John McCain (born 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential election. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, he was shot down and held as a prisoner of war until 1973, experiencing episodes of torture; his war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986.

Barack Obama (born 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major political party for president. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, he worked as a community organizer, served three terms in the Illinois Senate, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and was elected to the Senate in November 2004.

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, currently the oldest active opera house in Europe, was inaugurated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_di_San_Carlo)

Count Cavour became prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expanded to become the Kingdom of Italy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camillo_Benso,_conte_di_Cavour)

London's City and South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opened, running a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between the City of London and Stockwell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_South_London_Railway)

Hundreds of Iranian students supporting Iran's post-revolutionary regime seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, beginning a 444-day hostage crisis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis)

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was mortally wounded by Yigal Amir while at a peace rally at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin)

vituperative: (adj) Marked by harsh spoken or written abuse; invective; scolding; abusive.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vituperative)