- AD 62 – Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.[1]
- 756 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang Dynasty, declares himself emperor and establishes the state of Yan.
- 789 – Idris I reaches Volubilis and founds the Idrisid dynasty, ceding Morocco from the Abbasid caliphate and founding the first Moroccan state.
- 1576 – Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.
- 1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
- 1649 – Charles Stuart, the son of King Charles I, is declared King Charles II of England and Scotland by the Scottish Parliament.[2]
- 1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
- 1782 – Spanish defeat British forces and capture Menorca.
- 1783 – In Calabria, a sequence of strong earthquakes begins.
- 1807 – HMS Blenheim and HMS Java disappear off the coast of Rodrigues.
- 1810 – Peninsular War: Siege of Cádiz begins.
- 1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
- 1849 – University of Wisconsin–Madison‘s first class meets at Madison Female Academy.
- 1852 – The New Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
- 1859 – Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Prince of Moldavia, is also elected as prince of Wallachia, joining the two principalities as a personal union called the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state.[3]
- 1862 – Moldavia and Wallachia formally unite to create the Romanian United Principalities.[4]
- 1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the “Welcome Stranger“, is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
- 1885 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
- 1905 – In Mexico, the General Hospital of Mexico is inaugurated, started with four basic specialties.
- 1907 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world’s first synthetic plastic.
- 1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
- 1917 – The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
- 1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson‘s veto.
- 1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane; this is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
- 1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
- 1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists.
- 1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal.
- 1933 – Mutiny on Royal Netherlands Navy warship HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën off the coast of Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.
- 1939 – Generalísimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th “Caudillo de España“, or Leader of Spain.
- 1941 – World War II: Allied forces begin the Battle of Keren to capture Keren, Eritrea.
- 1945 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
- 1958 – Gamal Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
- 1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
- 1962 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence.
- 1963 – The European Court of Justice‘s ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law.
- 1971 – Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission.
- 1975 – Riots break in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship.
- 1985 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.
- 1988 – Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
- 1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
- 1994 – Markale massacres, more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell explodes in a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo.
- 1997 – The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
- 2000 – Russian forces massacre at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya.
- 2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
- 2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.
-Source: wikipedia
