Historic Event
1492 Christopher Columbus' fleet anchors at "Fernandina" (Long Island, Bahamas)
Francis Drake's Circumnavigation
1579 Francis Drake sights land in the Philippines after crossing the Pacific Ocean aboard the 'Golden Hind' [1]
- 1600 Olivier van Noorts ships reach Philippines
- 1674 Emperor Leopold I fires chancellor Fürst Wenzel Lobkowitz
- 1710 British troops occupies Port Royal, Nova Scotia
- 1757 Austrian troops occupy Berlin
- 1775 Portland, Maine burned by British
- 1780 Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
- 1793 Battle of Wattignies: French defeat Allied forces and lift siege of Maubeuge
- 1795 M von Böhms "Oorlogscantate" premieres
- 1829 Tremont Hotel, 1st US modern hotel opens (Boston)
- 1834 Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster (parliament) in London is burnt down
- 1839 Joseph Saxton, a machine inspector at the US Mint, takes 1st daguerrotype photograph in US, of Central High School building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 1841 Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is chartered
- 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
- 1846 Dentist William T Morton demonstrates effectiveness of ether
Historic Publication
1847 Charlotte Brontë's book "Jane Eyre" published
Historic Event
1854 Abraham Lincoln presents his Peoria Speech, denouncing recent federal legislation extending slavery, on the lawn of the Peoria County Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois [1]
Historic Event
1859 Abolitionist John Brown leads 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
Gregory Conquers Julius Caesar
1867 Alaska adopts Gregorian calendar, crosses international date line
Historic Event
1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
- 1876 Race riot at Cainhoy SC (5 whites & 1 black killed)
- 1882 The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.
- 1900 Great Britain and Germany sign the Anglo-German Treaty, agreeing to maintain territorial integrity of China and support 'open door' policy called for by US Secretary of State
- 1901 Baron Hayashi of Japan begins negotiations in London to make an alliance with the British and strengthen Japan's position against Russians
Historic Event
1901 Booker T. Washington and his family are invited to dine at the White House with Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, prompting condemnation from the South
- 1903 Homel, 1st Jewish self defense organization founded in Russia
- 1904 Russian Baltic fleet departs to Port Arthur
- 1905 The Partition of Bengal (India) occurred.
- 1907 Belasco Theater opens at 111 W 44th St NYC
- 1907 David Belasco's "Grand Army Man," premieres in NYC
- 1913 Booth Theater opens at 222 W 44th St NYC
Theater Premiere
1913 George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" premieres in Hofburg Theatre in Vienna, Austria
- 1915 Great Britain declares war on Bulgaria
Historic Event
1916 Margaret Sanger opens 1st birth control clinic in the US at 46 Amboy St, Brooklyn
Meeting of Interest
1916 T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) meets with Fasal Hoessein
Historic Event
1928 Mickey Cochrane wins AL MVP honors, edging Heinie Manush by 2 points
- 1931 US trunk murderess Winnie Ruth Judd murders two friends then dismembers one of them in Phoenix
Historic Event
1934 Mao Zedong and 25,000 troops begin their 6,000 mile Long March from the south of China to the north and west
Historic Event
1936 Jean Batten reaches Auckland, New Zealand after flying solo from Kent, England in a record 11 days and 45 minutes
Historic Event
1940 Warsaw Ghetto is formed by German Governor-General Hans Frank
- 1941 "Gordo" comic strip (by Gus Arriola) 1st appears in newspapers
- 1941 Germany advances within 60 miles (96 K) of Moscow
Historic Siege
1941 Romanian Legionnaires enter Odessa, Russia during the Siege of Odessa, part of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union
- 1942 Cyclone in Bay of Bengal kills some 40,000 south of Calcutta India
- 1943 Anti Jewish riot in Rome
- 1943 Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly opens city's new subway system
- 1943 Jewish quarter of Rome surrounded by Nazis, they are sent to Auschwitz
- 1943 US 1st Army establishes headquarter in Bristol
- 1944 Hungary: Horthy government falls/nazi count Szalasi becomes premier
- 1945 UN's Food & Agriculture Organization comes into existence
Nuremberg Trials
1946 10 Nazi leaders are hanged as war criminals after Nuremberg war trials, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Alfred Jodl
Historic Event
1948 Demonstration by Moscow Jews honoring Israeli ambassador Golda Meir
Historic Event
1950 The first edition of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is released in London
Historic Event
1953 Fidel Castro sentenced to 15 years (Havana)
Historic Event
1957 Queen Elizabeth & Prince Philip visits Williamsburg Virginia
Cuban Missile Crisis
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins as JFK is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba
Election of Interest
1964 Harold Wilson's Labour party wins British election
- 1964 Indians' directors vote to keep franchise in Cleveland, rejecting bids by Seattle, Oakland & Dallas
- 1967 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris ends after redefining the second using a cesium-beam atomic clock [1]
- 1967 Joean Baez and 123 other anti-draft protesters are arrested in Oakland, California
- 1968 China reports removal of president Li Sjao-tji
- 1968 Czechoslovakia & Russian "accord" rules allies Soviet forces
- 1968 The People's Democracy (PD), formed on Oct 9, organise a march of 1,300 students from the Queen's University of Belfast to the City Hall in the centre of the city, Northern Ireland
- 1969 Soyuz 6 returns to Earth
Historic Event
1970 Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history.
- 1971 Amphitheater in McLaren Park is dedicated in San Francisco
- 1972 2 members of the Official Irish Republican Army are shot dead by the British Army in County Tyrone
- 1972 A Protestant youth member (15) of the Ulster Defence Association, and a UDA member (26) are run over by British Army vehicles during riots in east Belfast
Nobel Prize
1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam that later failed
- 1973 Israeli tanks under Gen Sharon move through Suez Canal
- 1973 Maynard Jackson elected 1st black mayor of Atlanta
- 1973 Monks Heng Yo & Heng Ju, start 1000 mile SF to Seattle pilgrimage
- 1973 The Gulf Six (Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) unilaterally raise the posted price of Saudi Light marker crude-oil by 17 percent
- 1976 Soyuz 23 returns to Earth
- 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Herbert A Simon
Papal Inauguration
1978 Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul II
- 1979 First global telenovela Mexican "Los ricos también lloran" (The Rich Also Cry) premieres, second foreign series to be screened in the Soviet Union
- 1979 Nobel Prize for Economics awarded to Theodore Schultz and William Arthur Lewis for economic development research, particularly for developing countries [1]
- 1980 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
- 1981 2nd Dutch government of Van Agt resigns
- 1981 Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy," premieres in NYC
- 1982 Mt Palomar Observatory 1st to detect Halley's comet on 13th return
Historic Event
1982 Secretary of State George P. Shultz warns the US will withdraw from the UN if they vote to exclude Israel
- 1982 USSR performs underground nuclear test
Nobel Prize
1984 Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican Archbishop, wins Nobel Peace Prize
- 1985 Challenger vehicle moves to launch pad for STS 61A mission
- 1985 Nobel prize for chemistry awarded to Herbert Hauptman & Jerome Karle
- 1986 Armand Hammer returns to US with Jewish refusenik David Goldfarb
Historic Event
1986 US government shuts down due to disputes between President Reagan and the House
- 1986 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Nobel Prize
1986 Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet, becomes the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1987 338,500,000 shares traded on NY stock exchange (record)
- 1987 Dow Jones for 1st time falls more than 100 pts (108.35)
- 1987 Great Storm of 1987: 175-kph hurricane force winds hit London and much of the South of England killing 23 people and causing widespread blackouts
- 1987 Jessica McClure rescued 58 hrs after falling 22' into a well shaft
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1989 Bikenibau Paeniu installed as premier of Tuvalu
- 1989 Jan Syse becomes premier of Norway
- 1990 Reds beat A's 7-0, ending Oakland's 10-game post-season winning streak
- 1990 US forces reach 200,000 in Persian Gulf
- 1991 George Jo Hennard, 35, kills 23 & himself & wounds 20 in Texas
- 1991 Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.
- 1991 US Supreme Court begins to hear Joseph Doherty case
- 1993 Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching British National Party headquarters
Appointment of Interest
1993 General Omar al-Bashir appointed Sudan president
- 1993 IRA bomb attack on fish & chips restaurant in Belfast, 10 killed
- 1994 Shreveport Pirates win first Canadian Football League game, 24-12 at home to Sacramento Gold Miners; fold 1995
- 1995 Allan Donald takes 8-71 as South Africa defeat Zimbabwe
- 1995 Million Man March held in Washington, D.C. (over 830,000 African American men attend)
- 1995 ODI in Sharjah WI 7-333 in 50 overs beat Sri Lanka 329 all out
- 1996 Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.
Murder of Interest
1998 Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges
- 2001 The US Coast Guard lifts a ban on liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers entering Boston Harbor to make deliveries to Distrigas' Everett LNG terminal that had been imposed on September 26 in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11
- 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.
- 2012 Conflict in Maiduguri, Nigeria, leads to 24 militant deaths and several structures set ablaze
- 2013 18 people are killed after Typhoon Wipha strikes Japan
- 2013 21 people are killed after a minibus hits a land mine in Nawa, Syria
- 2013 49 people are killed after Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashes in the Mekong River, Laos
- 2013 The United States ends its 16-day government shut down and avoids default in a Bi-partisan deal in the Senate
- 2014 New Zealand, Malaysia, Angola, Spain and Venezuela are elected to the United Nations Security Council
- 2017 Findings published of neutron star collision that occurred two months prior on August 17, the first cosmic event seen in gravitational waves and light. Confirms heavy elements such as gold the result of such collisions
- 2017 Iraqi army seizes control of oil-rich Kirkuk, from Kurdish peshmerga
- 2017 Panama Papers Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in a suspicious car bomb in Malta
- 2017 Storm formed from Hurricane Ophelia lashes Ireland, killing 3 people
- 2018 Chairman of China's Xinjiang’s government defends its detention camps for Uighur Muslims saying they provided “vocational education and training”
- 2018 Man Booker Prize is won by Anna Burns' "Milkman", the first winner from Northern Ireland
Historic Event
2018 Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denies knowledge of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi according to President Trump
- 2019 Egyptian archaeologists announce discovery of more than 20 painted wooden coffins from Theban necropolis of Asasif
- 2019 First plant-powered selfie taken by Pete the Fern as part of research into use of microbial fuel cells at London Zoo (London, England)
- 2020 French teacher Samuel Paty beheaded by 18 year-old Islamist militant in Paris suburb of Éragny
- 2021 NASA probe Lucy launched on mission to fly-by eight Trojan asteroids circling the sun [1]
- 2022 More than 600 people have died in Nigeria's worst floods in a decade, displacing more than 1.3 million people according to a government minister [1]