional 103.

An American Vela satellite detected an unidentified flash of light near the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.

Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate U.S. president Gerald Ford, but failed due to unfamiliarity with her weapon.

François Duvalier (pictured), nicknamed Papa Doc, was elected President of Haiti as a populist before consolidating power and ruling as a dictator for the rest of his life.

Led by Gail Halvorsen, the United States Air Force began Operation "Little Vittles", delivering candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift.

A joint military parade by the troops of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union took place in Brest-Litovsk to celebrate their partition of Poland.

One of Britain's worst mining accidents took place when an explosion at Gresford Colliery in Wales killed 266 men.

After nine days, the great fire of Smyrna was extinguished (aftermath pictured), having caused at least ten thousand deaths.

First World War: The German submarine U-9 sank three Royal Navy cruisers, resulting in approximately 1,450 deaths.

World War I: German naval forces bombarded Papeete in French Polynesia and sank a French gunboat.

Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in Der Ring des Nibelungen by the German composer Richard Wagner (pictured), was first performed in Munich.

The office of United States Postmaster General was formally established.

Eighty Years' War: Spanish forces defeated an Anglo-Dutch army at the Battle of Zutphen.

Livonian Crusade: The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were soundly defeated by pagan Samogitian and Semigallian troops at the Battle of Saule.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is elected as the 9th President Of Sri Lanka.

Twenty-three people were killed in a maglev train collision in Lathen, Germany.

An E-3B AWACS crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes to two of the four engines soon after takeoff; all 24 on board are killed.

A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, causing the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history. Forty-seven passengers are killed.

A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia.

During a military exercise, a Turkish Air Force Northrop F-5 crashes in Babaeski as a result of pilot error, killing one crew member and also 65 soldiers on the ground.