- 708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
- 870 – The city of Melite surrenders to an Aghlabid army following a siege, putting an end to Byzantine Malta.
- 1009 – Mainz Cathedral suffers extensive damage from a fire, which destroys the building on the day of its inauguration.
- 1261 – Pope Urban IV succeeds Pope Alexander IV as the 182nd pope.
- 1315 – Battle of Montecatini: The army of the Republic of Pisa, commanded by Uguccione della Faggiuola, wins a decisive victory against the joint forces of the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Florence despite being outnumbered.
- 1350 – Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
- 1475 – The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between the kingdoms of France and England.
- 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII succeeds Pope Sixtus IV.
- 1498 – Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Kingdom of Portugal.
- 1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade).
- 1526 – Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
- 1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
- 1728 – The city of Nuuk in Greenland is founded as the fort of Godt-Haab by the royal governor Claus Paarss.
- 1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years’ War in Europe.
- 1758 – The Treaty of Easton establishes the first American Indian reservation, at Indian Mills, New Jersey, for the Lenape.
- 1778 – American Revolutionary War: British and American forces battle indecisively at the Battle of Rhode Island.
- 1786 – Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
- 1807 – British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley defeat a Danish militia outside Copenhagen in the Battle of Køge.
- 1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
- 1842 – Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.
- 1861 – American Civil War: The Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries gives Federal forces control of Pamlico Sound.
- 1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world’s first mountain-climbing rack railway.
- 1871 – Emperor Meiji orders the abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
- 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.
- 1898 – The Goodyear tire company is founded.
- 1903 – The Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, is launched.
- 1907 – The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
- 1910 – The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.
- 1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
- 1911 – The Canadian Naval Service becomes the Royal Canadian Navy.[1]
- 1914 – World War I: Start of the Battle of St. Quentin in which the French Fifth Army counter-attacked the invading Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne.
- 1915 – US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.
- 1916 – The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
- 1918 – World War I: Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive.
- 1930 – The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
- 1941 – World War II: Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is occupied by Nazi Germany following an occupation by the Soviet Union.
- 1943 – World War II: German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves the Danish government.
- 1944 – World War II: Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
- 1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
- 1950 – Korean War: British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.
- 1958 – United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
- 1965 – The Gemini V spacecraft returns to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
- 1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
- 1966 – Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
- 1970 – Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Rubén Salazar.
- 1982 – The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
- 1991 – Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
- 1991 – Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo, is killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
- 1996 – Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
- 1997 – Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service.
- 1997 – At least 98 villagers are killed by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
- 2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
- 2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing up to 1,836 people and causing $125 billion in damage.
- 2012 – At least 26 Chinese miners are killed and 21 missing after a blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, located at Panzhihua, Sichuan Province.
-Source: wikipedia
