- 472 – After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in St. Peter’s Basilica and put to death.
- 813 – Byzantine emperor Michael I, under threat by conspiracies, abdicates in favor of his general Leo the Armenian, and becomes a monk (under the name Athanasius).
- 911 – Signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple and Rollo of Normandy.
- 1174 – Baldwin IV, 13, becomes King of Jerusalem, with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli as regent and William of Tyre as chancellor.
- 1302 – Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch): A coalition around the Flemish cities defeats the king of France’s royal army.
- 1346 – Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, is elected King of the Romans.
- 1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time.
- 1476 – Giuliano della Rovere is appointed bishop of Coutances.
- 1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland.
- 1616 – Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec.
- 1735 – Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979.
- 1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.
- 1796 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.
- 1798 – The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.
- 1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.
- 1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
- 1833 – Noongar Australian aboriginal warrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, is killed.
- 1848 – Waterloo railway station in London opens.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempt to invade Washington, D.C.
- 1882 – The British Mediterranean Fleet begins the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the Anglo-Egyptian War.
- 1889 – Tijuana, Mexico, is founded.
- 1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kōkichi Mikimoto.
- 1893 – A revolution led by the liberal general and politician José Santos Zelaya takes over state power in Nicaragua.
- 1895 – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists.
- 1897 – Salomon August Andrée leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies.
- 1899 – Fiat founded by Giovanni Agnelli in Turin, Italy.
- 1906 – Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser‘s An American Tragedy.
- 1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.
- 1914 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is launched.
- 1919 – The eight-hour day and free Sunday become law for workers in the Netherlands.
- 1920 – In the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decides to remain with Weimar Germany.
- 1921 – A truce in the Irish War of Independence comes into effect.
- 1921 – The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People’s Republic.
- 1921 – Former president of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.
- 1922 – The Hollywood Bowl opens.
- 1924 – Eric Liddell won the gold medal in 400m at the 1924 Paris Olympics, after refusing to run in the heats for 100m, his favoured distance, on the Sunday.
- 1934 – Engelbert Zaschka of Germany flies his large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft, about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take-off.
- 1936 – The Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic.
- 1940 – World War II: Vichy France regime is formally established. Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of the French State.
- 1941 – The Northern Rhodesian Labour Party holds its first congress in Nkana.
- 1943 – Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Volhynia) peak.
- 1943 – World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily: German and Italian troops launch a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily.
- 1947 – The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France.
- 1950 – Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank.
- 1957 – Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherits the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismai’li worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III.
- 1960 – France legislates for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina) and Niger.
- 1960 – Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.
- 1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission.
- 1962 – Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.
- 1971 – Copper mines in Chile are nationalized.
- 1972 – The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.
- 1973 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Paris, France on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA bans smoking in airplane lavatories.
- 1977 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- 1978 – Los Alfaques disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists.
- 1979 – America’s first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
- 1983 – A TAME airline Boeing 737-200 crashes near Cuenca, Ecuador, killing all 119 passengers and crew on board.[1]
- 1990 – Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada begins.
- 1991 – Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 crashes in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia killing all 261 passengers and crew on board.
- 1995 – Yugoslav Wars: Srebrenica massacre begins; lasts until 22 July.
- 2006 – Mumbai train bombings: Two hundred nine people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India.
- 2010 – The Islamist militia group Al-Shabaab carried out multiple suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, killing 74 people and injuring 85 others.
- 2011 – Ninety-eight containers of explosives self-detonate killing 13 people in Zygi, Cyprus.
-Source: wikipedia
