- 999 Gerbert of Aurillac elected as 1st French Pope
Event of Interest
1513 Explorer Juan Ponce de León claims Florida for Spain as the first known European to reach Florida
Historic Expedition
1595 Cornelis de Houtman's ships depart Holland for Asia via the Cape of Good Hope on the 1st Dutch Expedition to the East Indies (Indonesia)
Election of Interest
1783 William Cavendish-Bentinck becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain after an opposition coalition of Henry Fox and Frederick North forces William Petty to resign
- 1792 The Coinage Act is passed establishing the United States Mint and authorizing the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins & silver dollar, ½ dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime
Battle of Copenhagen
1801 Napoleonic Wars: The British led by Horatio Nelson destroy the Danish fleet in the naval Battle of Copenhagen
- 1804 Forty merchantmen are wrecked when a convoy led by HMS Apollo runs aground off Portugal.
- 1819 1st successful agricultural journal ("American Farmer") first publishes
- 1827 US inventor Joseph Dixon of Salem, Massachusetts, begins manufacturing lead pencils
- 1845 H L Fizeau & Leon Foucault take 1st photo of the Sun
- 1860 1st Italian Parliament meets at Turin
- 1863 Bread revolt in Richmond, Virginia
- 1864 Skirmish at Crump's Hill (Piney Woods), Louisiana
- 1864 Skirmish at Spoonville, Antoine, Arkansas
- 1865 Battle of Fort Blakely Alabama, last major battle of the US Civil War
- 1865 Battle of Petersburg ends as the Army of Northern Virginia is forced to retreat under heavy fire from a general Union offensive
- 1865 Battle of Selma, Alabama, Union forces break Confederates defenses to secure the town
Event of Interest
1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis flees Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia (US Civil War)
Event of Interest
1866 US President Andrew Johnson ends civil war in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee & Virginia
Flash! Bang! It's the Human Cannonball!
1877 1st human cannonball act performed by 14-year-old Rossa Matilda Richter known as Zazel at the Royal Aquarium in London
- 1878 1st issue of Rotterdam's Newspaper
Event of Interest
1881 Sixth Impressionist Exhibition opens in Paris organized by Edgar Degas and showing his famous "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years", the only sculpture shown in his lifetime
- 1883 Battle at Bamako: French assault on Fabous arm forces attack
- 1884 London prison for debtors closed
- 1900 1st edition of The Volk published (Amsterdam)
- 1902 Dmitry Sipyagin, Minister of Interior of the Russian Empire, is assassinated by a terrorist in the Marie Palace, St Petersburg
- 1905 Cairo-Capetown railway opens
- 1912 Sun Yet Sen forms Guomindang Party in China
- 1916 57 armed New Zealand police invade the remote Ngāi Tūhoe settlement of Maungapōhatu in the Urewera Ranges to arrest the Māori prophet Rua Kēnana
- 1916 German troops overtake Bois de Caillette
Event of Interest
1917 Jeannette Rankin (Rep-R-Montana) begins her term as 1st woman member of US House of Reps
Event of Interest
1917 US President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany
Event of Interest
1921 Albert Einstein lectures in New York City on his new "Theory of Relativity"
Event of Interest
1930 Ras Tafari Makonnen becomes Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
Event of Interest
1932 Charles Lindbergh turns over $50,000 as ransom for his kidnapped son
Historic Invention
1935 Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt receives a British patents for RADAR
- 1941 German occupier disallows Dutch scouting association
Event of Interest
1942 USS Hornet with Jimmy Doolittles B-25 departs from San Francisco
Event of Interest
1944 Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party returns to Italy from the Soviet Union
- 1944 Soviet Army marches into pro-German Romania
- 1945 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Brazil are established
- 1947 Carlo Terron's "Il diamente del profeta" premieres in Rome
- 1953 Raab forms his 1st government in Austria
- 1956 Peter Ustinovs' "Romanoff & Juliet" premieres in Manchester
- 1958 Antillean Brewery (Amstel beer) opens
- 1958 Wind speed reaches a record 450 kph in tornado, Wichita Falls, Texas
- 1960 Cuba buys oil from USSR
- 1960 Mabry Harper catches a world record 25lb Walleye at Cedar Bluff on the Cumberland River in Tennessee
- 1962 The first official Panda crossing is opened outside Waterloo station, London.
- 1963 Explorer 17 attains Earth orbit (254/914 km)
- 1963 USSR launches Luna 4; missed Moon by 8,500 km
- 1964 Military coup in Brazil by Gen Castello Branco, President Goulart ousted
- 1964 USSR launches Zond 1 to Venus; no data returned
- 1965 Hochhuths play "Stellvertreter" banned in Italy
- 1966 Soviet Union's Luna 10 becomes 1st spacecraft to orbit Moon
- 1968 Chad creates Union of Central African States
Event of Interest
1968 Senator Eugene McCarthy wins Democratic primary in Wisconsin
Event of Interest
1972 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin visits Cairo
Event of Interest
1972 Tennessee Williams' "Small Craft Warnings" premieres in NYC
- 1973 ITT admits to asking CIA to influence Chilean presidential election
- 1973 Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal research service.
- 1974 Arganat Comm publishes report concerning Yom Kippur War
- 1975 Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees flee from the Quang Ngai Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops.
- 1976 Cambodia Khieu Sampan succeeds Prince Sihanouk as Premier
- 1976 Portuguese constitution assumed
- 1978 Georges de Mestral's patent for "velvet type fabric" expires, puts "Velcro" in the open market
- 1979 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin meets Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo
- 1981 Belgium's 4th government of Martens resigns
- 1981 Heavy battle between Christian militia & Syrian army in East Lebanon
- 1982 Several thousand Argentine troops seize the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands from Great Britain
- 1985 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1986 4 US passengers killed by bomb at TWA counter Athens Airport Greece
- 1986 George Corley Wallace (Gov-D-Ala) announces retirement plans
Murder of Interest
1992 Mafia boss John Gotti is found guilty of 5 murders (Paul Castellano, Thomas Bilotti, Robert DiBernardo, Liborio Milito and Louis Dibono), plus conspiracy to murder, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery and tax evasion
- 1992 Space Shuttle STS-45 (Atlantis 11) lands
- 1993 1st test flight of Fokker 70 (Amsterdam)
- 1993 Venezuelan DC-10 crashes at Margarita, killing 10
- 1995 North & Western Colorado begins using new area code 970
- 1995 NY Police Department & NY Transit Police merge into one organization
- 1995 Sunday NY Times raises price from $2.00 to $2.50
- 2002 Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem into which armed Palestinians had retreated. A siege ensues.
- 2004 Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid. Their attack is thwarted.
- 2006 Over 60 tornadoes break out, hardest hit is Tennessee with 29 people killed.
- 2012 Oikos University, Oakland shooting kills seven people and injures 3
- 2013 13 children are killed in a fire in a mosque in Yangon, Burma
- 2013 13 people are killed in a quarry accident, in Arusha, Tanzania
- 2013 4 more critical cases of bird flu (H7N9) are reported in China
- 2013 7 people are killed in an attack on a power plant in Peshawar, Pakistan
- 2013 9 mutilated bodies are found in an SUV in Tamaulipas, Mexico
- 2013 Eurozone unemployment reaches a high of 12%
- 2013 The UN General Assembly approves the first Arms Trade Treaty
- 2013 Uruguay passes legislation to legalize same-sex marriage
- 2015 140 people are killed after gunmen attack Garissa University College, Kenya
- 2017 Attack on visitors to Muslim shrine by a custodian and others in Sargodha, Pakistan leaves 20 dead
- 2019 70 villages evacuated in Khuzesta province, Iran, after at least 45 killed in flooding after unprecedented rainfall
Event of Interest
2019 Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (82) resigns after 20 years in office after widespread protests over running for another term
- 2019 Canada is warming at twice the speed of the rest of the world, according to a federal report, increasing 2.3% in northern Canada
- 2019 Lori Lightfoot elected first female African American Mayor of Chicago
- 2019 NASA states it wants to send astronauts to Mars by 2033, and land on the Moon again in 2024
COVID-19 Pandemic
2020 Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro downplays the COVID-19 pandemic saying "its not all its being made out to be"
- 2020 New study shows western Antarctica once swampy with temperate forests 93-83 million years ago during Cretaceous period, according to Alfred Wegener Institute
COVID-19 Pandemic
2020 Number of COVID-19 cases worldwide passes 1 million, with 1,002,159 cases and 51,485 deaths reported, according to Johns Hopkins University
- 2020 Record 6.6 million Americans filed claims for unemployment in last week according to the US Department of Labor, 10 million over 2 weeks
- 2020 Spain's death toll passes 10,000 (10003), as it posts a record single-day rise of 950 deaths
- 2021 New study suggests the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago created South America's tropical rainforests [1]
- 2022 Ukraine liberates the entire Kyiv region from retreating Russian forces