- 307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.[1]
- 1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.[2]
- 1492 – Queen Isabella of Castile issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
- 1561 – The city of San Cristóbal, Táchira is founded.
- 1717 – A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, preached in the presence of King George I of Great Britain, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.[3]
- 1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
- 1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
- 1885 – The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
- 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.[4]
- 1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.[5]
- 1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
- 1909 – Serbia formally withdraws its opposition to Austro-Hungarian actions in the Bosnian Crisis.
- 1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
- 1917 – According to the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the islands become American possessions.
- 1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
- 1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
- 1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
- 1930 – The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years.
- 1931 – An earthquake in Nicaragua destroys Managua; killing 2,000.
- 1931 – A Transcontinental & Western Air airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
- 1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
- 1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
- 1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
- 1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
- 1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
- 1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
- 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
- 1964 – Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d’état.
- 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
- 1968 – American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of “Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam” in a television address. At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”[6]
- 1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
- 1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
- 1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
- 1990 – Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
- 1991 – 1991 Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.
- 1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
- 1992 – The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow.
- 1995 – TAROM Flight 371, an Airbus A310-300, crashes near Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board.
- 1995 – Selena is murdered by her fan club’s president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas after accusations of Saldívar embezzling money from Selena’s fan club.
- 1998 – Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.
- 2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
- 2018 – Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution.
-Source: wikipedia
