Victory in Battle
1176 Battle at Legnano: Lombard League beats Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire
Frederick Barbarossa
Event of Interest
1453 Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire falls to the Turks under Mehmed II; ends the Byzantine Empire
Mehmed the Conqueror
Event of Interest
1630 John Winthrop begins "History of New England"
John Winthrop
- 1652 Battle of Goodwin Sands, off Folkestone, Kent: English 'General at Sea' Robert Blake drives out Dutch fleet under Lieutenant Admiral Maarten Tromp
Event of Interest
1660 On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end
Charles II
- 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and local Native Americans
- 1692 Battle at La Hogue: English and Dutch fleet beat France
- 1692 Royal Hospital Chelsea Founder's Day first celebrated in London
- 1721 South Carolina formally incorporated as a royal colony
- 1727 Peter II becomes Tsar of Russia aged 11
- 1733 The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld in Quebec City
Event of Interest
1765 Patrick Henry's historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry of "Treason!" with, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"
Patrick Henry
- 1780 Battle of Waxhaw Creek: alleged massacre of 113 of Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's troops after the continentals raised a white flag
Event of Interest
1787 "Virginia Plan" by Thomas Jefferson proposed to the Constitutional Convention advocating for a national government with three branches - legislative, executive, and judicial
Thomas Jefferson
Constitution of the United States
1790 Rhode Island becomes last of original 13 colonies ratifying US Constitution
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Conference of Interest
1851 Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio
Sojourner Truth
Event of Interest
1861 Dorothea Dix offers help in setting up hospitals for the Union Army
Dorothea Dix
Event of Interest
1886 American chemist John Pemberton begins to advertise Coca-Cola
John Pemberton
- 1889 August Strindberg's "Hemsoborna" premieres in Copenhagen
- 1900 Trademark "Escalator" registered by Otis Elevator Co.
- 1902 Dutch State Mine law forms
- 1903 May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization
- 1905 Pogrom against Jewish community in Brisk, Lithuania
- 1909 Frank "Home Run" Baker's 1st career home run for Philadelphia Athletics
- 1910 Pope Pius X's encyclical on Editae Saepe, against church reformers
- 1912 15 young women are fired by Curtis Publishing in Philadelphia for dancing the "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break
- 1912 Ballets Russes premieres their ballet L'après-midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun) in Paris, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky
- 1914 Ship rams Canadian ship Empress of Ireland on St Lawrence River; 1,024 die
- 1916 Official flag of President of the United States adopted
- 1916 US forces invade Dominican Republic, stay until 1924
- 1919 Charles Strite files patent for the automatic pop-up toaster
Historic Expedition
1919 Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, that when light passes a large body, gravity will bend the rays confirmed by Arthur Eddington's expedition to photograph a solar eclipse on the island of Principe, West Africa
Albert Einstein
- 1919 The Republic of Prekmurje founded - a short-lived, unrecognised state, which on June 6, 1919 was incorporated into the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed "Yugoslavia" in 1929)
- 1924 AEK Athens FC is established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks
- 1928 Fritz von Opel reaches 200 kph in experimental rocket car
- 1932 The Bonus Army of World War I veterans begins to assemble in Washington, D.C. to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945
- 1935 French liner Normandie begins its maiden voyage, arrived in NYC on June 3rd
- 1935 Hague local museum opens
- 1940 Arthur Seyss-Inquart installed as Reich commissar of The Hague, Netherlands
- 1940 In WWII, Germans capture Ostend & Ypres in Belgium and Lille in France
Conference of Interest
1943 Conference at of Algiers between Winston Churchill, George Marshall and General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
George Marshall
Winston Churchill
- 1943 Meat and cheese rationed in US
- 1944 British troops occupy Aprilia, Italy
- 1945 US 1st Marine division conquers Shuri Castle, Okinawa
- 1946 KVP wins Provincial National election in Netherlands
- 1951 1st North Pole flight in single engine plane-CF Blair
- 1952 2nd Round Conference between Dutch Antilles & Suriname ends
Tenzing Norgay on the Summit of Mount Everest
1953 Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) are first to reach the summit of Mount Everest as part of a British Expedition
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Event of Interest
1959 Charles de Gaulle forms French government
Charles de Gaulle
- 1959 Saunders-Roe SR.N1, the first practical hovercraft, performs its first engine run
- 1967 Australian Paul McManus water skis barefoot for 1:30:19
- 1968 US Truth in Lending Act signed into law
- 1968 UN resolves sanctions on white-minority-ruled Rhodesia
- 1969 Britain's Trans-Arctic expedition makes 1st crossing of Arctic Sea ice
- 1969 General strike in Cordoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest
- 1970 USSR performs underground nuclear test
- 1972 The Official IRA announce a ceasefire
- 1973 Thomas Bradley elected 1st African American mayor of Los Angeles, California
- 1973 Columbia Records fires president Clive Davis for misappropriating $100,000 in funds, Davis will start Arista records
- 1974 Northern Ireland is brought under direct rule from Westminster
- 1976 Only HR of Joe Niekro's 22-year career, comes off brother Phil
- 1977 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1978 US 1st class postage rises to 15 cents (13 cents for 3 years)
- 1978 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1979 Bishop Abel Muzorewa is sworn in as Zimbabwe's 1st black Prime Minister
- 1979 Radio's 1st rock network "Source" premieres
- 1980 53rd National Spelling Bee: Jacques Bailly wins spelling elucubrate
- 1980 Attempted assassination on Vernon Jordan Jr National Urban League president
Event of Interest
1980 JMW Turner's "Juliet & Her Nurse" sold for $6,400,000 in NYC
J. M. W. Turner
- 1981 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1982 1st papal visit to Britain since 1531
- 1982 Pentagon plans 1st strategy to fight a nuclear war
- 1986 59th National Spelling Bee: Jon Pennington wins spelling odontalgia
- 1988 Pakistan President Zia ul-Haq dismisses government and disbands parliament
Goddess of Democracy
1989 Student pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, China construct a replica of the Statue of Liberty, naming it the Goddess of Democracy
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- 1990 An earthquake hits Peru, killing over 200
Election of Interest
1990 Boris Yeltsin is elected President of the Russian Republic
Boris Yeltsin
Event of Interest
1996 Space Shuttle STS 77 Endeavour 11), lands
Marc Garneau
- 1997 70th National Spelling Bee: Rebecca Sealfon wins spelling euonym
- 1997 Jesse Timmedequas found guilty of rape and murder of Megan Kanka, 7
- 1997 Span scientists announce new human species in 780,000 year old fossil
- 1999 Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule
- 1999 Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.
- 2001 International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers inaugurated.
- 2001 Natural gas futures plunge 6% to a 10-month low on speculation that growing US inventories will help power plants meet summer demand for air-conditioning
- 2004 The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
- 2004 The Al-Khobar massacres in Saudi Arabia kill 22
- 2005 France resoundingly rejects the European Constitution
Event of Interest
2011 Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism started by Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam
Joshua Wong
- 2012 Thousands march in protest in Johannesburg against Brett Murray's controversial painting The Spear
- 2012 Facebook's problematic public listing could cost those involved $115 million from technical glitches
- 2012 A 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills 24 people near Bologna, northern Italy
- 2012 Indonesian police make the biggest drug bust in ten years after seizing over a million ecstasy pills valued at $45 million
Event of Interest
2014 President Obama approves US military training of 'moderate' Syrian rebels to fight the regime of Bashar al-Assad and al Qaeda-linked groups
Bashar al-Assad
Barack Obama
- 2015 Heat wave in India centered in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states is reported to have killed 1800 people in a week
Event of Interest
2015 Muhammadu Buhari is sworn in as the President of Nigeria
Muhammadu Buhari
- 2015 Sepp Blatter is elected to a fifth term as president of FIFA
- 2017 Violent storm and high winds in Moscow, Russia leaves 13 dead
- 2018 Missouri Governor Eric Greitens resigns over an extramarital affair and illegal use of a donor list
- 2018 Heatwave in Karachi, Pakistan, kills 65 as temperatures soar above 110 degrees Fahrenheit
- 2018 Starbucks closes more than 8,000 US stores early for racial bias training after two black men wrongly arrested in a store in April
- 2018 Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko fakes his own death with Ukrainian security services to foil an assassination plot
- 2018 Death toll on Puerto Rico 70 times higher than official figure, likely 4,600 died from Hurricane Maria according to Harvard University study
Event of Interest
2019 US Special Counsel Robert Mueller says charging President Donald Trump with a crime never an option as no legal means to charge a sitting president; and that his report does not exonerate the president
Donald Trump
- 2019 16 people charged for setting fire to and murdering a teenager who reported sexual harassment at an Islamic school in Feni, Bangladesh
- 2019 World's smallest surviving baby, a girl, discharged from Sharp March Birch Hospital in San Diego after being born at 23 weeks weighing 8.6 ounces (245 grams)
Event of Interest
2019 British politician Boris Johnson ordered to appear in court over claims he lied to the public during Britain's Brexit campaign
Boris Johnson
Election of Interest
2019 Israel's Knesset calls a snap election after Benjamin Netanyahu fails to form a government
Benjamin Netanyahu
- 2019 Transgender no longer classified as a mental health illness by the World Health Organization
- 2019 Tourist boat sinks after colliding with another boat on the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, killing 28 people