Victory in Battle
1500 France captures duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan
Ludovico Sforza
- 1516 1st Jewish ghetto established: Venice compels Jews to live in a specific area
- 1552 Henri II of France occupies Metz
- 1589 Spanish troops conquer Geertruidenberg
- 1607 The British colonial expedition that would found Jamestown departs Puerto Rico for the American mainland
- 1656 Dutch fleet occupiers Colombo Ceylon
- 1694 Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoye attacks Casale
- 1710 The first law regulating copyright is issued in Great Britain
- 1741 War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz
- 1790 US Patent system forms
- 1802 Great Trigonometrical Survey begun to survey entire Indian subcontinent, led by William Lambton and the East India Company (completed 1871)
- 1815 Austria declares war on Kingdom of Naples
Eruption of Mount Tambora
1815 Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies experiences a cataclysmic eruption, one of the most powerful in history, killing around 71,000 people, causes global volcanic winter
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- 1816 2nd Bank of US chartered
Event of Interest
1816 Samuel Taylor Coleridge recites his poem "Kubla Khan" to fellow poet Lord Byron, who persuades him to publish it
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
- 1821 Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Turks from the main gate of the Patriarchate, his body thrown into the Bosphorus
- 1825 1st hotel in Hawaii opens
- 1825 Nicaraguan constituent assembly meets at Leon
- 1826 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Messolonghi start leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
Event of Interest
1827 George Canning becomes British Prime Minister upon the resignation of Robert Jenkinson, lives to serve only 119 days
George Canning
Robert Jenkinson
Historic Invention
1849 Safety pin patented by Walter Hunt (NYC); sold rights for $400
Walter Hunt
Event of Interest
1864 Austrian Archduke Maximilian becomes Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico
Maximilian I
Event of Interest
1865 At Appomattox, Confederate General Robert E. Lee issues General Order #9, his last
Robert E. Lee
- 1866 American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) forms
- 1868 British defeat King of Abyssinia at Magdala
- 1869 Congress increases number of Supreme Court judges from 7 to 9
- 1869 José Martí founds the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
- 1871 William Hammond Hall's maps & surveys of Golden Gate Park accepted
- 1872 1st National black convention meets in New Orleans
- 1872 1st Arbor Day celebrated in Nebraska, later changed to Apr 22
- 1877 Federal troops withdrawn from Columbia, SC
- 1878 California Street Cable Car Railroad Co starts service
- 1882 Captain William Matson founds his shipping company (San Francisco & Hawaii)
- 1884 US Senate accepts Belgian administration of Congo
Event of Interest
1887 US President Abraham Lincoln's re-buried with his wife in Springfield, Illinois
Abraham Lincoln
- 1898 First Navy Law is passed by the German Reichstag
Edward Smith
Event of Interest
1923 Adolf Hitler demands "hatred & more hatred" in Berlin
Adolf Hitler
- 1925 Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd)
Historic Publication
1925 Scribners publishes "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1930 Thiokol synthetic rubber 1st produced in Yardley, New Jersey
Election of Interest
1932 Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected President of Germany in a runoff election against Adolf Hitler
Paul von Hindenburg
- 1936 200" mirror blank arrives in Pasadena
Appointment of Interest
1938 Second government of Blum replaced by Édouard Daladier's government in France
Édouard Daladier
Event of Interest
1940 Vidkun Quisling forms Norwegian "national government"
Vidkun Quisling
- 1941 German troops conquer Libyan county Cyrenaica
Event of Interest
1941 Independent State of Croatia led by Ante Pavelić established as fascist German puppet state
Ante Pavelić
- 1942 Cigarettes & candy rationed in Holland
- 1943 12 Jewish patients of Herren Loo-Lozenoord escape Nazis
- 1943 General Montgomery occupies Sfax, Tunisia
- 1944 "Patrolling the Ether" is shown on 3 TV stations simultaneously
- 1944 Soviet forces liberate Odessa from the Axis powers
- 1945 Canadian troops conquer Deventer
- 1945 General Blaskowitz becomes nazi leader of "Fort Holland"
- 1945 German troops attack Ijsselbrug
- 1945 US troops land on Tsugen Shima Okinawa
- 1945 William Schuman & Antony Tudor's ballet premieres in NYC
- 1946 1st election for Japanese Parliament
- 1947 King Frederik IX of Denmark crowned
- 1948 Jewish Hagana repels an Arab attack on Mishmar HaEmek
Event of Interest
1953 Dag Hammarskjöld becomes the 2nd Secretary-General of the United Nations
Dag Hammarskjöld
- 1955 Ruth Ellis shoots jilting lover David Blakely (last woman to be executed in the UK)
- 1957 John Osborne's "Entertainer" premieres in London
- 1957 Jordanian government of Naboelsi resigns
- 1957 USSR performs atmospheric nuclear test
- 1958 Northern strip of Spanish Sahara ceded to Morocco
- 1960 Senate passes landmark Civil Rights Bill
John F. Kennedy
- 1963 USS Thresher, a nuclear powered submarine, sinks 220 miles east of Boston killing 129 men, including 17 civilians
- 1963 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1964 Iranian motor launch catches fire & sinks killing 113 (Persian Gulf)
- 1968 Ferry Wahine sinks in Wellington harbour, New Zealand on route from Lyttelton (51 killed)
- 1968 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1971 US table tennis team arrives in People's Republic of China
- 1971 The Republican commemorations is held in Belfast of the Easter Rising (in 1916 in Dublin), revealing conflicts between the two wings of the Irish Republican Army
- 1972 7.0 earthquake kills 1/5 of population of Iranian province of Fars
- 1972 US, USSR & 70 other nations agree to ban biological weapons
- 1972 20 days after he was kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is executed by communist guerrillas
- 1972 Two British soldiers are killed in a bomb attack in Derry
- 1973 BEA flight to Basel Switzerland, crashes on landing, killing 104 of 143
- 1973 Pakistan suspends constitution
Event of Interest
1974 Golda Meir resigns as Israel's Prime Minister
Golda Meir
- 1974 American Boccaccio Association forms
Event of Interest
1974 Magicians Penn Jillette and Teller first meet
Teller
Penn Jillette
- 1979 Soyuz 33 launched with a Russian & a Bulgarian
- 1979 Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.
- 1981 Computer glitch keeps Space Shuttle Columbia grounded
- 1981 France performs nuclear test
- 1981 Imprisoned Provisional IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands elected to British Parliament for Northern Ireland county of Fermanagh and South Tyrone
- 1983 Hennie Kuiper (Neth) wins Paris-Roubaix cycle race
- 1983 Jordan king Hussein ceases negotiations with PLO
- 1984 Damaged Solar Max satellite snared by Challenger shuttle
- 1984 US Senate condemns CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors
- 1985 At 80 Leo Sites becomes oldest bowler to score a 300 game
- 1985 Challenger moves to Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida) for mating of STS 51-B mission
Event of Interest
1986 Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto
Andrew Grove
- 1990 CUNY/Lehman College, Bronx, opens a branch campus in Hiroshma, Japan
- 1991 Boat rams a tanker in Livorno Italy fog, killing about 138
- 1991 Last automat (coin operated cafeteria) closes (3rd & 42nd St, NYC)
- 1991 Rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere near Angola; first to be documented by satellites
- 1992 25 die in a bus bombing in Sri Lanka
- 1992 Floriade (Flower Show) opens at The Hague, Netherlands
- 1993 BPAA US Open by Del Ballard Jr
- 1995 NYC bans smoking in all restaurants that seat 35 or more
- 1996 Fastest wind speed ever recorded (not a tornado) 408 km/h (220 kn; 253 mph; 113 m/s) during tropical cyclone Olivia on Barrow Island, Australia
- 1998 The Good Friday Agreement [Belfast Agreement] for Northern Ireland is signed by the British and Irish governments
- 2006 Hundreds of thousands protest H.R. 4437 (aka the "Sensenbrenner Bill") in the United States.
- 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board including President Lech Kaczyński
- 2012 United Nations deadline for Syrian troop withdrawal passes as violence continues
- 2012 Apple Inc claims a value of $600 billion making it the largest company by market capitalization in the world
Election of Interest
2012 Rick Santorum suspends his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination making Mitt Romney the overwhelming favourite
Mitt Romney
- 2013 Japan and Taiwan sign an agreement on fishing rights around the Senkaku Islands
- 2014 88 civilians are killed by barrel bombs from Syrian war planes in Aleppo, Syria
- 2014 The Council of Europe suspends Russia's right to vote
- 2016 Explosions and a fire caused by fireworks at Puttingal Temple in Kerala, India, kills more than 100 and injures nearly 400
Event of Interest
2016 Hong Kong pro-democracy political party Demosistō established by Nathan Law, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow
Joshua Wong
Event of Interest
2018 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg begins testifying before US Congress about data use and security
Mark Zuckerberg
- 2019 China announces move to cull more than 1 million pigs in effort to eliminate African swine fever
1st Photo of a Black Hole
2019 First-ever photo of a black hole announced, taken by The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration in 2017 in galaxy M87, 6.5 billion times the mass of earth, 55 million light-years away
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- 2019 New species of human announced named Homo luzonensis, 3ft tall, remains dated 50-60,000 years old found in cave on island of Luzon, Philippines
- 2019 Four tiny sweat bees removed alive from a woman's eye in world's first operation of its kind at Fooyin University Hospital, Taiwan
- 2019 First home delivery service by drone begins in Canberra, Australia by Wing, part of Google's Alphabet company
- 2019 New York declares a public health emergency and compulsory vaccinations after a measles outbreak in Brooklyn with 285 cases
