- 618 Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty's rule over China
- 860 Rus Vikings attack Constantinople
Event of Interest
1155 Pope Adrian IV crowns Frederick I Barbarossa Roman-German Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa
- 1178 Five monks at Canterbury report something exploding on the moon shortly after sunset (only known observation)
- 1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature
- 1316 Peace of Fexhe: prince-bishop Adolf II of Mark and Luikse towns
Appointment of Interest
1541 Irish parliament selects Henry VIII of England as King of Ireland
Henry VIII
Event of Interest
1682 English Quaker William Penn founds Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania Colony
William Penn
- 1757 Battle at Kolin Bohemia: Austrian army beats Prussia
- 1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti; considered the first European to reach the island
- 1778 British Redcoats evacuate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and head for New York
- 1779 French fleet occupies St Vincent, West Indies
- 1812 War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain
Battle of Waterloo
1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under Wellington and Prussian troops under Blucher
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First Photo of Lightning?
1847 American photographer Thomas Martin Easterly takes the earliest known photograph of lightning using the daguerreotype process in St. Louis, Missouri [1]
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- 1863 After long neglect, Confederates hurriedly fortify Vicksburg
Battle of Interest
1864 Battle of Petersburg: Ulysses S. Grant ends four days of assaults and begins a nine month siege
Ulysses S. Grant
- 1872 Woman's Suffrage Convention held at Merchantile Liberty Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Event of Interest
1873 Susan B. Anthony fined $100 ($2,200 in 2020 value) for voting for US President in Rochester, New York; she refused to pay and no further action against her was taken
Susan B. Anthony
- 1879 W. H. Richardson, an African-American inventor, patents the children's carriage (Patent no. 405599)
- 1887 The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia is signed
- 1892 Brothers Edward and Robert Jordan plant 1st Macadamia nuts in Oahu, Hawaii
- 1894 Premier Roseberry declares Uganda a British protectorate
- 1898 Steel Pier, 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, New Jersey [1]
- 1900 Empress Dowager Cixi orders I-Ho-Chuan (Boxers) to kill all foreigners
- 1900 General Luigi Pelloux resigns as premier of Italy
- 1908 Japanese immigration to Brazil begins when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the Kasato-Maru ship
- 1909 American educator Nannie Helen Burroughs forms National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington D.C
Presidential Convention
1912 The Chicago national Republican Convention splits between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; after Taft is nominated, Roosevelt and progressive elements of the Party form the Progressive Party (also known as the 'Bull Moose Party')
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
- 1926 Theodor Lessing laid-off "because he is a Jew" in Hanover
Event of Interest
1928 American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, landing at Burry Port, Wales
Amelia Earhart
Victory in Battle
1940 Winston Churchill's "this was their finest hour" speech urging perseverance during Battle of Britain delivered to British House of Commons
Winston Churchill
- 1941 Turkey signs peace treaty with nazi-Germany
- 1942 Bernard W Robinson, becomes 1st African American ensign in US Navy
- 1942 Eric Nessler of France stays aloft in a glider for 38h21m
- 1943 SS Police in Amsterdam sentence 12 resistance fighters to death for the fire-bombing at the census records bureau in March
- 1944 German submarine U-767 sunk by English Navy destroyers in the English Channel
- 1946 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a Socialist calls for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa. A road is named after this date in Panjim
- 1948 American Library Association adopts Library Bill of Rights
- 1948 National Security Council authorizes covert operations for 1st time
- 1948 Columbia Records unveiled the 33-1/3 rpm LP, allowing up to 20 minutes per side (available in 10 and 12 inch diameters), at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, NYC
Election of Interest
1951 Charles de Gaulle wins French parliamentary election
Charles de Gaulle
- 1951 In South Africa, the Suppression of Communism Act commences
- 1953 Egypt proclaimed a republic, General Neguib becomes president
- 1953 USAF C124 Globemaster crashes near Tokyo killing 129 servicemen
- 1954 Pierre Mendès forms French government
- 1959 1st telecast transmitted from England to US
- 1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital's director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane
- 1963 3,000 blacks boycott Boston public school to protest de facto segregation
- 1964 African Groundnut Council forms in Dakar
- 1968 Supreme Court bans racial discrimination in sale and rental of housing
- 1969 A report published by the International Commission of Jurists on the British government's policy in Northern Ireland is critical of both the British government and the Northern Ireland government
Election of Interest
1970 Edward Heath's Conservative Party win the General Election in UK, replacing the Labour Party
Edward Heath
- 1971 Social Democratic and Labour Party and Nationalist Members of Parliament refuse to attend the state opening of Stormont (North Ireland Parliament)
- 1972 BEA Trident crashes after takeoff from Heathrow killing 118
- 1972 3 members of the British Army are killed by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb in a derelict house near Lurgan, County Down
Meeting of Interest
1973 Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev visits the US and President Nixon
Leonid Brezhnev
- 1974 Gaston Thorn forms Luxembourg government
- 1976 A Joseph William Turner watercolor auctioned for £340,000
- 1977 Space Shuttle test model "Enterprise" carries a crew aloft for 1st time, it was fixed to a modified Boeing 747
- 1978 Victor de la Torre wins Peru election
- 1979 US President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapons
- 1980 Dutch 2nd Chamber joins oil boycott of South Africa
World Record
1980 Indian "human computer" Shakuntala Devi sets a world record by mentally multiplying two random 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds; She correctly answered that 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 = 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 !
Shakuntala Devi
- 1981 Kimberley Ann Smith, of NC, 17, crowned America's Junior Miss
- 1981 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart retires
- 1981 Vaccine to prevent hoof & mouth disease announced
- 1981 The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California
- 1982 Voting Rights Act of 1965 extended by Senate by 85-8 vote
Event of Interest
1983 7th Shuttle Mission-Challenger 2 launches Sally Ride as 1st US woman in space
Sally Ride
- 1983 IRA's Joseph Doherty arrested in NYC
- 1986 De Havilland Twin Otter & Bell 206 helicopter collide, kills 25
- 1986 Heike Friedrich swims female world record 200m freestyle (1:57.55)
- 1986 Papua New Guinea score 9-455 in 60 overs v Gibraltar, ICC Trophy
- 1986 US House of Representatives approves Bill to impose stricter sanctions on Apartheid South Africa
- 1989 Comet Churyunov-Gerasimenko at perihelion
Event of Interest
1991 Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, arrives in US
Boris Yeltsin
Event of Interest
1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts
Ted Kaczynski
- 2001 Protests occur in Manipur over the extension of the ceasefire between Naga insurgents and the government of India
- 2006 The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat is launched
- 2012 15 people are killed and 40 injured in a suicide attack in Baquba, Iraq
- 2013 31 people are killed and 60 are injured by two suicide bombings in al-Qahira, Baghdad
- 2013 27 people are killed and 30 are injured by a suicide bomb in Sher Garh, Pakistan
- 2013 Russia passes a law banning foreign same-sex couples from adopting children
Event of Interest
2014 King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates the Spanish throne to make way for his son Felipe VI
Juan Carlos I
Felipe VI
Catholic Encyclical
2015 Pope Francis blames human selfishness for global warming in his encyclical, named "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home"
Pope Francis
Election of Interest
2017 French President Emmanuel Macron's party La République en Marche and allies win a majority in 2nd round French legislative elections
Emmanuel Macron
- 2017 Rare magnitude-four earthquake causes a tsunami to hit Nuugaatsiaq in northwestern Greenland
Event of Interest
2018 US President Trump orders US military to set up sixth branch of the military - a space force
Donald Trump
- 2018 Ferry sinks on Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, with 193 suspected dead
- 2019 Chennai, India's 6th largest city with 4 million people, runs out of water as its reservoirs dry up
- 2019 China has been forcefully harvesting organs from marginalized groups in prison camps on a significant scale according to International Tribunal in London
- 2019 US President Donald Trump announces his campaign for re-election
- 2019 Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announces the suspension of the pro-China and highly controversial extradition law, after massive protests in the city
- 2019 Sex-changing Australian bush tomato study published in journal "PhytoKeys" detailing how Solanum Plastisexum can change from male to female to hermaphrodite
- 2019 Two 14 year-old boys become the youngest in Irish history to be convicted of murder when found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of a 14 year-old girl in Dublin
Event of Interest
2020 US Supreme Court rules the Obama-era Dreamers Program (DACA), enabling undocumented migrant children ability to study and work, can stay
Barack Obama
- 2020 Global COVID-19 death toll passes 450,000 (451,118) with 8,421,357 cases known according to Johns Hopkins figures
- 2020 Canadian coronavirus COVID-19 known cases pass 100,000 with 8,361 deaths
- 2021 Jurist and conservative Ebrahim Raisi elected President of Iran on a low turn out
- 2021 Record 82 million people now forcibly displaced, or over 1% of world's population, according to UN refugee agency [1]