Historic Discovery
1493 Christopher Columbus 'discovers' the island of Dominica, which was originally inhabited by the Kalinago
Christopher Columbus
Event of Interest
1534 English parliament passes Act of Supremacy: Henry VIII and subsequent monarchs become Head of Church of England
Henry VIII
- 1620 Great Patent granted to Plymouth Colony
Event of Interest
1629 Prince Frederick Henry festival in The Hague
Frederick Henry
Treaty of Interest
1716 Pacification Treaty of Warsaw: Tsar Peter the Great guarantees Saxon monarch August I's Polish kingdom
Peter the Great
- 1760 Battle at Torgau, Saxony: Prussia beats Austria
- 1762 Britain & Spain sign Treaty of Paris
- 1762 Spain acquires Louisiana
- 1783 Washington orders Continental Army disbanded
- 1783 John Austin, a footpad turned murderer, is the last to be publicly hanged at London's Tyburn gallows
- 1791 Battle at Wabash: Indians assault general St Clair, 637 soldiers killed
Event of Interest
1793 French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined
Olympe de Gouges
- 1794 French troops conquer Maastricht
Election of Interest
1796 John Adams elected as 2nd president of the United States of America
John Adams
Victory in Battle
1812 Napoleonic armies defeated at Vyazma
Napoléon Bonaparte
- 1813 US troops under General Coffee destroy Indian village at Talladega Ala
- 1820 Cuenca (Santa Ana de los Ríos de Cuenca), Ecuador, declares independence
- 1838 The Times of India, world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce
- 1839 First Opium War - 2 British frigates engage several Chinese junks
- 1839 Palace of Gulhane Turkey, freedom of religion proclaimed
- 1848 Johan Thorbeckes revises the Constitution of the Netherlands
- 1856 A British fleet bombards Canton
- 1861 Battle of Port Royal, fought in Port Royal Sound, South Carolina begins, Union victory (US Civil War)
- 1862 Battle until the 5th November between gunboats at Bayou Teche, a waterway in Louisiana
- 1863 Battle of Grand Coteau in Southwestern Louisiana in the American Civil War
Event of Interest
1867 Battle at Mentana: French & Papal troops beat Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
- 1868 First black US Congressman elected (John W Menard, Louisiana)
Election of Interest
1868 Ulysses Grant (R) wins US presidential election over Horatio Seymour (D)
Ulysses S. Grant
- 1869 Canada's Hamilton Foot Ball Club forms
- 1874 James Theodore Holly, elected bishop of Haiti
- 1883 Race riots in Danville Virginia (4 blacks killed)
- 1883 US Supreme Court decides federal courts have no jurisdiction over Native American tribal Council (Ex parte Crow Dog)
- 1883 American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the poet" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves an incriminating clue that eventually leads to his capture
- 1885 Tacoma vigilantes drive out Chinese, burn their homes & businesses
- 1886 Friars of Tilburg arrives on Curacao
- 1888 Amsterdam: 1st concerto of Concert worker, under Willem Kes
- 1889 Chaplain Ariëns founds first roman catholic workers group
- 1896 J H Hunter patents portable weighing scales
- 1896 Martha Hughes Cannon of Utah elected 1st female senator
Election of Interest
1896 William McKinley (R) defeats William Jennings Bryan (D) for president
William McKinley
William Jennings Bryan
Event of Interest
1905 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia signs a document of amnesty for the political prisoners
Nicholas II
- 1906 International Radiotelegraph Conference in Berlin selects "SOS" (· · · – – – · · ·) distress signal as the worldwide standard for help
Election of Interest
1908 William Howard Taft (R) elected 27th U.S. President over William Jennings Bryan
William Howard Taft
William Jennings Bryan
- 1913 1st modern elastic brassiere is patented by New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob
- 1916 Treaty establishes British suzerainty over Qatar
- 1917 1st class US mail now costs 3 cents per ounce
- 1918 Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolves
- 1918 Poland proclaims independence from Russia after WW I
- 1918 Thousands of revolutionary German sailors with the fleet at Kiel mutiny, seize the city, and set up councils of workers and sailors
- 1922 Greek parliament bans Prince Andreas for life
- 1927 22.3 cm rainfall at Somerset, Vermont (state record)
- 1927 Tropical storm flooding kills 84 in Winooski River Valley, Vermont
- 1928 Turkey switches from Arabic to Roman alphabet
- 1930 First vehicular tunnel to a foreign country (Detroit-Windsor) opens
- 1930 Bank of Italy renamed Bank of America
Coup d'état
1930 Getúlio Dornelles Vargas became Head of the Provisional Government in Brazil after a bloodless coup on October 24.
Getulio Vargas
Election of Interest
1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins a second term in office, defeating Republican candidate Alf Landon in the most lopsided election in American history in terms of electoral vote
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1939 Clare Booth's "Margin for Error" premieres in NYC
Attack on Pearl Harbor
1941 Hirohiti's accord on Yamamoto's attack plan on Pearl Harbor fails
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- 1942 12th day of battle at El Alamein: Scottish assault
- 1942 William L Dawson elected to Congress from Chicago
- 1943 P-47D Thunderbolt shot down above North Holland
- 1944 Allied commandos land at Westkapelle, on the Dutch island of Walcheren
- 1944 German troops in Vlissingen surrender
- 1944 Pro-German government of Hungary flees
- 1944 US 28th Infantry division occupies Schmidt Hurtgenwald
Event of Interest
1952 Clarence Birdseye markets frozen peas
Clarence Birdseye
Event of Interest
1955 Argentine ex-president Juan Perón arrives in Nicaragua
Juan Perón
Election of Interest
1959 David Ben-Gurion's Mapai party wins Israeli parliamentary election
David Ben-Gurion
Election of Interest
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson is elected President of the United States in a landslide, defeating Republican candidate Barry Goldwater
Lyndon B. Johnson
- 1964 For 1st time since 1800, residents of Washington, D.C. permitted to vote
- 1967 Vietnam War: The Battle of Dak To begins, becoming one of the bloodiest battles of the war
- 1968 Bob Packwood is elected senator of Oregon
- 1968 Ex-premier of Greece Georgios Papandreou buried. 300,000 demonstrate against fascist junta
- 1969 Congo president Mobutu visits Belgium
Event of Interest
1970 US President Richard Nixon promises gradual troop removal of Vietnam
Richard Nixon
Event of Interest
1970 Marxist Salvador Allende inaugurated as President of Chile
Salvador Allende
- 1971 "Play Misty For Me" premieres
- 1973 Mariner 10 launched-1st Venus pics, 1st mission to Mercury
- 1975 U.S. advice columnist for "Good Housekeeping" Ann Landers asks parents in a mail-in survey "‘If you had it to do over again, would you have children?" 70% of participants say no
- 1978 Dominica gains independence from UK & adopts constitution
- 1978 USSR & Vietnam sign peace & friendship treaty
- 1979 Five people mortally wounded during anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration in NC
- 1979 Moroccan offensive against Polisario Front
- 1980 Ianford Wilson's "5th of July" premieres in NYC
- 1983 Jesse Jackson launches his 1st campaign for presidency (D)
- 1984 3,000 die in 3 day anti-Sikh riot in India
Assassination
1984 Body of assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi cremated
Indira Gandhi
- 1985 President Alfonsín's Radical Burgerunie wins in Argentine legislative elections
- 1986 Federated States of Micronesia signs Compact of Free Association with US
- 1986 Joaquim Chissano elected president Mozambique
- 1986 Lebanese magazine Ash Shirra reveals secret US arms sales to Iran
- 1986 Northern Mariana Islands becomes a Commonwealth associated with US
- 1987 On Wall Street, after 5 consecutive gains, Dow Jones down 50.56
Historic Invention
1987 Gordon Gould issued US patent US4704583 for the laser, ending his 30-year battle to be credited as the inventor of the laser
Gordon Gould
- 1988 Pakistan claims it downed Afghan warplane
Event of Interest
1988 President Reagan signs credit-card disclosure-bill
Ronald Reagan
- 1988 Soviet Union agrees to allow teaching of Hebrew
- 1988 Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera's nose is broken as Roy Innis brawls with skinheads at TV taping
- 1989 100s of Bulgarian demonstrate in Sofia for democratic rights
- 1990 Gro Harlem Brundtland is installed as Prime Minister of Norway
- 1990 MLB club owners agree to pay players $280 million in damages under a settlement to close aftermath of the owners' 3-year conspiracy case against free agents; largest owner-to-player payment ever made in sports
Election of Interest
1992 Democrat Bill Clinton is elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent President George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George H. W. Bush
- 1992 Carol Moseley Brown elected first African American woman in US Senate
- 1994 Dutch & British astronomers find spiral nebula Dwingeloo 1
- 1994 Space shuttle STS-66 (Atlantis 13), launches
- 1994 Susan Smith who claimed her two children were carjacked arrested for murder
- 1994 Total solar eclipse in South America (4m23s)
- 1997 California law ends affirmative action
- 2004 With no sign the lockout of its players will end in the near future, the National Hockey League cancels 2005 All-Star Game scheduled for February in Atlanta
- 2007 Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule across Pakistan. He suspended the Constitution, imposed State of Emergency, and fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
- 2012 Syrian rebels launch a major assault on Taftanaz airbase
- 2013 8 people are killed and 10 are injured after a turboprop plane crashes in northern Bolivia
- 2013 6 people are killed after an overcrowded ferry sinks in Pattaya, Thailand
Event of Interest
2014 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls for global action on climate change after warning from scientists
Ban Ki-moon
9/11 Attack on New York's World Trade Towers
2014 New York's 104-storey One World Trade Center officially opens 13 years after the September 11 attacks
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- 2015 Game Maker Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty) buys King.com (Candy Crush) for $5.9 billion
- 2017 Pakistani woman charged with poisoning 17 members of husband's family in attempt to escape forced marriage in Punjab Province
- 2018 Truck loses control hitting 31 cars and killing at least 15 people near a tollbooth in Lanzhou, China