Execution of Anne Boleyn
1536 Anne Boleyn's 4 "lovers" executed shortly before her own beheading
Learn More >>
Treaty of Interest
1544 Scot Earl Matthew Lennox signs secret treaty with Henry VIII
Henry VIII
- 1579 Artois, Henegouwen and French-Flanders sign Treaty, the Peace of Parma recognizing Spanish Duke van Parma as land guardian
- 1590 Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.
- 1620 1st merry-go-round seen at a fair in Philippapolis, Turkey
- 1630 Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi, 1st to see 2 belts on Jupiter surface
- 1631 Earl Johann Tilly attacks Maagdenburg
- 1648 Emperor Ferdinand III defeats Maximilian I of Bavaria
- 1672 Frontenac becomes Governor of New France (Canada)
- 1673 Louis Jolliet & Jacques Marquette begin exploring Mississippi
- 1712 Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria honored as "sovereign of Netherlands"
- 1733 Great Britain passes Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions
Victory in Battle
1742 Battle of Chotusitz: Prussia led by Frederick the Great defeats Austria
Frederick the Great
- 1744 French army takes Austrian Netherlands
- 1750 -18] Tax revolt in Gorinchem
- 1756 Britain declares war on France (7 Years' or French & Indian War)
- 1775 American Revolutionary War: the Continental Congress bans trade with Canada
- 1787 English slave ship Sisters, en route from Africa to Cuba, capsizes killing hundreds
- 1792 24 merchants form New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street
- 1794 Hard frost in southern New England
- 1803 John Hawkins & Richard French patent the Reaping Machine
- 1809 Papal States annexed by France
- 1814 Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden (National Day)
- 1814 Norwegian constitution passed by constitutent assembly at Eidsvoll
- 1814 Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian
Event of Interest
1824 The diaries of Lord Byron are burnt by six of the poet's friends at the office of John Murray in London, sometimes described as “the greatest crime in literary history”
Lord Byron
Famous Photo
1861 First color photograph of a tartan ribbon shown by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell to the Royal Institution in London
James Clerk Maxwell
- 1862 Battle of Princeton West Virginia, ends with about 128 causalities
- 1863 Battle of Big Black River Bridge, Mississippi
- 1863 Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, her first book in the Galician language
- 1864 Battle of Adairsville Georgia, Union forces Confederates to retreat
- 1865 The International Telegraph Union (later the International Telecommunication Union) is established
Event of Interest
1871 Native American fighter General William T. Sherman escapes from the Comanches in an ambulance
William Tecumseh Sherman
- 1872 Bohemian Club incorporated in San Francisco
Event of Interest
1876 7th US Cavalry under General George Armstrong Custer leaves Fort Lincoln
George Armstrong Custer
- 1877 Edwin T Holmes installs 1st telephone switchboard burglar alarm
Event of Interest
1881 Frederick Douglass appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
Frederick Douglass
Event of Interest
1897 The first successful submarine that can run submerged for any considerable distance and combines electric and gasoline engines is launched in the USA by its designer John Philip Holland
John Philip Holland
- 1898 Camp Merritt forms in Presidio [see 0503]
- 1899 Victoria & Albert Museum foundation laid, London, England
- 1900 British troops relieve Mafeking (Cape Colony)
- 1900 In China, three villages within 100 miles of Peking are burned by Boxers and 60 Chinese Christians killed
- 1900 "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is first published by L. Frank Baum with illustrations by William Wallace Denslow in Chicago
- 1902 Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer
- 1904 Maurice Ravel's "Shéhérazade" premieres in Paris
- 1906 Switzerland's Simplon Tunnel open to rail traffic
- 1909 White firemen on Georgia lroad strike to protest against hiring blacks
- 1910 Canada sets the designs for the 1-50 cent coins
Event of Interest
1915 Last liberal British government of H. H. Asquith falls
H. H. Asquith
- 1915 National Baptist Convention chartered
- 1916 British Summer Time (Daylight Savings) introduced
- 1919 UK War Department orders use of National Star Insignia on all airplanes
- 1920 1st De Havilland double-decker flight (London) lands in Schiphol
- 1920 1st flight by Dutch airlines KLM (Koninklijke-Luchtvaart-Maatschappij)
- 1921 Belgian and Luxembourg sign customs union
Event of Interest
1921 US President Warren G. Harding opens (via telephone) 1st Valencia Orange Show
Warren G. Harding
Event of Interest
1926 Chiang Kai-shek is made supreme warlord in Canton
Chiang Kai-shek
- 1926 Wilhelm Marx succeeds Hans Luther as Chancellor of Germany
- 1927 U.S. Army aviation pioneer Major Harold Geiger dies in the crash of his Airco DH.4 de Havilland plane at Olmstead Field, Pennsylvania
- 1932 US Congress changes name "Porto Rico" to "Puerto Rico"
- 1933 Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort form Nasjonal Samling, the national-socialist party of Norway
- 1937 Juan Negrin succeeds Largo Caballero as Spain's premier
- 1938 US Congress approves Vinson Naval Act, which funds a two-ocean navy
- 1940 Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium and begins invasion of France
- 1940 Nazis bombs Middelburg/B IJzerdrat begins illegal defiance
- 1941 Pennsylvania declares legal holiday to honor A's manager Connie Mack
Adolf Hitler
Event of Interest
1943 Millionaire Howard Hughes crashes into Lake Mead, while test flying his Sikorsky S-43, killing CAA inspector Ceco Cline and Richard Felt
Howard Hughes
D-Day
1944 General Eisenhower sets D-Day for June 5th
Learn More >>
- 1944 Operation Straightline: Allies land in Dutch New Guinea
- 1945 2 US P-47 Thunderbolts bomb Kiushu
- 1946 KVP Labor/Communists win 1st post-WW2 Dutch parliamentary elections
- 1946 US President Harry Truman seizes control of nation's railroads to delay a strike
- 1948 Israel liberates Acre, Nebi Yusha & Telel-Kadi
- 1948 Soviet Union recognizes Israel
- 1949 British government recognises Republic of Ireland (previously Irish Free State)
- 1954 US Supreme Court unanimously rules on Brown v Topeka Board of Education reverses 1896 "separate but equal" Plessy v Ferguson decision
- 1955 Dutch government of Drees resigns
- 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage, biggest civil rights demonstration to date (DC)
- 1957 School desegregation law, Brown v Board of education
- 1958 Emergency crisis proclaimed in Algeria
Sanctuary of Christ the King
1959 Sanctuary of Christ the King inaugurated, a 28 meter (92 ft) high monument and shrine overlooking Lisbon, Portugal by sculptor Francisco Franco de Sousa
Learn More >>
- 1960 1st atomic reactor system patented by J W Flora of Canoga Park, California
Event of Interest
1961 Fidel Castro offers to exchange Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 bulldozers
Fidel Castro
- 1962 Marin County withdraws from BART district
- 1963 US performs nuclear Test at Nevada Test Site
- 1967 Dylan's 1965 UK Tour is released as film "Don't Look Back"
- 1968 European Space Research Org launches 1st satellite
- 1968 Frank Howard belts record 8th HR in 5th straight game
- 1968 US performs nuclear Test at Nevada Test Site
- 1969 Russian probe Venera 6 landed on Venus
- 1971 Washington State bans sex discrimination
- 1972 Netherlands & People's Republic of China exchange ambassadors
- 1972 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) fires on workers leaving the Mackies engineering works in west Belfast (Although the factory was sited in a Catholic area it had an almost entirely Protestant workforce)
- 1973 Joe Ferguson, hits the 6,000th Dodger home run
- 1973 Senate Watergate Committee begins its hearings
- 1973 US performs 3 nuclear tests at Rifle Colorado
- 1973 Five British Army soldiers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army booby-trap bomb in Omagh, County Tyrone
- 1974 Symbionese Liberation Army shoot-out with Los Angeles police kills six SLA members in the gunfire and resulting fire. One of the largest police shootouts in US history, with more than 9,000 rounds fired.
- 1974 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) explode four bombs in Republic of Ireland, killing 33 civilians, wounding 300 (highest number of casualties in a single incident during "The Troubles")
- 1975 10CC releases "I'm Not in Love"
Event of Interest
1975 Mick Jagger punches a restaurant window, gets 20 stitches
Mick Jagger
- 1976 Earthquake in Uzbekistan: thousands killed
Election of Interest
1977 Menachem Begin's Likoed party wins election in Israel
Menachem Begin
- 1978 Lee Lacy hits record 3rd consecutive pinch-hit home run
- 1979 Coldest temperature ever recorded in Hawaii - 12°F (-11°C), on top of Mauna Kea
- 1980 V. S. Kumar Anandan from Sri Lanka balances on one foot for 33 hours (Guinness World Record)
- 1980 Major race riot in Miami Florida - 16 killed, 300 injured
- 1983 Israel & Lebanon sign a peace treaty
Event of Interest
1984 Prince Charles calls proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversy on the role of the Royal Family and course of modern architecture.
Prince Charles
Event of Interest
1989 Nelson Mandela receives a BA from University of South Africa
Nelson Mandela
- 1992 Expos Gary Carter is 3rd to catch 2,000 games (joins Boone & Fisk)
Andrew Grove
- 1994 Bakili Muluzi's UDF wins Malawi presidents/parliamentary election
- 1997 WIBC Bowling Queens won by Sandra Jo Shiery-Odom
- 1997 Troops loyal to Laurent Kabila march into Kinshasa.
- 2000 In the Philippines an explosion rocks Glorietta 2 injuring 13 persons, mostly teenagers. According to local authorities, the homemade bomb was placed in front of a toilet beside a video arcade.
Event of Interest
2001 US President George W. Bush calls for reduced regulations to encourage more oil, gas, and nuclear production
George W. Bush
- 2004 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage
- 2006 The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to be an artificial reef
- 2007 Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone since 1953.
- 2007 Demolition work begins at Dublin's famous Lansdowne Road Stadium to be replaced by the new Aviva Stadium, opened in 2010
- 2009 Video game Minecraft is first released to the public while in development
- 2013 90 people are killed and 200 are injured after a series of bombings across Iraq
- 2014 Atlético Madrid win the 2013–14 La Liga
- 2014 Bayern Munich defeats Borussia Dortmund to win the 2013–14 DFB-Pokal
- 2014 The center-right Hindu Nationalist Party, the BJP, wins landslide election victory in India
- 2014 St Johnstone FC win the Scottish Cup for 1st time in 130 years, defeating Dundee United 2-0
- 2015 A mudslide hits the alpine town of Salgar in Western Colombia killing over 50 people
- 2015 Gun fight between rival biker gangs and police in Waco, Texas leaves 9 dead and 18 injured. 170 later arrested for organised crime.
- 2015 Canada defeats Russia to win gold at the 2015 IIHF World Championship
- 2015 Melbourne Victory FC defeats Sydney FC to win the Australian A-League
- 2018 Gina Haspel confirmed as the first female director of the CIA by the US Senate
- 2018 Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo spreads to the city of Mbandaka
- 2019 Taiwan's parliament votes to legalize same-sex marriage, the first Asian country
- 2019 Tyler, the Creator releases his fifth studio album "Igor" which becomes his first number-one album in the United States
Event of Interest
2020 Israel swears in a new government led by both Benny Gantz, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after 510 days
Benjamin Netanyahu
Event of Interest
2020 Barack Obama criticizes the US government's handling of the pandemic during an online address to graduates, saying officials "aren't even pretending to be in charge"
Barack Obama