- 686 – Maya king Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ assumes the crown of Calakmul.
- 801 – King Louis the Pious captures Barcelona from the Moors after a siege of several months.
- 1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.
- 1077 – The first Parliament of Friuli is created.
- 1559 – The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars.
- 1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins.
- 1865 – American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
- 1882 – American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James.
- 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.
- 1888 – The first of eleven unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.
- 1895 – The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
- 1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 1933 – First flight over Mount Everest, by the British Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale, and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston.
- 1936 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
- 1946 – Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.
- 1948 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
- 1948 – In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju uprising.
- 1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg‘s book Howl against obscenity charges.
- 1956 – Hudsonville–Standale tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
- 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. He was assassinated the next day.
- 1969 – Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to “Vietnamize” the war effort.
- 1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
- 1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak). The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.
- 1975 – Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
- 1980 – US Congress restores a federal trust relationship with the 501 members of the Shvwits, Kanosh, Koosharem, and the Indian Peaks and Cedar City bands of the Paiute people of Utah.[1]
- 1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
- 1989 – The US Supreme Court upholds the jurisdictional rights of tribal courts under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 in Mississippi Choctaw Band v. Holyfield.[1]
- 1996 – Suspected “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.
- 1997 – The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
- 2000 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.
- 2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
- 2007 – Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record.
- 2008 – ATA Airlines, once one of the ten largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, files for bankruptcy for the second time in five years and ceases all operations.
- 2008 – Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS‘s YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be taken into state custody.
- 2009 – Jiverly Antares Wong opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.
- 2010 – Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.
- 2013 – More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 2016 – The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.
- 2017 – A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.
- 2018 – YouTube headquarters shooting.
-Source: wikipedia
