- 451 – Attila the Hun sacks the town of Metz and attacks other cities in Gaul.
- 529 – First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
- 611 – Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul sacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico.
- 1141 – Empress Matilda became the first female ruler of England, adopting the title ‘Lady of the English’.
- 1348 – Charles University is founded in Prague.
- 1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu.
- 1541 – Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.
- 1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s St John Passion, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.
- 1767 – End of Burmese–Siamese War (1765–67).
- 1776 – Captain John Barry and the USS Lexington captures the Edward.
- 1788 – American pioneers to the Northwest Territory establish Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.
- 1789 – Selim III became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.
- 1798 – The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.
- 1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.
- 1805 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
- 1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.
- 1829 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, commences translation of the Book of Mormon, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.
- 1831 – Emperor Pedro I of Brazil resigns. He goes to his native Portugal to become King Pedro IV.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The Union’s Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, Tennessee.
- 1868 – Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, is assassinated by a Fenian activist.
- 1890 – Completion of the first Lake Biwa Canal.
- 1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
- 1906 – The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco.
- 1922 – The United States Secretary of the Interior leases federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies on excessively generous terms.
- 1927 – The first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).
- 1933 – Prohibition in the United States is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment. (Now celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States.)
- 1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
- 1943 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Terebovlia, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches.
- 1943 – Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the Axis Occupation.
- 1945 – World War II: The battleship Yamato, one of the two largest ever constructed, is sunk by American aircraft during Operation Ten-Go.
- 1945 – World War II: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th, and 17th Krajina brigades from the Tenth division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.
- 1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
- 1949 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific opened on Broadway; it would run for 1,925 performances and win ten Tony Awards.
- 1954 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his “domino theory” speech during a news conference.
- 1955 – Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health.
- 1964 – IBM announces the System/360.
- 1964 – A bulldozer kills Rev. Bruce W. Klunder, a civil rights activist, during a school segregation protest in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking a riot.
- 1965 – Representatives of the National Congress of American Indians testify before members of the US Senate against the termination of the Colville tribe in Washington DC.[1]
- 1968 – Motor racing world champion Jim Clark is killed in an accident during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim.
- 1969 – The Internet‘s symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.
- 1971 – President Richard Nixon announces his decision to quicken the pace of Vietnamization.
- 1972 – Communist forces overran the South Vietnamese town of Loc Ninh.[2]
- 1976 – Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party (UK) after being arrested for faking his own death.
- 1977 – German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.
- 1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.
- 1980 – During the Iran hostage crisis, the United States severs relations with Iran.
- 1983 – During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
- 1989 – Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway killing 42 sailors.
- 1990 – Iran–Contra affair: John Poindexter is found guilty of five charges for his part in the scandal (the conviction is later reversed on appeal).
- 1990 – A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people.
- 1994 – Rwandan genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda.
- 1994 – Auburn Calloway attempts to destroy Federal Express Flight 705 in order to allow his family to benefit from his life insurance policy.
- 1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
- 1999 – The World Trade Organization rules in favor of the United States in its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas.
- 2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.
- 2003 – U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein‘s regime falls two days later.
- 2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
- 2009 – Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.
- 2011 – The Israel Defense Forces use their Iron Dome missile system to successfully intercept a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza, marking the first short-range missile intercept ever.[3]
- 2017 – A man deliberately drives a hijacked truck into a crowd of peoplein Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and injuring fifteen others.
-Source: wikipedia
