- 904 – The warlord Zhu Quanzhong kills Emperor Zhaozong, the penultimate emperor of the Tang dynasty, after seizing control of the imperial government.
- 1236 – The Samogitians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule.
- 1499 – The Treaty of Basel concludes the Swabian War.
- 1586 – The Battle of Zutphen is a Spanish victory over the English and Dutch.
- 1692 – The last hanging of those convicted of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials; others are all eventually released.
- 1711 – The Tuscarora War begins in present-day North Carolina.
- 1761 – George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen, respectively, of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during the American Revolution.
- 1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established.
- 1789 – Battle of Rymnik: Alexander Suvorov’s Russian and allied army defeats superior Ottoman Empire forces.
- 1792 – Primidi Vendémiaire of year one of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
- 1823 – Joseph Smith claims to have found the golden plates after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
- 1857 – The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.
- 1862 – A preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released by Abraham Lincoln.
- 1866 – The Battle of Curupayty is Paraguay’s only significant victory in the Paraguayan War.
- 1885 – Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement.
- 1892 – Lindal Railway Incident, providing inspiration for “The Lost Special” by A.C. Doyle and the TV serial Lost.
- 1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
- 1910 – The Duke of York’s Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain.
- 1914 – A German submarine sinks three British cruisers over a seventy-minute period, killing almost 1500 sailors.
- 1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States.
- 1934 – The Gresford disaster in Wales kills 266 miners and rescuers.
- 1939 – World War II: A joint German–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk is held to celebrate the successful invasion of Poland.
- 1941 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murders 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
- 1948 – Gail Halvorsen officially starts parachuting candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift.
- 1948 – Israeli-Palestine conflict: The All-Palestine Government is established by the Arab League.[1]
- 1957 – In Haiti, François Duvalier is elected president.
- 1960 – The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
- 1965 – The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, ends after the United Nations calls for a ceasefire.
- 1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by the Secret Service.
- 1979 – A bright flash, resembling the detonation of a nuclear weapon, is observed near the Prince Edward Islands. Its cause is never determined.
- 1980 – Iraq invades Iran.
- 1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time.
- 1993 – A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, causing the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history. Forty-seven passengers are killed.
- 1993 – A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia.
- 1995 – An E-3B AWACS crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes to two of the four engines soon after takeoff; all 24 on board are killed.
- 1995 – The Nagerkovil school bombing is carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil schoolchildren.
- 2013 – At least 75 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan.
-Source: wikipedia
