- 1395 – Battle of Rovine: The Wallachians defeat an invading Ottoman army.[1]
- 1536 – George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford and four other men are executed for treason.
- 1536 – Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn‘s marriage is annulled.
- 1590 – Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.
- 1642 – Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve (1612–1676) founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.
- 1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.
- 1792 – The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.
- 1805 – Muhammad Ali becomes Wāli of Egypt.
- 1809 – Emperor Napoleon I orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire.
- 1814 – Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian.
- 1814 – The Constitution of Norway is signed and Crown Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark is elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly.
- 1859 – Members of the Melbourne Football Club codified the first rules of Australian rules football.
- 1863 – Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language.
- 1865 – The International Telegraph Union (later the International Telecommunication Union) is established in Paris.
- 1875 – Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby with the jockey Oliver Lewis (2:37.75)
- 1900 – Second Boer War: British troops relieve Mafeking.
- 1900 – The children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, is first published in the United States. The first copy is given to the author’s sister.[2]
- 1902 – Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.
- 1914 – The Protocol of Corfu is signed, recognising full autonomy to Northern Epirus under nominal Albanian sovereignty.
- 1915 – The last British Liberal Party government (led by H. H. Asquith) falls.
- 1933 – Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort form Nasjonal Samling — the national-socialist party of Norway.
- 1939 – The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the United States’ first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.
- 1940 – World War II: Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium.
- 1943 – World War II: Dambuster Raids commence by No. 617 Squadron RAF.
- 1954 – The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
- 1967 – Six-Day War: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt.
- 1969 – Venera program: Soviet Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.
- 1973 – Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.
- 1974 – The Troubles: Thirty-three civilians are killed and 300 injured when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) detonates four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland.
- 1974 – Police in Los Angeles raid the Symbionese Liberation Army‘s headquarters, killing six members, including Camilla Hall.
- 1977 – Nolan Bushnell opened the first Chuck E. Cheese’s in San Jose, California.
- 1980 – General Chun Doo-hwan of South Korea seizes control of the government and declares martial law in order to suppress student demonstrations.
- 1980 – On the eve of presidential elections, Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path attacks a polling location in Chuschi (a town in Ayacucho), starting the Internal conflict in Peru.
- 1983 – The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world’s largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds [1.9 kt]), in response to the Appalachian Observer’s Freedom of Information Act request.
- 1983 – Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
- 1984 – Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”, sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.
- 1987 – Iran–Iraq War: An Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet fires two missiles into the U.S. Navy warship USS Stark, killing 37 and injuring 21 of her crew.
- 1990 – The General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.
- 1992 – Three days of popular protests against the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Suchinda Kraprayoon begin in Bangkok, leading to a military crackdown that results in 52 officially confirmed deaths, hundreds of injuries, many disappearances, and more than 3,500 arrests.
- 1994 – Malawi holds its first multi-party elections.
- 1995 – Shawn Nelson steals an M60 tank from the California Army National Guard Armory in San Diego and proceeds to go on a rampage.
- 1997 – Troops of Laurent Kabila march into Kinshasa. Zaire is officially renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- 2000 – Arsenal and Galatasaray fans clash in the 2000 UEFA Cup Final riots in Copenhagen
- 2004 – The first legal same-sex marriages in the U.S. are performed in the state of Massachusetts.
- 2006 – The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef.
- 2007 – Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments. This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone since 1953.
- 2014 – A plane crash in northern Laos kills 17 people.
-Source: wikipedia
