- 1411 – King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.[1]
- 1561 – The steeple of St Paul’s, the medieval cathedral of London, is destroyed in a fire caused by lightning and is never rebuilt.
- 1615 – Siege of Osaka: Forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
- 1745 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great’s Prussian army decisively defeated an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine during the War of the Austrian Succession.
- 1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada, taken from the Acadians.
- 1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
- 1784 – Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. Her flight covers four kilometres in 45 minutes, and reached 1,500 metres altitude (estimated).
- 1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1802 – King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.
- 1812 – Following Louisiana‘s admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.
- 1825 – General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.
- 1855 – Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.
- 1859 – Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
- 1878 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
- 1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
- 1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
- 1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V‘s horse at The Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness, and dies four days later.
- 1916 – World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.
- 1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
- 1919 – Women’s rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
- 1920 – Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.
- 1928 – The President of the Republic of China, Zhang Zuolin, is assassinated by Japanese agents.
- 1932 – Marmaduke Grove and other Chilean military officers lead a coup d’état establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.
- 1939 – The Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
- 1940 – World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends: British forces complete evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers, only to the House of Commons, his famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.
- 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. The Japanese Admiral Chūichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
- 1943 – A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.
- 1944 – World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
- 1944 – World War II: The United States Fifth Army captures Rome, although much of the German Fourteenth Army is able to withdraw to the north.
- 1961 – Cold War: In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.
- 1967 – Seventy-two people are killed when a Canadair C-4 Argonaut crashes at Stockport in England.
- 1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- 1975 – The Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.
- 1979 – Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.
- 1983 – Gordon Kahl, who killed two US Marshals in Medina, North Dakota on February 13, is killed in a shootout in Smithville, Arkansas, along with a local sheriff, after a four-month manhunt.
- 1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
- 1988 – Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.
- 1989 – Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death and funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
- 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army, with between 241 and 1,000 dead (an unofficial estimate).
- 1989 – Solidarity‘s victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of the so-called Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations.
- 1989 – Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
- 1996 – The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 37 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.
- 1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
- 2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.
-Source: wikipedia
