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CHRONOLOGY HUMAN TIMES 15 OOO EVENTS
BY KOMAZEC DARKO

"Ea enim quae scribuntur tria habere decent, utilitatem praesentem, certum finem, inexpugnabile fundamentum."
Cardanus

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 2011, by Komazec Darko, Belgrade, Serbia

JANUARY

JANUARY 1
  
153 BC Roman consuls begin their year in office. 45 BC The Julian calendar takes effect for the first time. 69 The Roman legions in Germania Superior refuse to swear loyalty to Galba. They rebel and proclaim Aulus Vitellius Germanicus as emperor.

            

193 The Senate chooses Pertinax against his will to succeed Commodus as Roman Emperor. 1001 Grand Prince Stephen I of Hungary is named the first King of Hungary by Pope Silvester II. 1259 Michael VIII Palaiologos is proclaimed co-emperor of the Empire of Nicaea with his ward John IV Laskaris. 1438 Albert II of Habsburg is crowned King of Hungary. 1515 King Francis I of France succeeds to the French throne. 1527 Croatian nobles elect Ferdinand I of Austria as king of Croatia in the Parliament on Cetin. 1600 Scotland begins its numbered year on January 1 instead of March 25. 1651 Charles II is crowned King of Scotland. 1700 Russia begins using the Anno Domini era and no longer uses the Anno Mundi era of the Byzantine Empire. 1707 John V is crowned King of Portugal. 1739 Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier. 1772 The first traveler's cheques, which can be used in 90 European cities, go on sale in London. 1773 The hymn that became known as "Amazing Grace", then titled "1 Chronicles 17:1617" is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, England.

1781 1,500 soldiers of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment under General Anthony Wayne's command rebel against the Continental Army's winter camp in Morristown, New Jersey as part of the Pennsylvania (Continentals; Regiment) Mutiny of 1781.

  

1788 First edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, is published. 1800 The Dutch East India Company is dissolved. 1801 The legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

 

1801 The dwarf planet Ceres is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi. 1803 Emperor Gia Long orders all bronze wares of the Ty S n Dynasty to be collected and melted into nine cannons for the Royal Citadel in Hu , Vietnam.

1804 French rule ends in Haiti. Haiti becomes the first black republic and second independent country on the North America after the U.S.

 

1806 The French Republican Calendar is abolished. 1808 The importation of slaves into the United States is banned.

 

1810 Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB officially becomes Governor of New South Wales 1812 The Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, orders troops from Durham Castle to break up a miners strike in Chester-le-Street, Co. Durham

   

1822 The Greek Constitution of 1822 is adopted by the First National Assembly of Epidaurus. 1833 The United Kingdom claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. 1845 The Cobble Hill Tunnel in Brooklyn is completed. 1847 The world's first "Mercy" Hospital is founded in Pittsburgh by the Sisters of Mercy, the name will go on to grace over 30 major hospitals throughout the world.

            

1860 First Polish stamp is issued. 1861 Porfirio Daz conquers Mexico City. 1863 American Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate territory. 1863 The first claim under the Homestead Act is made by Daniel Freeman for a farm in Nebraska. 1873 Japan begins using the Gregorian calendar. 1877 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom is proclaimed Empress of India. 1880 Ferdinand de Lesseps begins French construction of the Panama Canal. 1885 Twenty-five nations adopt Sanford Fleming's proposal for Standard Time (and also, time zones) 1890 Eritrea is consolidated into a colony by the Italian government. 1890 The Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, is first held. 1892 Ellis Island opens to begin processing immigrants into the United States. 1894 The Manchester Ship Canal, England, is officially opened to traffic. 1898 New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, are joined on January 25 by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.

  

1899 Spanish rule ends in Cuba. 1901 Nigeria becomes a British protectorate. 1901 The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton is appointed the first Prime Minister.

1902 The first American college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena.

 

1906 British India officially adopts the Indian Standard Time. 1908 For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City's Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight.

1909 Drilling begins on the Lakeview Gusher.

1910 Captain David Beatty is promoted to Rear Admiral, and becomes the youngest admiral in the Royal Navy (except for Royal family members), since Horatio Nelson.

  

1911 Northern Territory is separated from South Australia and transferred to Commonwealth control. 1912 The Republic of China is established. 1916 German troops abandon Yaound and their Kamerun colony to British forces and begin the long march to Spanish Guinea.

  

1920 The Belorussian Communist Organisation is founded as a separate party. 1923 Britain's Railways are grouped into the Big Four: LNER, GWR, SR, and LMS. 1927 Turkey adopts the Gregorian calendar: December 18, 1926 (Julian), is immediately followed by January 1, 1927 (Gregorian).

1928 Boris Bazhanov defects through Iran. He is the only assistant of Joseph Stalin's secretariat to have defected from the Eastern Bloc.

1929 The former municipalities of Point Grey, British Columbia and South Vancouver, British Columbia are amalgamated into Vancouver.

1932 The United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth.

       

1934 Alcatraz Island becomes a United States federal prison. 1934 Nazi Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring". 1937 Safety glass in vehicle windscreens becomes mandatory in Great Britain. 1939 William Hewlett and David Packard found Hewlett-Packard. 1939 Sydney, Australia, swelters in 45 C (113 F) heat, a record for the city. 1942 The Declaration by the United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations. 1945 World War II: In retaliation for the Malmedy massacre, U.S. troops massacre 30 SS prisoners at Chenogne. 1945 World War II: The German Luftwaffe launches Unternehmen Bodenplatte, a massive, but failed attempt to knock out Allied air power in northern Europe in a single blow.

 

1945 World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major German offensive on the Western Front begins. 1947 The American and British occupation zones in Germany, after World War II, merge to form the Bizone, that later became the Federal Republic of Germany.

1947 The Canadian Citizenship Act 1946 comes into effect, converting British subjects into Canadian citizens. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes the first Canadian citizen.

  

1948 The British railway network is nationalised to form British Railways. 1948 The Constitution of Italy comes into force. 1949 United Nations cease-fire takes effect in Kashmir from one minute before midnight. War between India and Pakistan stops accordingly.

1954 NBC makes the first coast-to-coast NTSC color broadcast when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade , with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers.

1956 The Republic of the Sudan achieves independence from the Egyptian Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

1956 A new year event causes panic and stampedes at Yahiko Shrine, Yahiko, central Niigata, Japan, killing at least 124 people.

 

1957 George Town, Penang becomes a city by a royal charter granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 1957 An Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit attacks Brookeborough RUC barracks in one of the most famous incidents of the IRA's Operation Harvest.

  

1958 The European Community is established. 1959 Fulgencio Batista, dictator of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro's forces during the Cuban Revolution. 1960 The Republic of Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

1962 Western Samoa achieves independence from New Zealand; its name is changed to the Independent State of Western Samoa.

 

1962 United States Navy SEALs established. 1964 The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is divided into the independent republics of Zambia and Malawi, and the British-controlled Rhodesia.

     

1965 The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan is founded in Kabul. 1966 A twelve-day New York City transit strike begins. 1966 After a coup, Colonel Jean-Bdel Bokassa assumes power as president of the Central African Republic. 1970 Unix epoch time begins at 00:00:00 UTC/GMT. 1971 Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television. 1973 Denmark, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland are admitted into the European Community.

1978 Air India Flight 855 Boeing 747 crashes into the sea, due to instrument failure and pilot disorientation, off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.

 

1978 The Constitution of the Northern Mariana Islands becomes effective. 1979 Formal diplomatic relations are established between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America.

  

1980 Victoria is crowned princess of Sweden. 1981 The Republic of Greece is admitted into the European Community. 1981 The Republic of Palau achieves self-government though it is not independent from the United States.

1982 Peruvian Javier Prez de Cullar becomes the first Latin American to hold the title of Secretary General of the United Nations.

 

1983 The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. 1984 The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T.

1984 The Sultanate of Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

  

1985 The Internet's Domain Name System is created. 1985 The first British mobile phone call is made by Ernie Wise to Vodafone. 1986 Aruba becomes independent of Curaao, though it remains in free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

 

1986 The Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic are admitted into the European Community. 1988 The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America comes into existence, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States.

    

1989 The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer comes into force. 1990 David Dinkins is sworn in as New York City's first black mayor. 1993 Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: Czechoslovakia is divided into the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. 1993 A single market within the European Community is introduced. 1994 The Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiates twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican State of Chiapas.

   

1994 The North American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect. 1995 The World Trade Organization goes into effect. 1995 The Kingdom of Sweden and the republics of Austria and Finland are admitted into the European Union. 1995 The Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe becomes the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

 

1995 The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of freak waves. 1996 Curaao gains limited self-government, though it remains within free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

    

1997 The Republic of Zare officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Zare. 1997 Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan is appointed Secretary General of the United Nations. 1998 Russia begins to circulate new rubles to stem inflation and promote confidence. 1998 The European Central Bank is established. 1999 The Euro currency is introduced in 11 countries - members of the European Union (with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Sweden).

   

2002 Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union's member states. 2002 Taiwan officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Chinese Taipei. 2002 The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially comes into force. 2004 In a vote of confidence, General Pervez Musharraf wins 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College of Pakistan, and according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, is "deemed to be elected" to the office of President until October 2007.

2006 Sydney, Australia swelters through its hottest New Years Day on record. The thermometer peaked at 45 C (113 F), sparking bushfires and power outages. (Same as 1939)

2007 Bulgaria and Romania officially join the European Union. Also, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Irish become official languages of the European Union, joining 20 other official languages.

 

2007 Adam Air Flight 574 disappears over Indonesia with 102 people on board. 2008 Malta and Cyprus officially adopt the Euro currency and become the fourteenth and fifteenth Eurozone countries.

 

2009 66 die in a nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand. 2010 A suicide car bomber detonates at a volleyball tournament in Lakki Marwat, Pakistan, killing 105 and injuring 100 more.

JANUARY 2
   
366 The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers, invading the Roman Empire 533 Mercurius becomes Pope John II, the first pope to adopt a new name upon elevation to the papacy 1492 Reconquista: the emirate of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrenders 1777 American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey

       

1788 Georgia becomes the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution 1791 Big Bottom massacre in the Ohio Country, marking the beginning of the Northwest Indian War 1818 The British Institution of Civil Engineers is founded 1833 Re-establishment of British rule on the Falklands. 1860 The discovery of the planet Vulcan is announced at a meeting of the Acadmie des Sciences in Paris 1871 Amadeus I becomes King of Spain 1900 John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China 1905 Russo-Japanese War: The Russian garrison surrenders at Port Arthur, China

1911 A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the involvement of then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill

1920 The second Palmer Raid takes place with another 6,000 suspected communists and anarchists arrested and held without trial. These raids take place in several U.S. cities.

1927 Angered by the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, Catholic rebels in Mexico rebelled against the government.

1935 Bruno Hauptmann goes on trial for the murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh

 

1941 World War II: German bombing severely damages the Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, Wales 1942 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) convicts 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne in the largest espionage case in United States historythe Duquesne Spy Ring

    

1942 World War II: Manila is captured by Japanese forces 1945 World War II: Nuremberg (in German, Nrnberg) is severely bombed by Allied forces 1949 Luis Muoz Marn becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico 1955 Panamanian president Jose Antonio Remon is assassinated 1959 Luna 1, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon and to orbit the Sun, is launched by the U.S.S.R.

 

1971 The second Ibrox disaster kills 66 fans at a Rangers-Celtic football match 1974 President Richard Nixon signs a bill lowering the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo

1999 A brutal snowstorm smashes into the Midwestern United States, causing 14 inches (359 mm) of snow in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 19 inches (487 mm) in Chicago, where temperatures plunge to -13 F (-25 C); 68 deaths are reported

   

2001 Sila Caldern becomes the first female Governor of Puerto Rico 2002 Eduardo Duhalde is appointed interim President of Argentina by the Legislative Assembly. 2004 Stardust successfully flies past Comet Wild 2, collecting samples that are returned to Earth. 2006 An explosion in a coal mine in Sago, West Virginia traps and kills 12 miners, while leaving one miner in critical condition.

JANUARY 3
 
1431 Joan of Arc is handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon. 1496 Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.

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1521 Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. 1749 Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont. 1777 American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton. 1782 Sylhet District in north-east Bangladesh is established 1815 Austria, the United Kingdom, and France form a secret defensive alliance treaty against Prussia and Russia.

   

1823 Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico. 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of the independent African Republic of Liberia. 1861 American Civil War: Delaware votes not to secede from the United States. 1868 Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Ch sh power. seize

 

1870 The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins. 1888 The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, is used for the first time. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time.

  

1925 Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy. 1932 Martial law is declared in Honduras to stop revolt by banana workers fired by United Fruit. 1933 Minnie D. Craig becomes the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.

 

1938 The March of Dimes is established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1944 World War II: Top Ace Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington is shot down in his Corsair by Captain Masajiro Kawato flying a Zero.

1945 World War II: Admiral Chester W Nimitz is placed in command of all U.S. Naval forces in preparation for planned assaults against Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Japan.

 

1947 Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time. 1953 Frances Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.

       

1956 A fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower. 1957 The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. 1958 The West Indies Federation is formed. 1959 Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. State. 1961 The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba. 1961 The SL-1, a government-run reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho, leaks radiation, killing three workers. 1962 Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro. 1977 Apple Computer is incorporated.

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1990 Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrenders to American forces. 1993 In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). 1994 More than seven million people from the former Apartheid Homelands, receive South African citizenship. 1997 The People's Republic of China announces it will spend $27.7 billion USD to fight erosion and pollution in the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys.

 

1999 The Mars Polar Lander is launched. 1999 Israel detains, and later expels, 14 members of Concerned Christians.

JANUARY 4
 
46 BC Julius Caesar defeats Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina army. 1490 Anna of Brittany announces that all those who would ally with the king of France will be considered guilty of the crime of lse majest.

1642 King Charles I of England sends soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, commencing England's slide into civil war.

      

1649 English Civil War: The Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial. 1717 The Netherlands, Great Britain, and France sign the Triple Alliance. 1762 Great Britain declares war on Spain and Naples. 1847 Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government. 1854 The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang. 1863 The New Apostolic Church, a Christian and chiliastic church, is established in Hamburg, Germany. 1865 The New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad near Wall Street in New York City.

      

1878 Sofia is emancipated from Ottoman rule. 1884 The Fabian Society is founded in London. 1885 The first successful appendectomy is performed by William W. Grant on Mary Gartside. 1896 Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state. 1903 Topsy, an elephant, is electrocuted by Thomas Edison during the War of Currents campaign. 1912 The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by Royal Charter. 1944 World War II: Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.

 

1948 Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1951 Korean War: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul.

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1955 The Greek National Radical Union is formed by Konstantinos Karamanlis. 1958 Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit. 1959 Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon. 1965 United States President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims his "Great Society" during his State of the Union address.

1966 A military coup takes place in Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso), dissolving the National Parliament and leading to a new national constitution.

  

1967 Donald Campbell is killed on Coniston Water while attempting to break the world water speed record. 1972 Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London. 1974 United States President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over materials subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

 

1976 The Reavey and O'Dowd killings take place (part of The Troubles in Northern Ireland) 1987 The Chase, Maryland rail wreck: An Amtrak train en route to Boston, Massachusetts from Washington, D.C., collides with Conrail engines in Chase, Maryland, killing 16 people.

1989 Second Gulf of Sidra incident: a pair of Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.

 

1998 Wilaya of Relizane massacres in Algeria: over 170 are killed in three remote villages. 1998 A massive ice storm hits eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, continuing through January 10 and causing widespread destruction.

 

1999 Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura is sworn in as governor of Minnesota. 1999 Gunmen open fire on Shiite Muslims worshipping in an Islamabad mosque, killing 16 people and injuring 25.

 

2004 Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands successfully on Mars at 04:35 UTC. 2006 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffers a second, apparently more serious stroke. His authority is transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

2007 The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.

2010 The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building is officially opened.

JANUARY 5

1066 Edward the Confessor dies childless, sparking a succession crisis that will eventually lead to the Norman Conquest of England.

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1355 Charles I of Bohemia is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan. 1477 Battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold is killed and Burgundy becomes part of France. 1500 Duke Ludovico Sforza conquers Milan. 1527 Felix Manz, a leader of the Anabaptist congregation in Zrich, is executed by drowning. 1554 A great fire occurs in Eindhoven, Netherlands. 1675 Battle of Colmar: the French army beats Brandenburg. 1757 Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by RobertFranois Damiens, the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for regicides.

  

1759 George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis. 1781 American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold. 1782 American Revolutionary War: French troops begin a siege of a British garrison on Brimstone Hill in Saint Kitts.

1846 The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom.

 

1854 The San Francisco steamer sinks, killing 300 people. 1895 Dreyfus Affair: French army officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.

1896 An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as Xrays.

    

1900 Irish leader John Edward Redmond calls for a revolt against British rule. 1909 Colombia recognizes the independence of Panama. 1911 Kappa Alpha Psi, the world's second oldest and largest black fraternity, is founded at Indiana University. 1912 The Prague Party Conference takes place. 1913 First Balkan War: During the Naval Battle of Lemnos, Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it did not venture for the rest of the war.

      

1914 The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor. 1918 The Free Committee for a German Workers Peace, which would become the Nazi party, is founded. 1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female governor in the United States. 1933 Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay. 1940 FM radio is demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission for the first time. 1944 The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper. 1945 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland.

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1957 In a speech given to the United States Congress, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces the establishment of what will later be called the Eisenhower Doctrine.

 

1968 Alexander Dub ek comes to power: "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia. 1969 Members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary damage property and assault occupants in the Bogside in Derry, Northern Ireland. In response, residents erect barricades and establish Free Derry.

1971 The first One Day International cricket match is held between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

   

1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program. 1974 An earthquake in Lima, Peru, kills six people, and damages hundreds of houses. 1974 Warmest reliably measured temperature in Antarctica of +59F (+15C) recorded at Vanda Station 1975 The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.

 

1976 Cambodia is renamed the Democratic Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge. 1976 Ten Protestant civilians are shot dead by a paramilitary group at Kingsmill in County Armagh, Northern Ireland (part of The Troubles).

 

1991 Georgian troops attack Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, opening the 19911992 South Ossetia War. 1993 The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.

   

1993 Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the last legal hanging in America). 1996 Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone. 2003 Police arrest seven suspects in connection with Wood Green ricin plot. 2005 Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.

JANUARY 6
     
1066 Harold Godwinson is crowned King of England. 1205 Philip of Swabia becomes King of the Romans. 1449 Constantine XI is crowned Byzantine-Roman Emperor at Mistra. 1540 King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves. 1579 The Union of Atrecht is signed. 1661 English Restoration: The Fifth Monarchists unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London.

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1690 Joseph, son of Emperor Leopold I, becomes King of the Romans. 1721 The Committee of Inquiry on the South Sea Bubble publishes its findings. 1781 In the Battle of Jersey, the British defeat the last attempt by France to invade Jersey. 1838 Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electrical telegraph. 1839 The most damaging storm in 300 years sweeps across Ireland, damaging or destroying more than 20% of the houses in Dublin.

1853 President-elect of the United States Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Massachusetts.

 

1870 The inauguration of the Musikverein in Vienna. 1893 The Washington National Cathedral is chartered by Congress. The charter is signed by President Benjamin Harrison.

1900 Second Boer War: Having already sieged the fortress at Ladysmith, Boer forces attack it, but are driven back by British defenders.

 

1907 Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome. 1910 The Great White Fleet passes through the Suez Canal, the largest group of ships to pass through up to that time.

  

1912 New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state. 1921 Formation of the Iraqi Army. 1929 King Alexander of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes suspends his country's constitution (the January 6th Dictatorship).

     

1929 Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India's poorest and sick people. 1930 The first diesel-engined automobile trip is completed, from Indianapolis, Indiana, to New York City. 1931 Thomas Edison submits his last patent application. 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms Speech in the State of the Union Address. 1942 Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to schedule a flight around the world. 1950 The United Kingdom recognizes the People's Republic of China. The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with the UK in response.

  

1951 Ganghwa massacre: Korean War. 1953 The first Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. 1960 National Airlines Flight 2511 is destroyed in mid-air by a bomb, while en route from New York City to Miami.

1967 Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and ARVN troops launch "Operation Deckhouse Five" in the Mekong River delta.

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1974 In response to the 1973 energy crisis, daylight saving time commences nearly four months early in the United States.

1978 The Crown of St. Stephen (also known as the Holy Crown of Hungary) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held after World War II.

 

1994 Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the knee at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit. 1995 A chemical fire in an apartment complex in Manila, Philippines, leads to the discovery of plans for Project Bojinka, a mass-terrorist attack.

2005 American Civil Rights Movement: Edgar Ray Killen is arrested as a suspect in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers.

2010 The Ady Gil, a ship owned by Sea Shepherd, is sunk during a skirmish with the Japanese Whaling Fleet's Sh nan Maru.

JANUARY 7
    
1325 Alfonso IV becomes King of Portugal. 1558 France takes Calais, the last continental possession of England. 1598 Boris Godunov becomes Tsar of Russia. 1608 Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia. 1610 Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able distinguish the last two until the following day.

 

1782 The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens. 1785 Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.

        

1797 The modern Italian flag is first used. 1835 HMS Beagle drops anchor off the Chonos Archipelago. 1894 W.K. Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film. 1904 The distress signal "CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by "SOS". 1919 Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail. 1920 The New York State Assembly refuses to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen. 1922 Dil ireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote. 1927 The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York City to London. 1931 Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast.

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1935 Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign the FrancoItalian Agreement. 1942 World War II: The siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins. 1945 World War II: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge.

   

1948 Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO. 1950 A fire at the Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, kills 41 people. 1952 President Harry Truman announces that the United States has developed the hydrogen bomb. 1954 Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM.

  

1959 The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro. 1960 The Polaris missile is test launched. 1968 Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.

1972 Iberia Airlines Caravelle 6-R crashes into Mont San Jose on approach to Ibiza Airport killing all 104 on board.

1973 Mark Essex fatally shoots 10 people and wounds 13 others at Howard Johnson's Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana before being shot to death by police officers.

1979 Third Indochina War Cambodian-Vietnamese War: Phnom Penh falls to the advancing Vietnamese troops, driving out Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

1980 President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.

 

1984 Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). 1985 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

 

1990 The interior of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public because of safety concerns. 1991 Roger Lafontant, former leader of the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti under Franois Duvalier, attempts a coup d'tat, which ends in his arrest.

 

1993 The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President. 1999 The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.

JANUARY 8

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307 Jin Huidi, Chinese Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, is poisoned and succeeded by his son Jin Huaidi. 871 Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings. 1297 Monaco gains its independence. 1499 Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany. 1734 Premiere performance of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. 1746 Second Jacobite Rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling. 1780 An earthquake of estimated magnitude 7.7 hits the city of Tabriz in Iran, killing about 80,000 people and causing major damage.

        

1790 George Washington delivers the first State of the Union Address in New York City. 1806 Cape Colony becomes a British colony. 1811 An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslondes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana. 1815 War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British. 1835 The United States national debt is 0 for the only time. 1838 Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code). 1863 American Civil War: Second Battle of Springfield 1867 African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C. 1877 Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.

1889 Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' his punched card calculator.

 

1904 The Blackstone Library is dedicated, marking the beginning of the Chicago Public Library system. 1906 A landslide in Haverstraw, New York, caused by the excavation of clay along the Hudson River, kills 20 people.

   

1912 The African National Congress is founded. 1918 President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I. 1940 World War II: Britain introduces food rationing. 1956 Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.

  

1961 In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria. 1962 The Harmelen train disaster killed 93 people in the Netherlands. 1963 Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

 

1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States. 1973 Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.

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1973 Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.

1975 Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband.

1977 Three bombs went off in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.

1978 Bowing to international pressure, President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto releases Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from prison, who had been arrested after declaring the independence of Bangladesh.

 

1979 The tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland. 1981 A local farmer reports a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, France, "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".

 

1982 The breakup of AT&T: AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions. 1989 The Kegworth air disaster. British Midland flight 92 crashes into the M1 motorway killing 47 people out of 127 on board.

 

1989 Beginning of Japanese Heisei era. 1994 Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.

1996 An Antonov 32 cargo turboprop powered plane crashes into the central market in Kinshasa, Zaire killing more than 350 people.

 

2002 President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. 2003 Turkish Airlines Flight 634 crashes near Diyarbak r Airport, Turkey, killing the entire crew and 70 of 75 passengers.

2004 The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest passenger ship ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

2005 The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.

2010 Gunmen from an offshoot the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus carrying the Togo national football team on its way to the 2010 African Cup of Nations, killing three.

2011 An attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills 6 people and wounds 13, including Giffords.

JANUARY 9

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475 Byzantine Emperor Zeno is forced to flee his capital at Constantinople, and his general, Basiliscus gains control of the empire.

1127 Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin Dynasty besiege and sack Bianjing (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song Dynasty of China, and abductEmperor Qinzong and others, ending the Northern Song Dynasty.

1349 The Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and incinerated.

1431 Judges' investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government.

      

1760 Afghans defeat Marathas in the Battle of Barari Ghat. 1768 In London, Philip Astley stages the first modern circus. 1788 Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States. 1793 Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States. 1806 Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral. 1816 Sir Humphry Davy tests the Davy lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery. 1822 The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese king Joo VI, starting the Brazilian independence process.

   

1839 The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process. 1857 The Fort Tejon earthquake of California occurs, registering an estimated magnitude of 7.9. 1858 Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide. 1861 American Civil War: The "Star of the West" incident occurs near Charleston, South Carolina. It is considered by some historians to be the "First Shots of the American Civil War".

1861 Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

   

1863 American Civil War: the Battle of Fort Hindman begins in Arkansas. 1878 Umberto I becomes King of Italy. 1880 The Great Gale of 1880 devastates parts of Oregon and Washington with high wind and heavy snow. 1894 New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1903 Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the famous poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes the second Governor-General of Australia.

1905 According to the Julian Calendar which is used at the time, Russian workers stage a march on the Winter Palace that ends in the massacre by Tsarist troops known asBloody Sunday, setting off the Russian Revolution of 1905.

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1909 Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the furthest anyone had ever reached at that time.

1914 Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., the first historically black intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity to be officially recognized at Howard University is founded.

1916 World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.

    

1917 World War I: the Battle of Rafa occurs near the Egyptian border with Palestine. 1918 Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars. 1921 Greco-Turkish War: The First Battle of nn, the first battle of the war, began near Eski ehir in Anatolia. 1923 Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight. 1923 Lithuanian residents of the Memel Territory rebelled against the League of Nations decision to leave the area as a mandated region under French control.

     

1927 A fire at the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, kills 78 children. 1941 World War II: First flight of the Avro Lancaster. 1941 World War II: The Greek Triton (Y-5) sinks the Italian submarine Neghelli in Otranto. 1945 World War II: The United States invades Luzon in the Philippines. 1947 Elizabeth "Betty" Short, the Black Dahlia, is last seen alive. 1960 President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of theNile.

1964 Martyrs' Day: Several Panamanian youths try to raise the Panamanian flag on the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, leading to fighting between U.S. military and Panamanian civilians.

1991 Representatives from the United States and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try and find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1992 The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of Republika Srpska, a new state within Yugoslavia.

1996 First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and later a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar in the neighbouring Republic of Dagestan, which turns into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.

2005 Elections are held to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is succeeded by Rawhi Fattouh.

JANUARY 10

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49 BC Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war. 69 Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus is appointed by Galba to deputy Roman Emperor. 236 Pope Fabian succeeds Anterus as the twentieth pope of Rome. 1072 Robert Guiscard conquers Palermo. 1475 Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui. 1645 Archbishop William Laud is beheaded at the Tower of London. 1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense. 1806 Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrender to the British. 1810 Napoleon divorces his first wife Josphine. 1861 American Civil War: Florida secedes from the Union. 1863 The London Underground, the world's oldest underground railway, opens between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.

        

1870 John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil. 1901 The first great Texas oil gusher is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas. 1916 Erzerum Offensive during World War I, Russian victory over Ottoman Empire. 1920 The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I. 1922 Arthur Griffith is elected President of the Irish Free State. 1923 Lithuania seizes and annexes Memel. 1941 World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura. 1946 The first General Assembly of the United Nations opens in London. Fifty-one nations are represented. 1946 The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the moon and receiving the reflected signals.

1962 Apollo Project: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle. It became better known as the Saturn V Moon rocket, which launched every Apollo Moonmission.

1972 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to the newly independent Bangladesh as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.

1981 Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazn and Chalatenango departments

  

1984 The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations after 117 years. 1990 Time Warner is formed from the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. 1999 Sanjeev Nanda kills three policemen in New Delhi with his car, an act for which he was later acquitted, resulting in a sharp drop in public confidence in the Indian legal system.

2003 Illinois Governor George Ryan commutes the death sentences of 167 prisoners on Illinois' death row based on the Jon Burge scandal.

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2005 A mudslide occurs in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more and closing U.S. Route 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days.

JANUARY 11
    
630 Muhammad leads an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca. 1055 Theodora is crowned Empress of the Byzantine Empire. 1158 Vladislav II becomes King of Bohemia. 1569 First recorded lottery in England. 1570 James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such.

     

1571 Austrian nobility is granted freedom of religion. 1693 Mt. Etna erupts in Sicily, Italy. A powerful earthquake destroys parts of Sicily and Malta. 1759 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first American life insurance company is incorporated. 1779 Ching-Thang Khomba is crowned King of Manipur. 1787 William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus. 1794 Robert Forsythe, a U.S. Marshal is killed in Augusta, Georgia when trying to serve court papers, the first US marshal to die while carrying out his duties.

  

1805 The Michigan Territory is created. 1861 Alabama secedes from the United States. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Arkansas Post General John McClernand and Admiral David Dixon Porter capture the Arkansas River for theUnion.

1863 American Civil War: CSS Alabama encountered and sank the USS Hatteras (1861) off Galveston Lighthouse in Texas.

     

1879 The Anglo-Zulu War begins. 1908 Grand Canyon National Monument is created. 1917 The Kingsland munitions factory explosion occurs as a result of sabotage. 1919 Romania annexes Transylvania. 1922 First use of insulin to treat diabetes in a human patient. 1923 Occupation of the Ruhr: Troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area to force Germany to make its World War I reparation payments.

1927 Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), announced the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a banquet in Los Angeles,California.

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1935 Amelia Earhart is the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. 1942 World War II: Japan declares war on the Netherlands and invades the Netherlands East Indies. 1942 World War II: The Japanese capture Kuala Lumpur. 1943 World War II: The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China. 1943 Italian-American Anarchist Carlo Tresca is assassinated in New York 1946 Enver Hoxha declares the People's Republic of Albania with himself as president. 1949 First recorded case of snowfall in Los Angeles, California. 1957 The African Convention is founded in Dakar. 1960 Henry Lee Lucas, once listed as America's most prolific serial killer, commits his first known murder. 1962 An avalanche on Huascaran in Peru causes 4,000 deaths. 1964 United States Surgeon General Dr. Luther Leonidas Terry, M.D., publishes a landmark report saying that smoking may be hazardous to health, sparking nation- and worldwide anti-smoking efforts.

  

1972 East Pakistan renames itself Bangladesh. 1986 The Gateway Bridge, Brisbane in Queensland, Australia is officially opened. 1994 The Irish Government announces the end of a 15-year broadcasting ban on the IRA and its political arm Sinn Fin.

1996 Space Shuttle program: STS-72 launches from the Kennedy Space Center marking the start of the 74th Space Shuttle mission and the 10th flight of Endeavour.

 

1998 Sidi-Hamed massacre takes place in Algeria, over 100 people are killed. 2007 China conducts the first successful anti-satellite missile test of any nation since 1985.

JANUARY 12

475 Basiliscus becomes Byzantine Emperor, with a coronation ceremony in the Hebdomon palace in Constantinople.

    

1528 Gustav I of Sweden crowned king of Sweden. 1539 Treaty of Toledo signed by King Francis I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. 1773 The first public Colonial American museum opens in Charleston, South Carolina. 1777 Mission Santa Clara de Ass is founded in what is now Santa Clara, California. 1808 The organizational meeting that led to the creation of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is held inEdinburgh.

 

1848 The Palermo rising takes place in Sicily against the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 1866 The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London.

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1872 Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first imperial coronation in that city in over 200 years.

   

1875 Kwang-su becomes emperor of China. 1895 The National Trust is founded in the United Kingdom. 1898 Ito Hirobumi begins his third term as Prime Minister of Japan. 1899 13 crew members and 5 apprentices are rescued from the stricken schooner Forest Hall by the Lynmouth Lifeboat when it floundered off the coast of Devon, England.

1906 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet (which included amongst its members H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill) embarks on sweeping social reforms after a Liberal landslide in the British general election.

 

1908 A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time. 1911 The University of the Philippines College of Law is formally established; three future Philippine presidents are among the first enrollees.

   

1915 The Rocky Mountain National Park is formed by an act of U.S. Congress. 1915 The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote. 1918 Finland's "Mosaic Confessors" law went into effect, making Finnish Jews full citizens. 1921 Acting to restore confidence in baseball after the Black Sox Scandal, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected as Major League Baseball's first commissioner.

    

1926 Original Sam 'n' Henry aired on Chicago radio later renamed Amos 'n' Andy in 1928. 1932 Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate. 1942 World War II: President Franklin Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board. 1964 Rebels in Zanzibar begin a revolt known as the Zanzibar Revolution and proclaim a republic. 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.

  

1967 Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation. 1970 Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian civil war. 1971 The Harrisburg Seven: The Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

1976 The UN Security Council votes 11-1 to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate (without voting rights).

1986 Space Shuttle program: Congressman Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61C as a Mission Specialist.

 

1991 Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. 1998 Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.

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2004 The world's largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage. 2005 Deep Impact launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2 rocket. 2006 A stampede during the Stoning the Devil ritual on the last day at the Hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, kills at least 362 Muslim pilgrims.

 

2006 Turkey releases Mehmet Ali A ca from jail after he served 25 years for shooting Pope John Paul II. 2006 The French warship Clemenceau reaches Egypt and is barred access to the Suez Canal. Greenpeace activists board the ship.

 

2007 Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) reaches perihelion becoming the brightest comet in more than 40 years. 2010 The 2010 Haiti earthquake occurs killing an estimated 316,000 and destroying the majority of the capital Port-au-Prince.

JANUARY 13
   
532 Nika riots in Constantinople. 888 Odo, Count of Paris becomes King of the Franks. 1328 Edward III of England marries Philippa of Hainault, daughter of the Count of Hainault. 1435 Sicut Dudum is promulgated by Pope Eugene IV about the enslaving of black natives in Canary Islands by Spanish natives.

 

1547 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey is sentenced to death. 1605 The controversial play Eastward Hoe by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston is performed, landing two of the authors in prison.

   

1607 The Bank of Genoa fails after announcement of national bankruptcy in Spain. 1733 James Oglethorpe and 130 colonists arrive in Charleston, South Carolina. 1785 John Walter publishes the first issue of the Daily Universal Register (later renamed The Times). 1797 French Revolutionary Wars: A naval battle between a French ship of the line and two British frigates off the coast of Brittany ends with the French vessel running ashore, resulting in the death of over 900.

1815 War of 1812: British troops capture Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia, the only battle of the war to take place in the state.

  

1822 The design of the Greek flag is adopted by the First National Assembly at Epidaurus. 1830 The Great fire of New Orleans, Louisiana begins. 1832 President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis.

1840 The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island with the loss of 139 lives.

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1842 Dr. William Brydon, an assistant surgeon in the British East India Company Army during the First AngloAfghan War, becomes famous for being the sole survivor of an army of 4,500 men and 12,000 camp followers when he reaches the safety of a garrison in Jalalabad.

   

1847 The Treaty of Cahuenga ends the Mexican-American War in California. 1869 National convention of black leaders meets in Washington D.C. 1893 The Independent Labour Party of the United Kingdom holds its first meeting. 1893 U.S. Marines land in Honolulu from the USS Boston to prevent the queen from abrogating the Bayonet Constitution.

  

1898 Emile Zola's J'accuse exposes the Dreyfus affair. 1908 The Rhoads Opera House fire in Boyertown, Pennsylvania kills 171 people. 1910 The first public radio broadcast takes place; a live performance of the opera Cavalleria rusticana is sent out over the airwaves from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

   

1915 An earthquake in Avezzano, Italy kills 29,800. 1934 The Candidate of Science degree is established in the USSR. 1935 A plebiscite in Saarland shows that 90.3% of those voting wish to join Nazi Germany. 1939 The Black Friday bush fires burn 20,000 square kilometres of land in Australia, claiming the lives of 71 people.

    

1942 Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car. 1942 World War II: First use of aircraft ejection seat by a German test pilot in a Heinkel He 280 jet fighter. 1951 First Indochina War: The Battle of Vinh Yen begins, which will end in a major victory for France. 1953 Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen as President of Yugoslavia. 1953 An article appears in Pravda accusing some of the most prestigious and prominent doctors, mostly Jews, in the Soviet Union of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.

   

1958 The Moroccan Liberation Army ambushes a Spanish patrol in the Battle of Edchera. 1964 Anti-Muslim riots break out in Calcutta resulting in 100 deaths. 1964 Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, is appointed archbishop of Krakow, Poland. 1966 Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member by being appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

 

1968 Johnny Cash performs live at Folsom Prison 1972 Prime Minister Kofi Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana are ousted in a bloodless military coup by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheamphong.

 

1974 Seraphim is elected Archbishop of Athens and All Greece. 1982 Shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737 jet crashes into Washington, DC's 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78 including four motorists.

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1985 A passenger train plunges into a ravine in Ethiopia, killing 428 in the worst railroad disaster in Africa. 1986 A month-long violent struggle begins in Aden, South Yemen between supporters of Ali Nasir Muhammad and Abdul Fattah Ismail, resulting in thousands of casualties.

1990 L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia.

1991 Soviet Union troops attack Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius, killing 14 people and wounding 1000.

1993 Space Shuttle program: Endeavour heads for space for the third time as STS-54 launches from the Kennedy Space Center.

2001 An earthquake hits El Salvador, killing more than 800.

JANUARY 14
     
1129 Formal approval of the Order of the Templar at the Council of Troyes. 1301 Andrew III of Hungary dies, ending the Arpad dynasty in Hungary. 1343 Arno t of Pardubice became the last bishop of Prague. 1514 Pope Leo X issues a papal bull against slavery. 1539 Spain annexes Cuba. 1639 The "Fundamental Orders", the first written constitution that created a government, is adopted in Connecticut.

 

1724 King Philip V of Spain abdicates the throne. 1761 The Third Battle of Panipat is fought in India between the Afghans under Ahmad Shah Durrani and the Marhatas. The Afghan victory changes the course of Indian History.

1784 American Revolutionary War: Ratification Day, United States Congress ratifies Treaty of Paris with Great Britain.

     

1814 Treaty of Kiel: Frederick VI of Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden in return for Pomerania. 1822 Greek War of Independence: Acrocorinth is captured by Theodoros Kolokotronis and Demetrius Ypsilanti. 1858 Napoleon III of France escapes an assassination attempt. 1907 An earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica kills more than 1,000. 1911 Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition makes landfall on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. 1933 The controversial Bodyline cricket tactics used by Douglas Jardine's England peaks when Australian captain Bill Woodfull was hit in the heart.

1938 Norway claims Queen Maud Land in Antarctica.

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1943 World War II: Operation Ke, the successful Japanese operation to evacuate their forces from Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign, begins.

1943 World War II: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill begin the Casablanca Conference to discuss strategy and study the next phase of the war.

1943 World War II: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to travel via airplane while in office when he travels from Miami, Florida to Morocco to meet with Winston Churchill.

   

1950 The first prototype of the MiG-17 makes its maiden flight. 1952 NBC's long-running morning news program Today debuts, with host Dave Garroway. 1960 The Reserve Bank of Australia, the country's central bank and banknote issuing authority, is established. 1954 The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with Nash-Kelvinator Corporation forming the American Motors Corporation.

1967 Counterculture of the 1960s: The Human Be-In, takes place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, launching the Summer of Love.

 

1969 An accidental explosion aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) near Hawaii kills 27 people. 1972 Queen Margrethe II of Denmark ascends the throne, the first Queen of Denmark since 1412 and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513.

1973 Elvis Presley's concert Aloha from Hawaii is broadcast live via satellite, and sets a record as the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.

   

1975 Teenage heiress Lesley Whittle is kidnapped by Donald Neilson, aka "the Black Panther". 1978 The English punk rock band Sex Pistols broke up amidst their US tour. 1998 An Afghan cargo plane crashes into a mountain in southwest Pakistan killing more than 50 people. 1999 Toronto, Ontario Mayor Mel Lastman becomes the first mayor in Canada to call in the Army to help with emergency medical evacuations and snow removal after more than one meter of snow paralyzes the city.

2000 A United Nations tribunal sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years for the 1993 killing of over 100 Muslims in a Bosnian village.

2004 The national flag of The Republic of Georgia, the so-called "five cross flag", is restored to official use after a hiatus of some 500 years.

 

2005 Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan. 2011 Ben Ali, former Tunisian president, fled the country to Saudi Arabia after popular protests (dubbed as Jasmine Revolution) requesting his departure.

2011 Stampede near Sabarimala 104 devotees killed and several others injured in a stampede at Uppupara in Idukki district.

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JANUARY 15

588 BC Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon lays siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah's reign. The siege lasts until July 23, 586 BC.

69 Otho seizes power in Rome, proclaiming himself Emperor of Rome, but rules for only three months before committing suicide.

     

1493 Christopher Columbus sets sail for Spain from Hispaniola, ending his first voyage to the New World. 1559 Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey, London. 1582 Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth. 1759 The British Museum opens. 1777 American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declares its independence. 1782 Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

1815 War of 1812: American frigate USS President (1800), commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur, is captured by a squadron of four British frigates.

  

1822 Greek War of Independence: Demetrius Ypsilanti is elected president of the legislative assembly. 1844 University of Notre Dame receives its charter from the state of Indiana. 1865 American Civil War: Fort Fisher in North Carolina falls to the Union, thus cutting off the last major seaport of the Confederacy.

1870 A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" byThomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).

1889 The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is originally incorporated in Atlanta.

 

1892 James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball. 1908 The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority becomes the first Greek-letter organization founded and established by African-American college women.

1910 Construction ends on the Buffalo Bill Dam in Wyoming, US, which was the highest dam in the world at the time, at 325 ft (99 m).

1919 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps.

1919 Boston Molasses Disaster: A large molasses tank in Boston, bursts and a wave of molasses rushes through the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150 others.

1936 The first building to be completely covered in glass, built for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, is completed in Toledo, Ohio.

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1943 World War II: The Soviet counter-offensive at Voronezh begins. 1943 The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. 1947 The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. 1949 Chinese Civil War: The Chinese Communist Party forces take over Tianjin from the Nationalist Government. 1951 Ilse Koch, "The Witch of Buchenwald", wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in West Germany.

     

1966 The Nigerian First Republic, led by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa is overthrown in a military coup dtat. 1967 The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles. The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 1969 The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 5. 1970 Nigerian Civil War: After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafra surrenders. 1970 Muammar al-Qaddafi is proclaimed premier of Libya. 1973 Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.

1974 Dennis Rader aka the BTK Killer kills his first victims by binding, torturing and murdering Joseph, Joseph II, Josephine and Julie Otero in their house.

    

1976 Gerald Ford's would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, is sentenced to life in prison. 1977 The Klvesta air disaster kills 22 people, the worst air crash in Sweden's history. 1986 The Living Seas opens at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World, Florida. 1990 AT&T's long distance telephone network suffers a cascade switching failure. 1991 The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.

1991 Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, signs letters patent allowing Australia to become the first Commonwealth Realm to institute its own separate Victoria Crossaward in its own honours system.

1992 The international community recognizes the independence of Slovenia and Croatia from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

    

1993 Salvatore Riina, the Mafia boss known as "The Beast", is arrested in Sicily after three decades as a fugitive. 1999 The Racak incident: 45 Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak are killed by Yugoslav security forces. 2001 Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online. 2005 An intense solar flare blasts X-rays across the solar system. 2005 ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.

2007 Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former Iraqi intelligence chief and half-brother of Saddam Hussein, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court, are executed by hanging in Iraq.

32

2009 US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. All passengers and crew members survive.

JANUARY 16
 
27 BC The title Augustus is bestowed upon Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian by the Roman Senate. 550 Gothic War (535554): The Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer Rome after a long siege, by bribing the Isaurian garrison.

 

929 Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III established the Caliphate of Cordoba. 1120 The Council of Nablus is held, establishing the earliest surviving written laws of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

     

1362 A storm tide in the North Sea destroys the German city of Rungholt on the island of Strand. 1412 The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy. 1492 The first grammar of the Spanish language is presented to Queen Isabella I. 1547 Ivan IV of Russia aka Ivan the Terrible becomes Tsar of Russia. 1556 Philip II becomes King of Spain. 1572 Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.

 

1581 The English Parliament outlaws Roman Catholicism. 1605 The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid.

      

1707 The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain. 1761 The British capture Pondicherry, India from the French. 1780 American Revolution: Battle of Cape St. Vincent. 1786 The Commonwealth of Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson. 1809 Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Corua. 1847 John C. Fremont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory. 1878 Russo-Turkish War (18771878) Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule.

 

1883 The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is passed. 1896 Defeat of Cymru Fydd at South Wales Liberal Federation AGM, Newport, Monmouthshire.

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1900 The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands.

 

1909 Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole. 1919 Temperance movement: The United States ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition in the United States one year after ratification.

        

1920 The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris. 1924 Eleftherios Venizelos becomes Prime Minister of Greece for the fourth time. 1938 The Benny Goodman Orchestra performed the first jazz concert at Carnegie Hall. 1939 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) begins a bombing and sabotage campaign in England. 1942 Crash of TWA Flight 3, killing all 22 aboard, including film star Carole Lombard. 1945 Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Fhrerbunker. 1956 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine. 1968 The Youth International Party is founded. 1969 Czech student Jan Palach commits suicide by self-immolation in Prague, in protest against the Soviets' crushing of the Prague Spring the year before.

1969 Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

    

1970 Buckminster Fuller receives the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects. 1979 The Shah of Iran flees Iran with his family and relocates to Egypt. 1986 First meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force. 1991 The United States goes to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War (U.S. Time). 1992 El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City ending the 12year Salvadoran civil war that claimed at least 75,000.

 

2001 Congolese President Laurent-Dsir Kabila is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards. 2001 US President Bill Clinton awards former President Theodore Roosevelt a posthumous Medal of Honor for his service in the Spanish-American War.

2002 The UN Security Council unanimously establishes an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the remaining members of the Taliban.

2003 The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.

2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state.

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JANUARY 17
      
38 BC Octavian marries Livia Drusilla. 1287 King Alfonso III of Aragon invades Minorca. 1377 Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon. 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano sets sail westward from Madeira to find a sea route to the Pacific Ocean. 1562 France recognizes the Huguenots under the Edict of Saint-Germain. 1595 Henry IV of France declares war on Spain. 1608 Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprises an Oromo army at Ebenat; his army reportedly kills 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men.

1648 England's Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.

 

1773 Captain James Cook and his crew become the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle. 1781 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cowpens Continental troops under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the battle in South Carolina.

 

1799 Maltese patriot Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with a number of other patriots, is executed. 1811 Mexican War of Independence: In the Battle of Caldern Bridge, a heavily outnumbered Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats nearly 100,000Mexican revolutionists.

 

1852 The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal. 1873 A group of Modoc warriors defeats the United States Army in the First Battle of the Stronghold, a part of the Modoc War.

 

1885 A British force defeats a large Dervish army at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan. 1893 The Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston, overthrows the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

 

1899 The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean. 1903 El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.

    

1904 Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre. 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen. 1913 Raymond Poincar is elected President of France. 1917 The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands. 1918 Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles take place between the Red Guards and the White Guard.

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1929 Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.

1929 Inayatullah Khan, king of the Emirate of Afghanistan abdicates the throne after only three days into his reign.

 

1941 Franco-Thai War: French forces inflict a decisive victory over the Royal Thai Navy. 1944 World War II: Allied forces launch the first of four battles with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome, an effort that would ultimately take four months and cost 105,000 Allied casualties.

  

1945 World War II: Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw. 1945 The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in. 1945 Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is taken into Soviet custody while in Hungary; he is never publicly seen again.

  

1946 The UN Security Council holds its first session. 1949 The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, first airs. 1950 The Great Brinks Robbery 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts.

1961 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex".

1961 Former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States.

1966 A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea in thePalomares incident.

1969 Black Panther Party members Bunchy Carter and John Huggins are killed during a meeting in Campbell Hall on the campus of UCLA.

1977 Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States.

1981 President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos lifts martial law eight years and five months after declaring it.

1982 "Cold Sunday" - in the United States temperatures fell to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities.

1983 The tallest department store in the world, Hudson's, flagship store in downtown Detroit closes due to high cost of operating.

1989 Cleveland School massacre: Patrick Purdy opens fire with an assault rifle at the Cleveland Elementary School playground in Stockton, California, killing five children and wounding 29 others and one teacher before taking his own life.

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1991 Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.

 

1991 Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V. 1992 During a visit to South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II.

 

1994 1994 Northridge earthquake: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Northridge, California. 1995 The Great Hanshin earthquake: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hits near Kobe, Japan, causing extensive property damage and killing 6,434 people.

 

1996 The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union. 1997 A Delta 2 carrying a GPS2R satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.

1998 Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the story of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair on his website The Drudge Report.

 

2001 U.S. President Bill Clinton posthumously raises Meriwether Lewis' rank from Lieutenant to Captain. 2002 Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.

 

2007 The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing. 2008 British Airways Flight 38 crash lands just short of London Heathrow Airport in England with no fatalities. It is the first complete hull loss of a Boeing 777.

2010 Rioting begins between Muslim and Christian groups in Jos, Nigeria, resulting in at least 200 deaths.

JANUARY 18
        
350 Generallus Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans and proclaims himself Emperor. 474 Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor. 532 Nika riots in Constantinople fail. 1126 Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Emperor Qinzong. 1486 King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. 1520 King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats the Swedes at Lake sunden. 1535 Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru. 1562 Pope Pius IV reopens the Council of Trent for its third and final session. 1591 King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, for which this date is now observed marked as Royal Thai Armed Forces day.

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1670 Henry Morgan captures Panama. 1701 Frederick I becomes King of Prussia. 1778 James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".

  

1788 The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrives at Botany Bay. 1866 Wesley College, Melbourne is established. 1871 Wilhelm I of Germany is proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles ( France ) towards the end of theFranco-Prussian War. The empire is known as the Second Reich to Germans.

1884 Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom.

  

1886 Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. 1896 The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time. 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.

1911 Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.

1913 A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece.

1915 Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

      

1916 A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri. 1919 World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France. 1919 Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland. 1919 Bentley Motors Limited is founded. 1941 World War II: British troops launch a general counter-offensive against Italian East Africa. 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. 1944 The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw,Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

   

1944 Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad. 1945 Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army. 1955 Battle of Yijiangshan is fought. 1958 Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian National Hockey League player, makes his NHL debut.

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1960 Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 aboard, the third fatal Capital Airlines crash in as many years.

1967 Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler", is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

1969 United Airlines Flight 266 crashes into Santa Monica Bay killing all 32 passengers and six crew members. 1974 A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War.

   

1976 Lebanese Christian militias overrun Karantina, Beirut, killing at least 1,000. 1977 Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. 1977 Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83. 1978 The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.

 

1978 The roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center collapses after a significant snowfall. 1981 Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).

   

1983 The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family. 1990 Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting. 1993 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 states. 1994 The Cando event, a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.

1997 In north west Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other.

     

1997 Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. 2000 The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth. 2002 Sierra Leone Civil War is finally declared over. 2003 A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia. 2005 The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France 2007 The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years kills 14 people, Germany sees the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Hurricane Kyrill, causes at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe.

2009 Gaza War: Hamas announces they will accept Israeli Defense Forces's offer of a ceasefire, ending the assault.

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JANUARY 19
   
1419 Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy. 1511 Mirandola surrenders to the French. 1520 Sten Sture the Younger, the Regent of Sweden, is mortally wounded at the Battle of Bogesund. 1607 San Agustin Church in Manila is officially completed; it is the oldest church still standing in the Philippines.

  

1764 John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel. 1788 The second group of ships of the First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay. 1795 The Batavian Republic is proclaimed in the Netherlands bringing to an end the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

 

1806 The United Kingdom occupies the Cape of Good Hope. 1812 Peninsular War: After a ten day siege, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, orders British soldiers of the Light and third divisions to stormCiudad Rodrigo.

1817 An army of 5,423 soldiers, led by General Jos de San Martn, crosses the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru.

  

1829 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust Part 1 receives its premiere performance. 1839 The British East India Company captures Aden. 1840 Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates Antarctica, claiming what became known as Wilkes Land for the United States.

 

1853 Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore receives its premiere performance in Rome. 1861 American Civil War: Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in seceding from the United States.

1862 American Civil War: Battle of Mill Springs The Confederacy suffers its first significant defeat in the conflict.

1871 Franco-Prussian War: In the Siege of Paris, Prussia wins the Battle of St. Quentin. Meanwhile, the French attempt to break the siege in the Battle of Buzenval will end unsuccessfully the following day.

1883 The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

   

1893 Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder receives its premiere performance in Berlin. 1899 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is formed. 1915 Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising. 1915 World War I: German zeppelins bomb the towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in the United Kingdom killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.

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1917 Silvertown explosion: 73 are killed and 400 injured in an explosion in a munitions plant in London. 1920 The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations. 1935 Coopers Inc. sells the world's first briefs. 1937 Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles, California to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.

 

1942 World War II: Japanese forces invade Burma 1945 World War II: Soviet forces liberate the d ghetto. Out more than 200,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 had survived the Nazi occupation.

1946 General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.

   

1949 Cuba recognizes Israel. 1953 68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth. 1960 Japan and the United States sign the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty 1969 Student Jan Palach dies after setting himself on fire 3 days earlier in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968. Hisfuneral turned into another major protest.

  

1975 An earthquake strikes Himachal Pradesh, India 1977 President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose"). 1977 Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time in the history of the city that snow has fallen. It also fell in the Bahamas.

1978 The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW's plant in Emden. Beetle production in Latin America would continue until 2003.

1981 Iran Hostage Crisis: United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.

 

1983 Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia. 1983 The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.

1986 The first computer virus released into the wild is a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain, created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written.

  

1991 Gulf War: Iraq fires a second Scud missile into Israel, causing 15 injuries. 1993 Czech Republic and Slovakia join the United Nations. 1996 The barge North Cape oil spill occurs as an engine fire forces the tugboat Scandia ashore on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

1997 Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.

41

1999 British Aerospace agrees to acquire the defence subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc, forming BAE Systems in November 1999.

  

2006 A Slovak Air Force Antonov An-24 crashes in Hungary. 2006 The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto. 2007 Turkish Journalist Hrant Dink is assassinated in front of his newspaper's office by 17 year old Turkish ultranationalist Ogn Samast.

JANUARY 20
 
250 Emperor Decius begins a widespread persecution of Christians in Rome. Pope Fabian is martyred. 1265 In Westminster, the first English parliament conducts its first meeting held by Simon de Montfort in the Palace of Westminster, now also known colloquially as the "Houses of Parliament".

      

1320 Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek becomes king of Poland. 1356 Edward Balliol abdicates as King of Scotland. 1502 The present-day location of Rio de Janeiro is first explored. 1523 Christian II is forced to abdicate as King of Denmark and Norway. 1576 The Mexican city of Len is founded by order of the viceroy Don Martn Enrquez de Almanza. 1649 Charles I of England goes on trial for treason and other "high crimes". 1783 The Kingdom of Great Britain signs a peace treaty with France and Spain, officially ending hostilities in the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence).

1788 The third and main part of First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay. Arthur Phillip decides that Botany Bay is unsuitable for the location of a penal colony, and decides to move to Port Jackson.

      

1801 John Marshall is appointed the Chief Justice of the United States. 1839 In the Battle of Yungay, Chile defeats an alliance between Peru and Bolivia. 1841 Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British. 1885 L.A. Thompson patents the roller coaster. 1887 The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base. 1920 The American Civil Liberties Union is founded. 1921 The first Constitution of Turkey is adopted, making fundamental changes in the source and exercise of sovereignty by consecrating the principle of national sovereignty.

  

1929 In Old Arizona, the first full-length talking motion picture filmed outdoors, is released. 1934 Fujifilm, the photographic and electronics company, is founded in Tokyo, Japan. 1936 Edward VIII becomes King of the United Kingdom.

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1941 A Nazi officer is murdered in Bucharest, Romania, sparking a rebellion and pogrom by the Iron Guard, killing 125 Jews and 30 soldiers.

1942 World War II: At the Wannsee Conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials discuss the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

 

1945 World War II: Hungary agrees to an armistice with the Allies. 1945 World War II: Germany begins the evacuation of 1.8 million people from East Prussia, a task which will take nearly two months.

1949 Point Four Program a program for economic aid to poor countries announced by United States President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address for a full term as President.

   

1954 The National Negro Network is established with 40 charter member radio stations. 1959 The first flight of the Vickers Vanguard. 1960 Hendrik Verwoerd announces a plebiscite on whether South Africa should become a Republic. 1969 East Pakistani police kill student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman. The resulting outrage is in part responsible for the Bangladesh Liberation War.

1972 Pakistan launched its Nuclear detterent program few weeks after its defeat in Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

1981 Twenty minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated, at age 69 the oldest man ever to be inaugurated as U.S. President, Iran releases 52 American hostages.

   

1986 Martin Luther King, Jr. day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time. 1987 Church of England envoy Terry Waite is kidnapped in Lebanon. 1990 Tragedy at Baku The Red Army killed Azerbaijani people in Baku. 1991 Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.

 

1992 Air Inter Flight 148 crashes near Strasbourg, France, killing 82 passengers and 5 crew. 1999 The China News Service announces new government restrictions on Internet use aimed especially at Internet cafs.

2001 Philippine president Joseph Estrada is ousted in a nonviolent 4-day revolution, and is succeeded by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

2006 Witnesses report sightings of a Bottlenose whale swimming in the River Thames, the first time the species had been seen in the River Thames since records began in 1913.

2007 A three-man team, using only skis and kites, completes a 1,093-mile (1,759 km) trek to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility for the first time since 1958 and for the first time ever without mechanical assistance.

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JANUARY 21

1525 The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is founded when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz's mother in Zrich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union.

   

1643 Abel Tasman becomes the first European to reach Tonga. 1720 Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Stockholm. 1749 The Verona Philharmonic Theatre is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754. 1789 The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts.

     

1793 After being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine. 1840 Jules Dumont d'Urville discovers Adlie Land, Antarctica. 1861 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate. 1864 The Tauranga Campaign begins during the Maori Wars. 1887 465 millimetres (18.3 in) of rain falls in Brisbane, a record for any Australian capital city. 1893 The Tati Concessions Land, formerly part of Matabeleland, is formally annexed to the Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana.

 

1899 Opel manufactures its first automobile. 1908 New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.

  

1911 The first Monte Carlo Rally takes place. 1915 Kiwanis International is founded in Detroit, Michigan. 1919 Meeting of the First Dil ireann in the Mansion House Dublin. Sinn Fin adopts Ireland's first constitution. The first engagement of Irish War of Independence, Sologhead Beg,County Tipperary.

  

1925 Albania declares itself a republic. 1931 Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia. 1948 The Flag of Quebec is adopted and flown for the first time over the National Assembly of Quebec. The day is marked annually as Quebec Flag Day.

 

1950 Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. 1954 The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the United States.

1958 The last Fokker C.X in military service, the Finnish Air Force FK-111 target tower, crashes, killing the pilot and winch-operator.

44

1960 Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.

1960 Avianca Flight 671 crashes and burns upon landing at Montego Bay, Jamaica, killing 37. It is the worst air disaster in Jamaica's history and the first for Avianca.

 

1968 Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins. 1968 A B-52 bomber crashes near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.

1971 The current Emley Moor transmitting station, the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, begins transmitting UHF broadcasts.

 

1976 Commercial service of Concorde begins with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes. 1977 President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all American Vietnam War draft evaders, some of whom had emigrated to Canada.

 

1981 Production of the iconic DeLorean DMC-12 sports car begins in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. 1985 The inauguration of President Ronald Reagan to a second term, already postponed a day because January 20 fell on a Sunday, becomes the second inauguration in history moved indoors because of freezing temperatures and high winds. The parade is cancelled altogether.

1997 Newt Gingrich becomes the first leader of the United States House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct.

1999 War on Drugs: In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard intercepts a ship with over 4,300 kilograms (9,500 lb) of cocaine on board.

2000 Ecuador: After the Ecuadorian Congress is seized by indigenous organizations, Col. Lucio Gutierrez, Carlos Solorzano and Antonio Vargas depose President Jamil Mahuad. Gutierrez is later replaced by Gen. Carlos Mendoza, who resigns and allows Vice-President Gustavo Noboa to succeed Mahuad.

2003 A 7.6 magnitude earthquake strikes the Mexican state of Colima, killing 29 and leaving approximately 10,000 people homeless.

2004 NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies in the management of its flash memory and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6.

 

2005 In Belmopan, Belize, the unrest over the government's new taxes erupts into riots. 2008 Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 11 September 2001, and Asian stocks drop as much as 14%.

JANUARY 22

45

   

565 Eutychius is deposed as Patriarch of Constantinople by John Scholasticus. 1506 The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards arrives at the Vatican. 1521 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, opens the Diet of Worms. 1689 The Convention Parliament convenes to determine if James II, the last Roman Catholic king of England, had vacated the throne when he fled toFrance in 1688.

  

1771 Spain cedes Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to the United Kingdom. 1824 Ashantis defeat British forces in the Gold Coast. 1849 Second Anglo-Sikh War: The Siege of Multan ends after nine months when the last Sikh defenders of Multan, Punjab, surrender.

1863 The January Uprising breaks out in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The aim of the national movement is to regain Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth from occupation by Russia.

1877 Arthur Tooth, an Anglican clergyman is taken into custody after being prosecuted for using ritualist practices.

 

1879 Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Isandlwana Zulu troops defeat British troops. 1879 Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Rorke's Drift 139 British soldiers successfully defend their garrison against an intense assault by four to five thousand Zulu warriors.

       

1889 Columbia Phonograph is formed in Washington, D.C. 1890 The United Mine Workers of America is founded in Columbus, Ohio. 1899 Leaders of six Australian colonies meet in Melbourne to discuss confederation. 1901 Edward VII is proclaimed King after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. 1905 Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, beginning of the 1905 revolution. 1906 SS Valencia runs aground on rocks on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, killing more than 130. 1915 Over 600 people are killed in Guadalajara, Mexico, when a train plunges off the tracks into a deep canyon. 1917 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.

  

1919 Act Zluky is signed, unifying the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian National Republic. 1924 Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1927 First live radio commentary of a football match anywhere in the world, between Arsenal F.C. and Sheffield United at Highbury.

1941 World War II: British and Commonwealth troops capture Tobruk from Italian forces during Operation Compass.

 

1944 World War II: The Allies commence Operation Shingle, an assault on Anzio, Italy. 1946 Iran: Qazi Muhammad declares the independent people's Republic of Mahabad at Chuwarchira Square in the Kurdish city of Mahabad. He is the new president; Hadschi Baba Scheich is the prime minister.

46

 

1946 Creation of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. 1947 KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood, California.

 

1957 Israel withdraws from the Sinai Peninsula. 1957 The New York City "Mad Bomber", George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and is charged with planting more than 30 bombs.

1959 Knox Mine Disaster: Water breaches the River Slope Mine near Pittston City, Pennsylvania in Port Griffith; 12 miners are killed.

 

1962 The Organization of American States suspends Cuba's membership. 1963 The Elyse treaty of cooperation between France and Germany is signed by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer.

 

1968 Apollo 5 lifts off carrying the first Lunar module into space. 1968 Operation Igloo White, a US electronic surveillance system to stop communist infiltration into South Vietnam begins installation.

 

1969 A gunman attempts to assassinate Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. 1970 The Boeing 747, the world's first "jumbo jet", enters commercial service for launch customer Pan American Airways with its maiden voyage from John F Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.

1971 The Singapore Declaration, one of the two most important documents to the uncodified constitution of the Commonwealth of Nations, is issued.

1973 The Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in Roe v. Wade, legalizing elective abortion in all fifty states.

 

1973 A chartered Boeing 707 explodes in flames upon landing at Kano Airport, Nigeria, killing 176. 1984 The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous"1984" television commercial.

1987 Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself during a televised press conference, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism.

1987 Philippine security forces open fire on a crowd of 10,00015,000 demonstrators at Malacaang Palace, Manila, killing 13.

 

1990 Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet Computer worm. 1991 Gulf War: Three SCUDs and one Patriot missile hit Ramat Gan in Israel, injuring 96 people. Three elderly people die of heart attacks.

1992 Rebel forces occupy Zaire's national radio station in Kinshasa and broadcast a demand for the government's resignation.

47

1995 Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Beit Lid massacre In central Israel, near Netanya, two suicide bombers from the Gaza Strip blow themselves up at a military transit point killing 19 Israelis.

1999 Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons are burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in Eastern India.

  

2002 Kmart becomes the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 2006 Evo Morales is inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first indigenous president. 2007 At least 88 people are killed when two car bombs explode in the Bab Al-Sharqi market in central Baghdad, Iraq.

JANUARY 23
  
3102 BCE Epoch (origin) of the Kali Yuga. 393 Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his nine year old son Honorius co-emperor. 971 In China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han are soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops.

1368 In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.

1510 Henry VIII of England, then 18 years old, appears incognito in the lists at Richmond, and is applauded for his jousting before he reveals his identity.

 

1533 Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII of England, discovers herself pregnant. 1546 Having published nothing for eleven years, Franois Rabelais publishes the Tiers Livre, his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel.

1556 The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.

    

1571 The Royal Exchange opens in London. 1579 The Union of Utrecht forms a Protestant republic in the Netherlands. 1656 Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his Lettres provinciales. 1719 The Principality of Liechtenstein is created within the Holy Roman Empire. 1789 Georgetown College, the first Catholic University in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.)

 

1793 Second Partition of Poland: Russia and Prussia partition Poland for the second time. 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor.

48

1855 The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.

1870 In Montana, U.S. cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in the Marias Massacre.

 

1879 Anglo-Zulu War: the Battle of Rorke's Drift ends. 1897 Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.

 

1899 Emilio Aguinaldo is sworn in as President of the First Philippine Republic. 1900 The Battle of Spion Kop between the forces of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State and British forces during the Second Boer War resulted in a British defeat.

1904 lesund Fire: the Norwegian coastal town lesund is devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless and one person dead. Kaiser Wilhelm II funds the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style.

   

1907 Charles Curtis of Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator. 1912 The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague. 1920 The Netherlands refuses to surrender ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies. 1937 In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders.

1941 Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.

 

1942 World War II: The Battle of Rabaul begins, the first fighting of the New Guinea campaign. 1943 World War II: Troops of Montgomery's 8th Army capture Tripoli in Libya from the German-Italian Panzer Army.

1943 World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.

 

1943 Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time. 1943 World War II: The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign ends.

   

1945 World War II: Karl Dnitz launches Operation Hannibal. 1950 The Knesset passes a resolution that states Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. 1958 Overthrow in Venezuela of Marcos Prez Jimnez 1960 The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) in the Pacific Ocean.

49

1961 The Portuguese luxury cruise ship Santa Maria is hijacked by foes of the Estado Novo regime with the intention of waging war until dictator Antnio de Oliveira Salazar was overthrown.

1963 Guinea-Bissau War of Independence offially begins when PAIGC guerrilla fighters attacked the Portuguese army stationed in Tite.

1964 The 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified.

 

1967 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Ivory Coast are established. 1968 North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo (AGER-2), claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.

 

1973 President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam. 1973 A volcanic eruption devastates Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyjar chain of islands off the south coast of Iceland.

1986 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

 

1997 Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. 1997 Antonis Daglis, a 23-year-old Greek truck driver is sentenced to thirteen consecutive life sentences, plus 25 years for the serial slayings of three women and the attempted murder of six others.

   

2002 "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh returns to the United States in FBI custody. 2002 Reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered . 2003 Final communication between Earth and Pioneer 10. 2009 Dendermonde nursery attack in Dendermonde, Belgium.

JANUARY 24

41 Gaius Caesar (Caligula), known for his eccentricity and cruel despotism, is assassinated by his disgruntled Praetorian Guards. Claudiussucceeds his nephew.

       

1438 The Council of Basel suspends Pope Eugene IV as Prelate of Ethiopia, arrives at Massawa from Goa. 1679 King Charles II of England dissolves the Cavalier Parliament. 1742 Charles VII Albert becomes Holy Roman Emperor. 1848 California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento. 1857 The University of Calcutta is formally founded as the first fully-fledged university in south Asia. 1859 Political union of Moldavia and Wallachia; Alexandru Ioan Cuza is elected as ruler. 1862 Bucharest is proclaimed capital of Romania. 1878 The revolutionary Vera Zasulich shoots at Fyodor Trepov, the Governor of Saint Petersburg.

50

1916 In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court of the United States declares the federal income tax constitutional.

1918 The Gregorian calendar is introduced in Russia by decree of the Council of People's Commissars effective February 14(NS)

 

1939 The deadliest earthquake in Chilean history strikes Chilln. 1942 World War II: The Allies bombard Bangkok, leading Thailand to declare war against the United States and United Kingdom .

  

1943 World War II: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill conclude a conference in Casablanca. 1947 Greek banker Dimitrios Maximos becomes Prime Minister of Greece. 1960 Algerian War: Some units of European volunteers in Algiers stage an insurrection known as the "barricades week", during which they seize government buildings and clash with local police.

1961 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.

 

1966 An Air India Boeing 707 jet crashes on Mont Blanc, on the border between France and Italy, killing 117. 1972 Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II.

 

1977 Massacre of Atocha in Madrid, during the Spanish transition to democracy. 1978 Soviet satellite Cosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor onboard, burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.

  

1984 The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale. 1986 Voyager 2 passes within 81,500 kilometres (50,600 mi) of Uranus. 1990 Japan launches Hiten, the country's first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States.

   

1993 Turkish journalist and writer U ur Mumcu is assassinated by a car bomb in Ankara. 1996 Polish Premier Jzef Oleksy resigns amid charges that he spied for Moscow. 2003 The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation. 2009 The storm Klaus makes landfall near Bordeaux, France. It subsequently would cause 26 deaths as well as extensive disruptions to public transport and power supplies.

2011 At least 35 died and 180 injured in a bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

JANUARY 25

51

 

41 After a night of negotiation, Claudius is accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate. 1348 A strong earthquake strikes the South Alpine region of Friuli in modern Italy, causing considerable damage to buildings as far away as Rome.

       

1494 Alfonso II becomes King of Naples. 1533 Henry VIII of England secretly marries his second wife Anne Boleyn. 1554 Founding of So Paulo city, Brazil. 1573 Battle of Mikatagahara, in Japan; Takeda Shingen defeats Tokugawa Ieyasu. 1575 Luanda, the capital of Angola is founded by the Portuguese navigator Paulo Dias de Novais. 1755 Moscow University is established on Tatiana Day. 1787 American Daniel Shays leads a rebellion to seize Federal arsenal to protest debtor's prisons. 1791 The British Parliament passes the Constitutional Act of 1791 and splits the old Province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.

 

1792 The London Corresponding Society is founded. 1858 The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn becomes a popular wedding recessional after it is played on this day at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia.

    

1879 The Bulgarian National Bank is founded. 1881 Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company. 1890 Nellie Bly completes her round-the-world journey in 72 days. 1909 Richard Strauss' opera Elektra receives its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera. 1915 Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

  

1918 Ukraine declares independence from Bolshevik Russia. 1919 The League of Nations is founded. 1924 The 1924 Winter Olympics opens in Chamonix, France (in the French Alps), inaugurating the Winter Olympic Games.

 

1932 Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese National Revolutionary Army begins its defense of Harbin. 1937 The Guiding Light debuts on NBC radio from Chicago. In 1952 it moves to CBS television, where it remains until Sept. 18, 2009.

1941 Pope Pius XII elevates the Apostolic Vicariate of the Hawaiian Islands to the dignity of a diocese. It becomes the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.

   

1942 World War II: Thailand declares war on the United States and United Kingdom. 1945 World War II: The Battle of the Bulge ends. 1946 The United Mine Workers rejoins the American Federation of Labor. 1949 At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards are presented.

52

 

1955 The Soviet Union ends state of war with Germany. 1960 The National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accept money for playing particular records.

 

1961 In Washington, D.C. John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference. 1969 Brazilian Army captain Carlos Lamarca deserts in order to fight against the military dictatorship, taking with him 10 machine guns and 63 rifles.

        

1971 Charles Manson and three female "Family" members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. 1971 Idi Amin leads a coup deposing Milton Obote and becomes Uganda's president. 1971 Himachal Pradesh becomes the 18th Indian state. 1981 Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death. 1986 The National Resistance Movement topples the government of Tito Okello in Uganda. 1990 The Burns' Day storm hits northwestern Europe. 1993 Five people are shot outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia resulting in two murders. 1994 The Clementine space probe launches. 1995 The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launches a nuclear attack after it mistakes Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile.

 

1996 Billy Bailey became the last person to be hanged in the United States of America. 1998 During a historic visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II demands the release of political prisoners and political reforms while condemning US attempts to isolate the country.

1998 A suicide attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on Sri Lanka's Temple of the Tooth kills 8 people and injures 25 others.

  

1999 A 6.0 Richter scale earthquake hits western Colombia killing at least 1,000. 2001 A 50-year-old Douglas DC-3 crashes near Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela killing 24. 2003 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A group of people left London, England, for Baghdad, Iraq, to serve as human shields to prevent the U.S.-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations.

  

2004 Opportunity rover (MER-B) lands on surface of Mars. 2005 A stampede at the Mandher Devi temple in Mandhradevi in India kills at least 258. 2006 Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star.

2006 Mexican professional wrestler Juana Barraza is arrested in conjunction with the serial killing of at least 10 elderly women.

2010 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after take-off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on-board.

53

2011 Egyptian Revolution of 2011 begins in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes inCairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in Egypt.

JANUARY 26
  
1500 Vicente Yez Pinzn becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil. 1531 Lisbon, Portugal is hit by an earthquake--thousands die. 1564 The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

 

1564 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeats the Tsardom of Russia in the Battle of Ula during the Livonian War. 1565 Battle of Talikota, fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leads to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.

  

1589 Job is elected as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. 1699 Treaty of Carlowitz is signed. 1700 The magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake takes place off the west coast of the North America, as evidenced by Japanese records.

 

1736 Stanislaus I of Poland abdicates his throne. 1788 The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. Commemorated as Australia Day

     

1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia. 1837 Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state. 1838 Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States 1841 The United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong, which China later formally cedes. 1855 Point No Point Treaty is signed in Washington Territory. 1856 First Battle of Seattle. Marines from the USS Decatur drive off American Indian attackers after all day battle with settlers.

 

1861 American Civil War: The state of Louisiana secedes from the Union. 1863 American Civil War: General Ambrose Burnside is relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac after the disastrous Fredericksburg campaign. He is replaced by Joseph Hooker.

54

1863 American Civil War: Governor of Massachusetts John Albion Andrew receives permission from Secretary of War to raise a militia organization for men of African descent.

  

1870 American Civil War: Virginia rejoins the Union. 1885 Troops loyal to The Mahdi conquer Khartoum. 1905 The world's largest diamond ever, the Cullinan weighing 3,106.75 carats (0.62135 kg), is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.

1907 The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III is officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the second oldest military rifle still in official use.

  

1911 Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane. 1911 Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier receives its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera. 1918 Finnish Civil War: A group of Red Guards hangs a red lantern atop the tower of Helsinki Workers' Hall to symbolically mark the start of the war.

1920 Former Ford Motor Company executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer.

 

1924 Saint Petersburg, Russia, is renamed Leningrad. 1930 The Indian National Congress declares 26 January as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence) which occurred 20 years later.

    

1934 The Apollo Theater reopens in Harlem, New York City. 1934 German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed. 1939 Spanish Civil War: Troops loyal to nationalist General Francisco Franco and aided by Italy take Barcelona. 1942 World War II: The first United States forces arrive in Europe landing in Northern Ireland. 1945 World War II: The Red Army begins encircling the German Fourth Army near Heiligenbeil in East Prussia, which will end in destruction of the 4th Army two months later.

1950 The Constitution of India comes into force, forming a republic. Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as its first President of India. Observed as Republic Day in India.

1952 Black Saturday in Egypt: rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses.

 

1958 Japanese ferry Nankai Maru capsizes off southern Awaji Island, Japan, 167 killed. 1960 Danny Heater sets a worldwide high school basketball scoring record when he records 135 points for Burnsville High School (West Virginia)

1961 John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician. This is the first time a woman holds this appointment.

1962 Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later misses the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).

55

  

1965 Hindi becomes the official language of India. 1966 The Beaumont Children go missing from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia. 1978 The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).

 

1980 Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations. 1991 Mohamed Siad Barre is removed from power in Somalia, ending centralized government, and is succeeded by Ali Mahdi.

 

1992 Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia will stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons. 1998 Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had "sexual relations" with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

  

2001 An earthquake hits Gujarat, India, causing more than 20,000 deaths. 2004 President Hamid Karzai signs the new constitution of Afghanistan. 2004 A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

2005 Glendale train crash: Two trains derail killing 11 and injuring 200 in Glendale, California, near Los Angeles.

2009 Rioting breaks out in Antananarivo, Madagascar, sparking a political crisis that will result in the replacement of President Marc Ravalomanana with Andry Rajoelina.

JANUARY 27
      
98 Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva. 661 The Rashidun Caliphate ends with death of Ali. 1142 Execution, believed wrongful, of noted Song Dynasty General Yue Fei. 1186 Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, marries Constance of Sicily. 1343 Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus. 1593 The Vatican opens seven year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno. 1606 Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.

1695 Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his abdication in 1703.

 

1785 The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States. 1825 The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears".

56

1868 Boshin War: The Battle of Toba-Fushimi between forces of the Tokugawa shogunate and proImperial factions begins, which will end in defeat for the shogunate, and is a pivotal point in the Meiji Restoration.

     

1870 The Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity is founded at DePauw University. 1888 The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C.. 1909 The Young Left is founded in Norway. 1927 Ibn Saud takes the title of King of Nejd. 1939 First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. 1943 World War II: The VIII Bomber Command dispatched ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhemshafen, Germany. The first American bombing attack on Germany.

    

1944 World War II: The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted. 1945 World War II: The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. 1951 Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat. 1961 Soviet submarine S-80 sinks with all hands lost. 1967 Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

1967 The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

1973 The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.

1974 The Brisbane River breaches its banks causing the largest flood to affect the city of Brisbane in the 20th Century

1980 Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian caper.

1983 The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honsh and Hokkaid , breaks through.

1984 Pop singer Michael Jackson suffers second degree burns to his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium.

1993 American-born sumo wrestler Akebono Tar becomes the first foreigner to be promoted to the sport's highest rank of yokozuna.

1996 In a military coup Colonel Ibrahim Bar Manassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane.

1996 Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

57

2002 An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others.

  

2003 The first selections for the National Recording Registry are announced by the Library of Congress. 2006 Western Union discontinues its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. 2010 The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis ends when Porfirio Lobo Sosa becomes the new President of Honduras.

JANUARY 28
     
1077 Walk to Canossa: The excommunication of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor is lifted. 1521 The Diet of Worms begins, lasting until May 25. 1547 Henry VIII dies. His nine year old son, Edward VI becomes King, and the first Protestant ruler of England. 1573 Articles of the Warsaw Confederation are signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland. 1624 Sir Thomas Warner founds the first British colony in the Caribbean, on the island of Saint Kitts. 1724 The Russian Academy of Sciences is founded in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, and implemented by Senate decree. It is called the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences until 1917.

   

1754 Horace Walpole coins the word serendipity in a letter to Horace Mann. 1760 Pownal, Vermont is created by Benning Wentworth as one of the New Hampshire Grants. 1813 Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom. 1820 A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovers the Antarctic continent approaching the Antarctic coast.

     

1846 The Battle of Aliwal, India, is won by British troops commanded by Sir Harry Smith. 1851 Northwestern University becomes the first chartered university in Illinois. 1855 The first locomotive runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on the Panama Railway. 1871 Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris ends in French defeat and an armistice. 1878 Yale Daily News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States. 1887 In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the world's largest snowflakes are reported, 15 inches (38 cm) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) thick.

1896 Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent became the first person to be convicted of speeding. He is fined 1 shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thus exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h).

1902 The Carnegie Institution of Washington is founded in Washington, D.C. with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie.

58

1908 Members of the Portuguese Republican Party fail in their attempted coup d'tat against the administrative dictatorship of Prime Minister Joo Franco.

1909 United States troops leave Cuba with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being there since the Spanish-American War.

  

1915 An act of the U.S. Congress creates the United States Coast Guard. 1917 Municipally owned streetcars take to the streets of San Francisco, California. 1918 Finnish Civil War: Rebels seized control of the capital, Helsinki, and members of the Senate of Finland go underground.

1922 Knickerbocker Storm, Washington D.C.'s biggest snowfall, causes the city's greatest loss of life when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre collapses.

 

1932 Japanese forces attack Shanghai. 1933 The name Pakistan is coined by Choudhary Rehmat Ali Khan and is accepted by the Indian Muslims who then thereby adopted it further for the Pakistan Movement seeking independence.

  

1934 The first ski tow in the United States begins operation in Vermont. 1935 Iceland becomes the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion. 1938 The World Land Speed Record on a public road is broken by driver Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W195 at a speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph).

1941 French-Thai War: Final air battle of the conflict. Japanese-mediated armistice goes into effect later in the day.

    

1945 World War II: Supplies begin to reach the Republic of China over the newly reopened Burma Road. 1956 Elvis Presley made his first US TV appearance 1958 The Lego company patents the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today. 1958 The last episode of the British radio comedy programme Goon Show was broadcast. 1964 An unarmed USAF T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission is shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19.

 

1965 The current design of the Flag of Canada is chosen by an act of Parliament. 1977 The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which severely affects and cripples much of Upstate New York, but Buffalo, NY, Syracuse, NY, Watertown, NY, and surrounding areas are most affected, each area accumulating close to 10 feet (3.0 m) of snow on this one day.

1980 USCGC Blackthorn colides with the tanker Capricorn while leaving Tampa Florida and capsizes killing 23 Coast Guard crewmembers.

1981 Ronald Reagan lifts remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

59

1982 US Army general James L. Dozier is rescued by Italian anti-terrorism forces from captivity by the Red Brigades.

1984 Tropical Storm Domoina makes landfall in southern Mozambique, eventually causing 214 deaths and some of the most severe flooding so far recorded in the region.

1985 Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) records the hit single We Are the World, to help raise funds forEthiopian famine relief.

1986 Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board.

  

1988 The last episode of the British TV series Yes, Prime Minister, entitled The Tangled Web, was broadcast. 2002 TAME Flight 120, a Boeing 727-100 crashes in the Andes mountains in southern Colombia killing 92. 2006 The roof of one of the buildings at the Katowice International Fair in Chorzw / Katowice, Poland, collapses due to the weight of snow, killing 65 and injuring more than 170 others.

2010 Five murderers of President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh: Lieutenant Colonel Syed Faruq Rahman, Lieutenant Colonel Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Major AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, Major Bazlul Huda and Lieutenant Colonel Mohiuddin Ahmed are hanged.

2011 Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled up the Egyptian's streets in demonstrations referred to as "Friday of Anger" against the Mubarak regime.

JANUARY 29
     
904 Sergius III comes out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher. 1676 Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia. 1814 France defeats Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne. 1819 Stamford Raffles landed on the island of Singapore. 1834 US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute. 1845 "The Raven" is published in the New York Evening Mirror, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe

     

1850 Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress. 1856 Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross. 1861 Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state. 1863 Bear River Massacre. 1886 Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile. 1891 Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.

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1900 The American League is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 8 founding teams. 1916 World War I: Paris is first bombed by German zeppelins. 1918 Ukrainian-Soviet War: The Bolshevik Red Army, on its way to besiege Kiev, is met by a small group of military students at the Battle of Kruty.

1918 Ukrainian-Soviet War: An armed uprising organized by the Bolsheviks in anticipation of the encroaching Red Army begins at the Kiev Arsenal, which will be put down six days later.

 

1936 The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced. 1940 Three trains on the Sakurajima Line, in Osaka, Japan, collide and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station. 181 people are killed.

1943 The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island, U.S. cruiser Chicago is torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers.

    

1944 World War II: The Battle of Cisterna takes place in central Italy. 1944 World War II: Approximately 38 men, women, and children die in the Koniuchy massacre in Poland. 1944 In Bologna, Italy, the Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio is destroyed in an air-raid. 1963 The first inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are announced. 1967 The "ultimate high" of the hippie era, the Mantra-Rock Dance, takes place in San Francisco and features Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.

   

1979 Brenda Spencer kills two people and wounds eight at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School shootings. 1985 Final recording session of We Are The World, by the supergroup USA for Africa. 1989 Hungary establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea, making it the first Eastern Bloc nation to do so 1991 Gulf War: The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the war, as well as its deadliest, begins.

  

1996 President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear weapons testing. 1996 La Fenice, Venice's opera house, is destroyed by fire. 1998 In Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic, killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph is suspected as the culprit.

2001 Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

2002 In his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

2005 The first direct commercial flights from mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines flight lands in Beijing.

JANUARY 30

61

1048 Protestantism: The villagers around today's Baden-Baden elect their own priest in defiance of the local bishop.

1648 Eighty Years' War: The Treaty of Mnster and Osnabrck is signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.

 

1649 King Charles I of England is beheaded. 1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.

1667 The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and left-bank Ukraine to the Tsardom of Russia in the Treaty of Andrusovo.

  

1703 The Forty-seven Ronin, under the command of

ishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master.

1790 The first boat specializing as a lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne. 1806 The original Lower Trenton Bridge (also called the Trenton Makes the World Takes Bridge), which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, is opened.

 

1820 Edward Bransfield sights the Trinity Peninsula and claims the discovery of Antarctica. 1826 The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world's first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales, is opened.

1835 In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

  

1841 A fire destroys two-thirds of Mayagez, Puerto Rico. 1847 Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco. 1858 The first Hall concert is given in Manchester, England, marking the official founding of the Hall Orchestra as a full-time, professional orchestra.

 

1862 The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched. 1889 Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.

 

1902 The first Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed in London. 1911 The destroyer USS Terry (DD-25) makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.

    

1911 The Canadian Naval Service becomes the Royal Canadian Navy. 1913 The United Kingdom's House of Lords rejects the Irish Home Rule Bill. 1925 The Government of Turkey throws Patriarch Constantine VI out of Istanbul. 1933 Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. 1942 World War II: Japanese forces invade the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies.

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1943 World War II: Second day of the Battle of Rennell Island. The USS Chicago (CA-29) is sunk and a U.S. destroyer is heavily damaged by Japanese torpedoes.

 

1944 World War II: United States troops land on Majuro. 1945 World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,400 people.

1945 World War II: Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberate 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.

1948 Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi known for his non-violent freedom struggle is assassinated by Pandit Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.

1956 American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1959 MS Hans Hedtoft, said to be the safest ship afloat and "unsinkable" like the RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank, killing all 95 aboard.

  

1960 The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties. 1964 Ranger program: Ranger 6 is launched. 1964 In a bloodless coup, General Nguyen Khanh overthrows General Duong Van Minh's military junta in South Vietnam.

1969 The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.

1971 Carole King's Tapestry album is released, it would become the longest charting album by a female solo artist and sell 24 million copies worldwide.

1972 Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.

 

1972 Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations. 1975 The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary is established as the first United States National Marine Sanctuary.

1979 A Varig 707-323C freighter, flown by the same commander as Flight 820, disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

1982 Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called "Elk Cloner".

  

1989 The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes. 1994 Pter Lk becomes the youngest chess grand master. 1995 Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease.

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1996 Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.

2000 Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.

JANUARY 31
        
314 Silvester I begins his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Miltiades. 1504 France cedes Naples to Aragon. 1606 Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England. 1747 The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital. 1814 Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of Argentina. 1846 After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unify as the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 1848 John C. Fremont is court-martialed for mutiny and disobeying orders. 1849 Corn Laws are abolished in the United Kingdom (following legislation in 1846). 1862 Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located atNorthwestern University.

1865 American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, submitting it to the states for ratification.

      

1865 American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief. 1867 Maronite nationalist leader Youssef Karam leaves Lebanon on board a French ship bound for Algeria 1876 The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations. 1891 The first attempt at a Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto. 1900 Datu Muhammad Salleh is assassinated in Kampung Teboh, Tambunan, ending the Mat Salleh Rebellion 1915 World War I: Germany uses poison gas against Russia 1917 World War I: Germany announces that its U-boats will resume unrestricted submarine warfare after a twoyear hiatus.

1918 A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five Britishwarships.

   

1919 The Battle of George Square takes place in Glasgow, Scotland. 1929 The Soviet Union exiles Leon Trotsky. 1930 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape. 1942 World War II: Allied forces are defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Malaya and retreat to the island of Singapore.

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1943 German Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus surrenders to the Soviets at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of World War II's fiercest battles.

1944 World War II: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

1944 World War II: During Anzio campaign 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby's Rangers) is destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at Battle of Cisterna, Italy.

1945 US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.

1945 World War II: About 3,000 inmates from the Stutthof concentration camp are forcibly marched into the Baltic Sea at Palmnicken (now Yantarny, Russia) and executed.

1946 Yugoslavia's new constitution, modeling the Soviet Union, establishes six constituent republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia andSlovenia).

  

1950 President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the hydrogen bomb. 1953 A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands. 1957 Eight people on the ground in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.

    

1958 Explorer program: Explorer 1 The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit. 1958 James Van Allen discovers the Van Allen radiation belt. 1961 Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2 Ham the Chimp travels into outer space. 1966 The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program. 1968 Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive.

 

1968 Nauru gains independence from Australia. 1971 Apollo program: Apollo 14 Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

1971 The Winter Soldier Investigation, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to publicize war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, begin inDetroit, Michigan.

  

1990 The first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow. 1995 President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy. 1996 An explosives-filled truck rams into the gates of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo, Sri Lanka killing at least 86 and injuring 1,400.

 

1996 Comet Hyakutake is discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake. 2000 Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crash: An MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 aboard.

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2001 In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 overLockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

 

2003 The Waterfall rail accident occurs near Waterfall, New South Wales, Australia. 2007 Suspects are arrested in Birmingham in the UK, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq.

2009 In Kenya, at least 113 people are killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.

FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY 1

1327 Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.

 

1411 The First Peace of Thorn is signed in Thorn, Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights (Prussia). 1662 The Chinese general Koxinga seizes the island of Taiwan after a nine-month siege.

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1709 Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

1713 The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery results from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be seized.

   

1790 In New York City, the Supreme Court of the United States convenes for the first time. 1793 French Revolutionary Wars: France declares war on the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. 1796 The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York. 1814 Mayon Volcano, in the Philippines, erupts, killing around 1,200 people, the most devastating eruption of the volcano.

    

1835 Slavery is abolished in Mauritius. 1861 American Civil War: Texas secedes from the United States. 1865 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 1884 The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary is published. 1893 Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.

     

1897 Shinhan Bank, the oldest bank in South Korea, opens in Seoul. 1908 King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Prince Luis Filipe are killed in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon. 1918 Russia adopts the Gregorian Calendar. 1920 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police begins operations. 1924 The United Kingdom recognizes the USSR. 1942 World War II: Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar of German-occupied Norway, appoints Vidkun Quisling the Minister President of the National Government.

1942 World War II: U.S. Navy conducts Marshalls-Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater.

1942 Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States federal government, begins broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by theAxis powers.

 

1946 Trygve Lie of Norway is picked to be the first United Nations Secretary General. 1957 Felix Wankel's first working prototype DKM 54 of the Wankel engine runs at the NSU research and development department Versuchsabteilung TX in Germany

 

1958 Egypt and Syria merge to form the United Arab Republic, which lasted until 1961. 1960 Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

1965 The Hamilton River in Labrador, Canada is renamed the Churchill River in honour of Winston Churchill.

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1968 Vietnam War: The execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan is videotaped and photographed by Eddie Adams. This image helped build opposition to the Vietnam War.

1968 Canada's three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, are unified into the Canadian Forces.

1968 The New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad are merged to form the ill-fated Penn Central Transportation.

   

1972 Kuala Lumpur becomes a city by a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia. 1974 A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil kills 189 and injures 293. 1974 Kuala Lumpur is declared a Federal Territory. 1978 Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees the United States to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl.

1979 Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by President Jimmy Carter.

   

1979 The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile. 1982 Senegal and the Gambia form a loose confederation known as Senegambia. 1989 The Western Australian towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder amalgamate to form the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. 1992 The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal court declares Warren Anderson, ex-CEO of Union Carbide, a fugitive under Indian law for failing to appear in the Bhopal Disaster case.

   

1993 Gary Bettman becomes the NHL's first commissioner 1996 The Communications Decency Act is passed by the U.S. Congress. 1998 Rear Admiral Lillian E. Fishburne became the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral. 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

 

2004 251 people are trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. 2004 Janet Jackson's breast is exposed during the half-time show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, resulting in US broadcasters adopting a stronger adherence to Federal Communications Commission censorship guidelines.

2005 King Gyanendra of Nepal carries out a coup d'tat to capture the democracy, becoming Chairman of the Councils of ministers.

2009 Jhanna Sigurardttir is chosen the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, becoming the first openly gay head of government in the modern world.

FEBRUARY 2

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506 Alaric II, eighth king of the Visigoths promulgates The Breviary of Alaric (Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum) a collection ofRoman law.

962 Translatio imperii: Pope John XII crowns Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.

    

1032 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor becomes King of Burgundy. 1207 Terra Mariana, comprising present-day Estonia and Latvia, is established. 1461 Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Mortimer's Cross is fought in Herefordshire, England. 1536 Spaniard Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1542 Portuguese under Christovo da Gama capture a Muslim-occupied hill fort in northern Ethiopia in the Battle of Baente.

      

1653 New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated. 1812 Russia establishes a fur trading colony at Fort Ross, California. 1848 Mexican-American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed. 1848 California Gold Rush: The first ship with Chinese immigrants arrives in San Francisco, California. 1876 The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed. 1887 In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed. 1899 The Australian Premiers' Conference held in Melbourne decides to locate Australia's capital city, Canberra, between Sydney and Melbourne.

         

1901 Funeral of Queen Victoria. 1913 Grand Central Terminal is opened in New York City. 1920 The Tartu Peace Treaty is signed between Estonia and Russia. 1920 France occupies Memel. 1922 Ulysses by James Joyce is published. 1925 Serum run to Nome: Dog sleds reach Nome, Alaska with diphtheria serum, inspiring the Iditarod race. 1925 The Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America. 1934 The Export-Import Bank of the United States is incorporated. 1935 Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine. 1943 World War II: The Battle of Stalingrad comes to conclusion as Soviet troops accept the surrender of 91,000 remnants of the Axis forces.

    

1946 The Hungarian Republic is proclaimed. 1957 Iskander Mirza of Pakistan lays the foundation-stone of the Guddu Barrage. 1966 Pakistan suggests a six-point agenda with Kashmir after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. 1971 Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader of Uganda. 1972 The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest at Bloody Sunday.

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1974 The F-16 Fighting Falcon flies for the first time. 1976 The Groundhog Day gale hits the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada. 1980 Reports surface that the FBI is targeting allegedly corrupt Congressmen in the Abscam operation. 1982 Hama Massacre: Syria attacks the town of Hama. 1987 After the 1986 People Power Revolution the Philippines enacts a new constitution. 1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet armoured column leaves Kabul. 1990 Apartheid: F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to function legally and promises to release Nelson Mandela.

2004 Swiss tennis player Roger Federer becomes the No. 1 ranked men's singles player, a position he will hold for a record 237 weeks.

FEBRUARY 3

313 Edict of Milan: Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius met at a conference in Milan. They proclaimed a policy of religiousfreedom, ending the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.

   

1112 Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona and Douce I of Provence marry, uniting the fortunes of those two states. 1377 More than 2,000 people of the Italian city of Cesena are slaughtered by Papal Troops (Cesena Bloodbath). 1451 Sultan Mehmed II inherits the throne of the Ottoman Empire. 1488 Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal lands in Mossel Bay after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first known European to travel so far south.

  

1509 The Battle of Diu, between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire takes place in Diu, India. 1534 The Irish rebel Silken Thomas is executed by the order of Henry VIII in London, England. 1637 Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) as sellers could no longer find buyers for their bulb contracts.

 

1690 The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in America. 1706 During the Battle of Fraustadt Swedish forces defeat a superior Saxon-Polish-Russian force by deploying a double envelopment.

   

1781 American Revolutionary War: British forces seize the Dutch-owned Caribbean island Sint Eustatius. 1783 American Revolutionary War: Spain recognizes United States independence. 1787 Shays' Rebellion is crushed. 1807 A British military force, under Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty captures the city of Montevideo, then part of the Spanish Empire now the capital of Uruguay.

1809 The Illinois Territory is created.

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1813 Jos de San Martn defeats a Spanish royalist army at the Battle of San Lorenzo, part of the Argentine War of Independence.

   

1830 The sovereignty of Greece is confirmed in a London Protocol. 1834 Wake Forest University is established. 1852 Justo Jos de Urquiza defeats Juan Manuel de Rosas at the Battle of Caseros. 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race.

1900 Governor of Kentucky William Goebel dies of wound sustained in an assassination attempt three days earlier in Frankfort, Kentucky.

1913 The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.

 

1916 Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada burn down. 1917 World War I: The United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany a day after the latter announced a new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

1918 The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begins service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet (3,633 meters) long.

 

1931 The Hawke's Bay earthquake, New Zealand's worst natural disaster, kills 258. 1943 The USAT Dorchester is sunk by a German U-boat. Only 230 of 902 men aboard survived. The Chapel of the Four Chaplains, dedicated by President Harry Truman, is one of many memorials established to commemorate the Four Chaplains story.

1944 World War II: During the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, U.S. Army and Marine forces seize Kwajalein Atoll from the defending Japanese garrison.

1945 World War II: As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin, a raid which kills between 2,500 to 3,000 and dehouses another 120,000.

1945 World War II: The United States and the Philippine Commonwealth begin a month-long battle to retake Manila from Japan.

  

1947 The lowest temperature in North America is recorded in Snag, Yukon. 1957 Senegalese political party Democratic Rally merges into the Senegalese Party of Socialist Action (PSAS). 1958 Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.

1959 A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa kills Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson and the incident becomes known as The Day the Music Died.

1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of the "a wind of change" of increasing national consciousness blowing through colonial Africa, signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation.

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1961 The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post.

1961 A protest by agricultural workers in Baixa de Cassanje, Portuguese Angola, turns into a revolt, opening the Angolan War of Independence, the first of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.

  

1966 The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon. 1967 Ronald Ryan, the last person to be executed in Australia, is hanged in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne. 1969 In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is appointed Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.

1971 New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption. Many believe the incident proves that NYPD officers tried to kill him.

1972 The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history.

1984 John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.

 

1984 Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger. 1988 Iran-Contra Affair: The United States House of Representatives rejects President Ronald Reagan's request for $36.25 million to aid Nicaraguan Contras.

1989 After a stroke two weeks previous, South African President P. W. Botha resigns as leader of the National Party, but stays on as president for six more months.

 

1989 A military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay since 1954. 1995 Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

 

1996 The Lijiang earthquake in Lijiang, Yunnan, China. 1998 Karla Faye Tucker is executed in Texas becoming the first woman executed in the United States since 1984.

1998 Cavalese cable car disaster: a United States Military pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low-flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy.

 

2007 A Baghdad market bombing kills at least 135 people and injures a further 339. 2011 All available blocks of IPv4 internet addresses are officially distributed to regional authorities.

FEBRUARY 4

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211 Roman Emperor Septimius Severus dies at Eboracum (modern York, England) while preparing to lead a campaign against the Caledonians.He leaves the empire in the control of his two quarrelling sons.

960 The coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China that would last more than three centuries.

1454 In the Thirteen Years' War, the Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sends a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master.

1703 In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death.

1789 George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

    

1794 The French legislature abolishes slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic. 1797 The Riobamba earthquake strikes Ecuador, causing up to 40,000 casualties. 1801 John Marshall is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States. 1810 The Royal Navy seizes Guadeloupe. 1820 The Chilean Navy under the command of Lord Cochrane completes the 2 day long Capture of Valdivia with just 300 men and 2 ships.

   

1825 The Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal. 1846 The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Utah Territory. 1859 The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt. 1861 American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six break-away U.S. states meet and form the Confederate States of America.

    

1899 The Philippine-American War begins. 1932 Second Sino-Japanese War: Harbin, Manchuria, falls to Japan. 1936 Radium becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically. 1941 The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops. 1945 World War II: The Yalta Conference between the "Big Three" (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin) opens at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea.

1945 World War II: The British Indian Army and Imperial Japanese Army begin a series of battles known as the Battle of Pokoku and Irrawaddy River operations.

  

1948 Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth. 1966 All Nippon Airways Flight 60 plunges into Tokyo Bay, killing 133. 1967 Lunar Orbiter program: Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollospacecraft.

1969 Yasser Arafat takes over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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1974 The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California. 1974 M62 coach bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) explodes a bomb on a bus carrying offduty British Armed Forces personnel in Yorkshire, England. Nine soldiers and three civilians are killed.

  

1975 Haicheng earthquake (magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale) occurs in Haicheng, Liaoning, China. 1976 In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000. 1977 A Chicago Transit Authority elevated train rear-ends another and derails, killing 11 and injuring 180, the worst accident in the agency's history.

  

1980 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini names Abolhassan Banisadr as president of Iran. 1992 A Coup d'tat is led by Hugo Chvez Fras, against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrs Prez. 1996 Major snowstorm paralyzes Midwestern United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ties all-time record low temperature at -26F (-32.2C)

1997 En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop-transport helicopters collide in mid-air over northern Galilee, Israel killing 73.

1997 After at first contesting the results, Serbian President Slobodan Milo evi recognizes opposition victories in the November 1996 elections.

 

1998 An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000. 1999 Unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo is shot dead by four plainclothes New York City police officers on an unrelated stake-out, inflaming race-relations in the city.

 

1999 The New Carissa runs aground near Coos Bay, Oregon. 2000 German extortionist Klaus-Peter Sabotta is jailed for life for attempted murder and extortion in connection with the sabotage of German railway lines.

 

2002 Cancer Research UK, the world's largest independent cancer research charity, is founded. 2003 The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is officially renamed to Serbia and Montenegro and adopts a new constitution.

   

2004 Facebook, a mainstream online social network is founded by Mark Zuckerberg. 2006 A stampede occurs in the ULTRA Stadium near Manila killing 71. 2008 The London Low Emission Zone (LEZ) scheme begins to operate in the UK. 2010 The Federal Court of Australia's ruling in Roadshow Films v iiNet sets a precedent that Internet service providers (ISPs) are not responsible for what their users do with the services the ISPs provide them.

FEBRUARY 5

62 Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.

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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.

      

1631 Roger Williams emigrates to Boston. 1778 South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. 1782 Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca. 1783 In Calabria a sequence of strong earthquakes begins. 1810 Peninsular War: Siege of Cdiz begins. 1818 Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway. 1852 The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.

1859 Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state.

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. 1900 The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal 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. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.

 

1918 Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military. 1918 SS Tuscania (1914) 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 or the "BBC pips".

  

1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States. 1939 Generalsimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th "Caudillo de Espaa", or Leader of Spain. 1941 World War II: Allied forces begin the Battle of Keren to capture Keren, Eritrea.

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1945 World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila. 1946 The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea. 1958 Gamel 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. 1972 Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. 1976 The 1976 swine flu outbreak begins at Fort Dix, NJ. 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 During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell slams into 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 Twenty-three Chinese people drown when a group of 35 cockle-pickers are trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Twenty-one bodies are recovered.

2004 Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.

2008 A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States leaves 57 dead, the most since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 88.

2009 The United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal runs aground off Oahu, Hawaii, damaging the ship as well as a coral reef.

FEBRUARY 6

1649 The claimant King Charles II of England and Scotland is declared King of Great Britain, by the Parliament of Scotland. This move was not followed by the Parliament of England nor the Parliament of Ireland.

1685 James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II.

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1778 American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and Francesignaling official recognition of the new republic.

     

1788 Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution. 1806 Battle of San Domingo British naval victory against the French in the Caribbean. 1815 New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to John Stevens. 1817 The Argentinian San Martn crosses the Andes with an army in order to liberate Chile from Spanish rule. 1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore. 1820 The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia.

  

1833 Otto becomes the first modern King of Greece. 1840 Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing New Zealand as a British colony. 1843 The first minstrel show in the United States, The Virginia Minstrels, opens (Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City).

1862 American Civil War: US Navy gives the Union its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee, known as the Battle of Fort Henry.

1899 Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris, a peace treaty between the United States and Spain, is ratified by the United States Senate.

1900 The international arbitration court at The Hague is created when the Netherlands' Senate ratifies an 1899 peace conference decree.

1922 The Washington Naval Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., limiting the naval armaments of United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy.

1933 The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing the beginning and ending of the terms of the elected federal offices, goes into effect.

1934 Far right leagues rally in front of the Palais Bourbon in an attempted coup against the French Third Republic, creating a political crisis in France.

 

1942 World War II: The United Kingdom declares war on Thailand. 1951 The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident kills 85 people and injures over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history.

1952 Elizabeth II becomes the first Queen regnant of the United Kingdom and several other realms since Queen Victoria, upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.

 

1958 Eight Manchester United F.C. players are killed in the Munich air disaster. 1959 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.

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1959 At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.

1978 The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and snowfall of 4" an hour.

1981 The National Resistance Army of Uganda launches an attack on a Ugandan Army installation in the central Mubende District to begin the Ugandan Bush War.

 

1987 Justice Mary Gaudron is appointed to the High Court of Australia, the first woman to be appointed. 1989 The Round Table Talks start in Poland, thus marking the beginning of overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.

1996 Flooding in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, United States, causes over US$500 million in property damage throughout the Pacific Northwest.

 

1998 Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport. 2000 Second Chechen War: Russia captures Grozny, Chechnya, forcing the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria government into exile.

FEBRUARY 7
   
457 Leo I becomes emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1074 Pandulf IV of Benevento is killed battling the invading Normans at the Battle of Montesarchio. 1301 Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales. 1497 The bonfire of the vanities occurs in which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books inFlorence, Italy.

 

1795 The 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. 1807 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Eylau Napolon's French Empire begins fighting against Russian and Prussian forces of the Fourth Coalition at Eylau, Poland.

 

1812 The strongest in a series of earthquakes strikes New Madrid, Missouri. 1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles leaves Singapore after just taking it over, leaving it in the hands of William Farquhar.

1842 Battle of Debre Tabor: Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien.

1856 The Kingdom of Awadh is annexed by the British East India Company and Wajid Ali Shah, the king of Awadh, is imprisoned and later exiled toCalcutta.

1856 The colonial Tasmanian Parliament passes the second piece of legislation (the Electoral Act of 1856) anywhere in the world providing forelections by way of a secret ballot.

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1863 HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189. 1894 The Cripple Creek miner's strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, begins in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

1897 Greco-Turkish War: The first full-scale battle takes place when the Greek expeditionary force in Crete defeats a 4,000-strong Ottoman force at Livadeia.

   

1898 mile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'Accuse. 1900 Second Boer War: British troops fail in their third attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith. 1904 A fire in Baltimore, Maryland destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours. 1907 The Mud March is the first large procession organized by the National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

  

1935 The classic board game Monopoly is invented. 1940 The second full length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres. 1943 Imperial Japanese naval forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign.

      

1944 World War II: In Anzio, Italy, German forces launch a counteroffensive during the Allied Operation Shingle. 1948 Neil Harvey becomes the youngest Australian to score a century in Test cricket. 1948 Sancheong-Hamyang massacre:Korean War 1962 The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports. 1974 Grenada gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1979 Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit for the first time since either was discovered. 1984 Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit(MMU).

1986 Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation.

1990 Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.

  

1991 Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in. 1992 The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union. 1995 Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.

 

1999 Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein. 2009 Bushfires in Victoria left 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.

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FEBRUARY 8
    
421 Constantius III becomes co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. 1238 The Mongols burn the Russian city of Vladimir. 1250 Seventh Crusade: Crusaders engage Ayyubid forces in the Battle of Al Mansurah. 1575 Universiteit Leiden is founded, and given the motto Praesidium Libertatis. 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed on suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

 

1601 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebels against Queen Elizabeth I the revolt is quickly crushed. 1693 The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.

      

1726 The Supreme Privy Council is established in Russia. 1807 Battle of Eylau Napoleon defeats Russians under General Benigssen. 1817 Las Heras crosses the Andes with an army to join San Martn and liberate Chile from Spain. 1837 Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate. 1855 The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appear in southern Devon. 1856 Barbu Dimitrie tirbei abolishes slavery in Wallachia. 1865 In the United States, Delaware voters reject the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)

1879 Sandford Fleming first proposes adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute.

 

1879 The England cricket team led by Lord Harris is attacked during a riot during a match in Sydney. 1887 The Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.

1904 Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the RussoJapanese War.

     

1910 The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce. 1915 D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles. 1922 President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio in the White House. 1924 Capital punishment: The first state execution in the United States by gas chamber takes place in Nevada. 1942 World War II: Japan invades Singapore. 1945 World War II: The United Kingdom and Canada commence Operation Veritable to occupy the west bank of the Rhine.

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1946 The first portion of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the first serious challenge to the popularity of the Authorized King James Version, is published.

   

1948 The formal creation of the Korean People's Army of North Korea is announced. 1949 Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary is sentenced for treason. 1952 Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom. 1955 The Government of Sindh abolishes the Jagirdari system in the province. One million acres (4000 km ) of land thus acquired is to be distributed among the landless peasants.

1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".

 

1960 The first eight brass star plaques are installed in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 1962 Charonne massacre. Nine trade unionists are killed by French police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police.

1963 Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.

1963 The regime of Prime Minister of Iraq, Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Qassem is overthrown by the Ba'ath Party.

1965 After taking evasive maneuvers to avoid a mid-air collision immediately after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and explodes, killing everyone aboard.

1968 American civil rights movement: The Orangeburg massacre: An attack on black students from South Carolina State University who are protesting racial segregation at the town's only bowling alley, leaves three or four dead in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

  

1969 Allende meteorite falls near Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico. 1971 The NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time. 1971 South Vietnamese ground troops launch an incursion into Laos to try and cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail and stop communist infiltration.

1974 After 84 days in space, the crew of Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station Skylab, returns to Earth.

   

1974 Military coup in Upper Volta. 1978 Proceedings of the United States Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time. 1979 Denis Sassou-Nguesso becomes the President of the Republic of the Congo for the first time. 1981 Twenty-one association football spectators are trampled to death at Karaiskakis Stadium in Neo Faliro, Greece, after a football match between Olympiacos F.C. and AEK Athens FC.

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1983 The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.

 

1989 An Independent Air Boeing 707 crashes into Santa Maria mountain in the Azores, killing 144. 1993 General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.

  

1996 The U.S. Congress passes the Communications Decency Act. 1996 The massive Internet collaboration "24 Hours in Cyberspace" takes place. 2010 A freak storm in the Hindukush mountains of Afghanistan triggers a series of at least 36 avalanches, burying over two miles of road, killing at least 172 people and trapping over 2,000 travellers.

FEBRUARY 9
     
474 Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1555 Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake. 1621 Gregory XV becomes Pope, the last Pope elected by acclamation. 1775 American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion. 1788 The Habsburg Empire joins the Russo-Turkish War in the Russian camp. 1825 After no presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives electsJohn Quincy Adams President of the United States.

 

1849 New Roman Republic established 1861 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention atMontgomery, Alabama.

      

1870 The U.S. Weather Bureau is established. 1885 The first Japanese government-approved immigrants arrive in Hawaii. 1889 The United States Department of Agriculture is established as a Cabinet-level agency. 1895 William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball. 1900 The Davis Cup competition is established. 1904 RussoJapanese War: Battle of Port Arthur concludes. 1913 A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-livednatural satellite of the Earth.

1920 Under the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, international diplomacy recognizes Norwegian sovereignty over Arctic archipelago Svalbard, and designates it as demilitarized.

1922 Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

82

 

1934 The Balkan Entente is formed. 1942 World War II: Top United States military leaders hold their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war.

1942 Year-round Daylight saving time is re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

1943 World War II: Allied authorities declare Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuates its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal.

1945 World War II: The Battle of the Atlantic HMS Venturer sinks U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway, in a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat.

1945 World War II: A force of Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Frdefjorden, Norway.

1950 Second Red Scare: Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists.

  

1951 Geochang massacre: Korean War 1959 The R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becomes operational at Plesetsk, USSR. 1964 The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a "record-busting" audience of 73 million viewers.

     

1965 Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam. 1969 First test flight of the Boeing 747. 1971 The Sylmar earthquake hits the San Fernando Valley area of California. 1971 Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. 1971 Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned moon landing. 1973 Biju Patnaik of the Pragati Legislature Party is elected leader of the opposition in the state assembly in Orissa, India.

  

1975 The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth. 1991 Voters in Lithuania vote for independence. 1995 Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African American and first Briton, respectively, to perform spacewalks.

1996 The Provisional Irish Republican Army declares the end to its 18 month ceasefire and explodes a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf.

2001 The American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School.

FEBRUARY 10

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1258 Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed. 1306 In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn, his leading political rival, sparking revolution in the Scottish Wars of Independence

1355 The St. Scholastica's Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 63 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days.

1567 An explosion destroys the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland. The second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley is found strangled, in what many believe to be an assassination.

 

1763 French and Indian War: The 1763 Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Quebec to Great Britain. 1798 Louis Alexandre Berthier invades Rome, proclaims a Roman Republic on February 15 and then on February 20 takes Pope Pius VI prisoner.

      

1814 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Champaubert 1840 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 1846 First Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Sobraon British defeat Sikhs in final battle of the war 1863 The fire extinguisher is patented. 1870 The YWCA is founded in New York City. 1906 HMS Dreadnought is launched. 1920 Jozef Haller de Hallenburg performs symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea.

  

1923 Texas Tech University is founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas. 1933 The New York City-based Postal Telegraph Company introduces the first singing telegram. 1933 In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf, killing him.

1936 Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italian troops launched the Battle of Amba Aradam against Ethiopian defenders.

 

1942 Japanese submarine bombards Midway Atoll. 1943 World War II: Attempting to completely lift the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet Red Army engages German troops and Spanish volunteers in the Battle of Krasny Bor.

   

1947 Italy cedes most of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia. 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam. 1962 Captured American U2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. 1964 Melbourne-Voyager collision: The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with the destroyer HMAS Voyager off the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.

 

1967 The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. 1981 A fire at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino kills eight and injures 198.

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1989 Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party.

 

1996 The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov for the first time. 1998 Voters in Maine repeal a gay rights law passed in 1997 becoming the first U.S. state to abandon such a law.

2003 France and Belgium break the NATO procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq.

 

2005 North Korea announces that it possesses nuclear weapons. 2009 The communication satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collide in orbit, destroying both.

FEBRUARY 11
 
660 BC Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu. 55 Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way forNero to become Emperor.

244 Emperor Gordian III is murdered by mutinous soldiers in Zaitha (Mesopotamia). A mound is raised at Carchemish in his memory.

           

1531 Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England. 1659 The assault on Copenhagen by Swedish forces is beaten back with heavy losses. 1752 Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, is opened by Benjamin Franklin. 1790 The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for abolition of slavery. 1794 First session of United States Senate open to the public. 1808 Jesse Fell burns anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal. 1812 Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry "gerrymanders" for the first time. 1826 University College London is founded under the name University of London. 1826 Swaminarayan writes the Shikshapatri, an important text within the Swaminarayan faith. 1840 Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Rgiment receives its first performance in Paris. 1843 Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi receives its first performance in Milan. 1855 Kassa Hailu is crowned Tewodros II, Emperor of Ethiopia, by Abuna Salama III in a ceremony at the church of Derasge Maryam

1861 American Civil War: United States House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

 

1873 King Amadeus I of Spain abdicates. 1889 Meiji Constitution of Japan is adopted; the first Diet of Japan convenes in 1890.

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1903 Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony receives its first performance in Vienna. 1906 Pope Pius X publishes the encyclical Vehementer nos. 1916 Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control. 1919 Friedrich Ebert (SPD), is elected President of Germany. 1929 Fascist Italy and the Vatican sign the Lateran Treaty. 1937 A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers Union. 1938 BBC Television produces the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Capek play R.U.R., that coined the term "robot".

      

1939 A Lockheed XP-38 flies from California to New York in 7 hours 2 minutes. 1942 The first gold record is presented to Glenn Miller for "Chattanooga Choo Choo". 1942 World War II: The Battle of Bukit Timah is fought in Singapore. 1943 World War II: General Dwight Eisenhower is selected to command the allied armies in Europe. 1953 President Dwight Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. 1953 The Soviet Union breaks off diplomatic relations with Israel. 1959 The Federation of Arab Emirates of the South, which will later become South Yemen, is created as a protectorate of the United Kingdom.

   

1964 Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 1964 The Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) breaks off diplomatic relations with France. 1968 Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 1971 Eighty-seven countries, including the US, UK, and USSR, sign the Seabed Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor in international waters.

 

1973 Vietnam War: First release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place. 1978 Censorship: the People's Republic of China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

1979 Islamic revolution of Iran establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1981 100,000 US gallons (380 m3) of radioactive coolant leak into the containment building of TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee, contaminating 8 workers.

 

1987 The Constitution of the Philippines goes into effect. 1990 Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.

 

1997 Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. 2008 Rebel East Timorese soldiers seriously wound President Jos Ramos-Horta. Rebel leader Alfredo Reinado is killed in the attack.

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2011 Egyptian Revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests.

FEBRUARY 12
 
881 Pope John VIII crowns Charles the Fat, the King of Italy: Emperor 1429 English forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orleans from attack by the Comte de Clermont and Sir John Stewart of Darnley in the Battle of Rouvray (also known as the Battle of the Herrings).

   

1502 Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India. 1541 Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia. 1554 A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason. 1593 Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.

1689 The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes anabdication.

1733 Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, and its first city at Savannah (known as Georgia Day).

  

1771 Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden. 1816 The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is destroyed by fire. 1817 An Argentine/Chilean patriotic army, after crossing the Andes, defeats Spanish troops on the Battle of Chacabuco.

 

1818 Bernardo O'Higgins formally approved the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepcin, Chile. 1825 The Creek cede the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrate west.

 

1832 Ecuador annexes the Galpagos Islands. 1851 Edward Hargraves announces that he has found gold in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, starting the Australian gold rush.

   

1855 Michigan State University is established. 1894 Anarchist mile Henry hurls a bomb into Paris's Cafe Terminus, killing one and wounding 20. 1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded. 1909 New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century happens when the SS Penguin, an interisland ferry, sinks and explodes at the entrance to Wellington Harbour.

1912 The Xuantong Emperor, the last Emperor of China, abdicates.

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1914 In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place. 1934 The Austrian Civil War begins. 1934 In Spain the national council of Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista decides to merge the movement with the Falange Espaola.

1935 USS Macon, one of the two largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashes into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sinks.

 

1946 World War II: Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured U-boats. 1946 African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the Civil Rights Movement and partially inspires Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil.

    

1947 A meteor creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union. 1961 U.S.S.R. launches Venera 1 towards Venus. 1968 Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat massacre. 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union. 1990 Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history when she becomes Premier of Western Australia.

   

1992 The current Constitution of Mongolia comes into effect. 1994 Four men break into the National Gallery of Norway and steal Edward Munch's iconic painting The Scream. 1999 President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial. 2001 NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

2002 The trial of former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milo evi begins at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He dies four years later before its conclusion.

2002 An Iran Air Tours Tupolev Tu-154 crashes in the mountains outside Khorramabad, Iran while descending for a landing at Khorramabad Airport, killing 119.

2004 The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

2009 Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York while on approach to BuffaloNiagara International Airport, killing all on board and one on the ground.

FEBRUARY 13
 
1503 Disfida di Barletta famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta. 1542 Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.

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1575 Henry III of France is crowned at Rheims, marrying Louise de Lorraine-Vaudmont on the same day. 1633 Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition. 1668 Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation. 1689 William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England. 1692 Massacre of Glencoe: About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.

1739 Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nadir Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.

1867 Work begins on the covering of the Zenne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.

   

1880 Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect. 1881 The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert. 1894 Auguste and Louis Lumire patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector. 1914 Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

   

1920 The Negro National League is formed. 1931 New Delhi becomes the capital of India. 1934 The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean. 1935 A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

1945 World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army.

1945 World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.

1951 Korean War: Battle of Chipyong-ni, which represented the "high-water mark" of the Chinese incursion into South Korea, commences.

  

1954 Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game 1955 Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls. 1960 With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

1960 Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.

1961 A 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.

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1967 American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain. 1970 Black Sabbath, arguably the very first heavy metal album, is released. 1971 Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos. 1978 Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.

1979 An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.

  

1981 A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky. 1982 Ro Negro massacre in Guatemala. 1984 Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

 

1990 German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany. 1991 Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.

  

2000 The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies. 2001 An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400. 2004 The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

2007 Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.

2008 Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.

2010 A bomb explodes in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India, killing 17 and injuring 60 more.

FEBRUARY 14

842 Charles the Bald and Louis the German swear the Oaths of Strasbourg in the French and German languages.

   

1014 Pope Benedict VIII recognizes Henry of Bavaria as King of Germany. 1076 Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. 1349 Approximately 2,000 Jews are burned to death by mobs or forcibly removed from the city of Strasbourg. 1556 Thomas Cranmer is declared a heretic.

90

1778 The United States Flag is formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte rendered a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.

 

1779 James Cook is killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii. 1797 French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Cape St. Vincent John Jervis, (later 1st Earl of St Vincent) and Horatio Nelson (later 1st Viscount Nelson) lead the British Royal Navy to victory over a Spanish fleet in action near Gibraltar.

 

1804 Karadjordje leads the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. 1831 Ras Marye of Yejju marches into Tigray and defeats and kills Dejazmach Sabagadis in the Battle of Debre Abbay.

1835 The original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is formed in Kirtland, Ohio.

 

1843 The event that inspired the Beatles song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is held in England. 1849 In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.

1852 Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital providing in-patient beds specifically for children in the English-speaking world, is founded in London.

1855 Texas is linked by telegraph to the rest of the United States, with the completion of a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas.

     

1859 Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state. 1876 Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray. 1879 The War of the Pacific breaks out when Chilean armed forces occupy the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta. 1899 Voting machines are approved by the U.S. Congress for use in federal elections. 1900 Second Boer War: In South Africa, 20,000 British troops invade the Orange Free State. 1903 The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (later split into Department of Commerce and Department of Labor).

      

1912 Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state. 1912 In Groton, Connecticut, the first diesel-powered submarine is commissioned. 1918 The Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian calendar (on 1 February according to the Julian calendar). 1919 The Polish-Soviet War begins. 1920 The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago, Illinois. 1924 The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is founded. 1929 Saint Valentine's Day massacre: Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone's gang, are murdered in Chicago, Illinois.

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1942 Battle of Pasir Panjang contributes to the fall of Singapore. 1943 World War II: Rostov-on-Don, Russia is liberated. 1943 World War II: Tunisia Campaign General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim's Fifth Panzer Army launches a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.

 

1944 World War II: Anti-Japanese revolt on Java. 1945 World War II: On the first day of the bombing of Dresden, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces begin fire-bombing Dresden, the capital of theGerman state of Saxony.

1945 World War II: Prague is bombed probably due to a mistake in the orientation of the pilots bombing Dresden.

1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, officially starting the U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relationship.

    

1945 World War II: Mostar is liberated by Yugoslav partisans. 1946 The Bank of England is nationalized. 1949 The Knesset (Israeli parliament) convenes for the first time. 1949 The Asbestos Strike begins in Canada. The strike marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. 1950 Chinese Civil War: The National Revolutionary Army instigates the unsuccessful Battle of Tianquan against the People's Liberation Army.

1956 The XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union begins in Moscow. On the last night of the meeting, Premier Nikita Khrushchev condemns Joseph Stalin's crimes in a secret speech.

1961 Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.

  

1962 First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House. 1966 Australian currency is decimalised. 1979 In Kabul, Setami Milli militants kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.

 

1981 Stardust Disaster: A fire in a Dublin nightclub kills 48 people 1983 United American Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee collapses. Its president, Jake Butcher is later convicted of fraud.

1989 Union Carbide agrees to pay $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster.

1989 Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie.

1990 92 people are killed aboard Indian Airlines Flight 605 at Bangalore, India.

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1998 An oil tanker train collides with a freight train in Yaound, Cameroon, spilling fuel oil. One person scavenging the oil drops a lit cigarette, creating a massive explosion which kills 120.

2000 The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.

2004 In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapses, killing more than 25 people, and wounding more than 100 others.

2005 Lebanese self-made billionaire and business tycoon Rafik Hariri killed, along with 21 others, when explosives, equivalent of around 1,000 kg of TNT, are detonated as hismotorcade drove near the St. George Hotel in Beirut.

2005 Seven people are killed and 151 wounded in a series of bombings by suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants that hit the Philippines' Makati financial district in Metro Manila,Davao City, and General Santos City.

2008 Northern Illinois University shooting: a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall of the DeKalb County, Illinois university resulting in 6 fatalities (including gunman) and 18 injuries.

2011 The 2011 Bahraini uprising commenced.

FEBRUARY 15
  
590 Khosrau II is crowned king of Persia. 1113 Pope Paschal II issued a bull sanctioning the establishment of the Order of Hospitallers. 1493 While on board the Nia, Christopher Columbus writes an open letter (widely distributed upon his return to Portugal) describing his discoveries and the unexpected items he came across in the New World.

     

1637 Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor. 1764 The city of St. Louis, Missouri is established. 1804 The Serbian revolution begins. 1835 The first constitutional law in modern Serbia is adopted. 1862 American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant attacks Fort Donelson, Tennessee. 1879 Women's rights: American President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

1898 Spanish-American War: The USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana harbor in Cuba, killing more than 260. This event leads the United States to declare war on Spain.

 

1906 The British Labour Party is organised. 1909 The Flores Theater fire in Acapulco, Mexico kills 250.

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1933 In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but instead shoots Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds on March 6, 1933.

1942 World War II: The Fall of Singapore. Following an assault by Japanese forces, the British General Arthur Percival surrenders. About 80,000 Indian, United Kingdom andAustralian soldiers become prisoners of war, the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. The Sook Ching massacre begins.

 

1944 World War II: The assault on Monte Cassino, Italy, begins. 1946 ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

1949 Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

1952 King George VI is buried in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. 1954 Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska.

1961 Sabena Flight 548 crashes in Belgium, killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team, several coaches and family members.

1965 A new red-and-white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner.

   

1970 A Dominican DC-9 crashes into the sea during takeoff from Santo Domingo, killing 102. 1971 The decimalisation of British coinage is completed on Decimal Day. 1972 Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time. 1972 Jos Mara Velasco Ibarra, serving as President of Ecuador for the fifth time, is overthrown by the military for the fourth time.

   

1976 The 1976 Constitution of Cuba is adopted by national referendum. 1979 Don Dunstan resigns as Premier of South Australia, ending a decade of sweeping social liberalisation. 1982 The drilling rig Ocean Ranger sinks during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing 84 workers. 1989 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.

1991 The Visegrd Agreement, establishing cooperation to move toward free-market systems, is signed by the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.

 

1994 Standard of the President of Russia is established. 1996 At the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China, a Long March 3 rocket, carrying an Intelsat 708, crashes into a rural village after liftoff, killing many people.

1999 Abdullah calan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, is arrested in Kenya.

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2000 Indian Point II nuclear power plant in New York State vents a small amount of radioactive steam when a steam generator fails.

 

2001 First draft of the complete human genome is published in Nature. 2003 Protests against the Iraq war take place in over 600 cities worldwide. It is estimated that between 8 million to 30 million people participate, making this the largest peace demonstration in history.

FEBRUARY 16

116 Emperor Trajan sends laureatae to the Roman Senate at Rome on account of his victories and being conqueror of Parthia.

1249 Andrew of Longjumeau is dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to meet with Mongol Khagan of the Mongol Empire.

       

1646 Battle of Torrington, Devon the last major battle of the first English Civil War. 1742 Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes British Prime Minister. 1804 First Barbary War: Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia. 1852 Studebaker Brothers wagon company precursor of the automobile manufacture is established. 1862 American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant captures Fort Donelson, Tennessee. 1866 Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington becomes British Secretary of State for War. 1899 Knattspyrnuflag Reykjavkur Iceland's first football club is founded. 1918 The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopts the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state.

    

1923 Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. 1934 The Austrian Civil War ends with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republican Schutzbund. 1936 Elections bring the Popular Front to power in Spain. 1937 Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon. 1940 World War II: Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. 299 British prisoners are freed.

  

1943 World War II: Red Army troops re-enter Kharkov. 1945 World War II: American forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines. 1957 The "Toddlers' Truce", a controversial television close down between 6.00pm and 7.00pm is abolished in the United Kingdom.

 

1959 Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1. 1960 The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

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1961 Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched. 1961 The DuSable Museum of African American History is chartered. 1962 Flooding in the coastal areas of West Germany kills 315 and destroys the homes of about 60,000 people. 1968 In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service. 1978 The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois). 1983 The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia kill 75. 1985 Hezbollah is founded. 1986 The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. 1987 The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed "Ivan the Terrible" in Treblinka extermination camp, starts in Jerusalem.

 

1991 Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermdez is assassinated in Managua. 1998 China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a road and residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan, killing all 196 aboard and six more on the ground.

1999 In Uzbekistan, a bomb explodes and gunfire is heard at the government headquarters in an apparent assassination attempt against President Islom Karimov.

1999 Across Europe, Kurdish rebels take over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrests one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah calan.

 

2005 The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia. 2005 The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004-2005 regular season and playoffs, becoming the first major sports league in North America to do so over a labor dispute.

2006 The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

FEBRUARY 17

364 Emperor Jovian dies after a reign of eight months. He is found dead in his tent at Tyana (Asia Minor) en route back to Constantinople in suspicious circumstances.

 

1370 Northern Crusades: Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Teutonic Knights meet in the Battle of Rudau. 1500 Duke Friedrich and Duke Johann attempt to subdue the peasantry of Dithmarschen, Denmark, in the Battle of Hemmingstedt.

  

1600 The philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned alive at Campo de' Fiori in Rome for heresy. 1621 Myles Standish is appointed as first commander of Plymouth colony. 1753 In Sweden February 17 is followed by March 1 as the country moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

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1801 An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

     

1809 Miami University is chartered by the State of Ohio. 1814 War of the Sixth Coalition: The Battle of Mormans. 1819 The United States House of Representatives passes the Missouri Compromise for the first time. 1838 Weenen massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulus. 1854 The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State. 1864 American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

1865 American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina, is burned as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.

1871 The victorious Prussian Army parades though Paris, France after the end of the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

 

1904 Madama Butterfly receives its premire at La Scala in Milan. 1913 The Armory Show opens in New York City, displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.

1924 In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller sets a new world record in the 100 meters freestyle swimming competition with a time of 57.4 seconds.

   

1933 Newsweek magazine is published for the first time. 1933 The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States. 1944 World War II: The Battle of Eniwetok Atoll begins. The battle ends in an American victory on February 22. 1944 World War II: Operation Hailstone begins. U.S. naval air, surface, and submarine attack against Truk (Chuuk), Japan's main base in the central Pacific, in support of theEniwetok invasion.

 

1959 Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2 The first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud-cover distribution. 1964 In Wesberry v. Sanders the Supreme Court of the United States rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.

1964 Gabonese president Leon M'ba is toppled by a coup and his rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, is installed in his place.

1965 Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the "Sea of Tranquility" would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

  

1968 In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens. 1972 Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceed those of the Ford Model-T. 1974 Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzes the White House in a stolen helicopter.

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1978 The Troubles: The Provisional IRA detonates an incendiary bomb at the La Mon restaurant, near Belfast, killing 12 and seriously injuring 30.

  

1979 The Sino-Vietnamese War begins. 1995 The Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador ends on a cease-fire brokered by the UN. 1996 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

1996 NASA's Discovery Program begins as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifts off on the first mission ever to orbit and land on an asteroid, 433 Eros.

    

1998 Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian troops kill 7090 Azerbaijani civilians in the village of Qarada l . 2003 The London Congestion Charge scheme begins. 2006 A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines; the official death toll is set at 1,126. 2008 Kosovo declares independence. 2011 Libyan protests begin

FEBRUARY 18

1229 The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.

  

1268 The Livonian Brothers of the Sword are defeated by Dovmont of Pskov in the Battle of Rakvere. 1332 Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces. 1478 George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is executed in private at the Tower of London.

1637 Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important AngloDutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.

1745 The city of Surakarta, Central Java is founded on the banks of Bengawan Solo River, and becomes the capital of the Kingdom of Surakarta.

1781 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: Captain Thomas Shirley opened his expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa (present-day Ghana).

   

1797 French Revolutionary Wars: Sir Ralph Abercromby and a fleet of 18 British warships invade Trinidad. 1814 Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Montereau. 1846 Beginning of the Galician peasant revolt. 1861 In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

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1861 With the Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.

1865 Union forces under Major General William T. Sherman set the South Carolina State House on fire during the burning of Columbia.

 

1873 Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski is executed by hanging in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities. 1878 John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

1900 Second Boer War: Imperial forces suffer their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday, the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg.

 

1906 Edouard de Laveleye forms the Belgian Olympic Committee in Brussels. 1911 The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-yearold pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.

1913 Pedro Lascurin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.

 

1930 While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto. 1930 Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.

1932 The Empire of Japan declares Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) independent from the Republic of China.

  

1943 The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement. 1943 Joseph Goebbels delivers his Sportpalast speech. 1946 Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Mumbai harbour, from where it would spread throughout British India and involve 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 sailors

 

1954 The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles, California. 1955 Operation Teapot: Teapot test shot "Wasp" is successfully detonated at the Nevada Test Site with a yield of 1.2 kilotons. Wasp is the first of fourteen shots of the Teapot series.

    

1957 Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is executed by the British colonial government. 1957 Walter James Bolton becomes the last person legally executed in New Zealand. 1965 The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1969 Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708 crashes into Mount Whitney killing all on board. 1970 The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

1972 The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628 invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

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1977 The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747. 1978 The first Ironman Triathlon competition takes place on the island of Oahu, won by Gordon Haller. 1979 Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history. 1983 Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle, Washington. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.

 

1991 The IRA explodes bombs in the early morning at Paddington station and Victoria station in London. 2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

2001 Seven-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt dies in an accident during the Daytona 500.

2001 Inter-ethnic violence between Dayaks and Madurese breaks out in Sampit, Indonesia, that will ultimately result in more than 500 deaths and 100,000 Madurese displaced from their homes.

 

2003 Nearly 200 people die in the Daegu subway fire in South Korea. 2004 Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Neyshabur in Iran when a runaway freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertilizer catches fire and explodes.

 

2007 Terrorist bombs explode on the Samjhauta Express in Panipat, Haryana, India, killing 68 people. 2010 Nigerien rebels attacked the presidential palace in Niamey and replaced President Mamadou Tandja with a ruling junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy.

FEBRUARY 19

197 Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.

 

356 Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire. 1594 Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother Catherine Jagellonica of Poland, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa is crowned King of Sweden, succeeding his father John III of Sweden.

1600 The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

1674 England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.

1807 In Alabama, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert.

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1819 British explorer William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands, and claims them in the name of King George III.

1846 In Austin, Texas the newly formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following Texas' annexation by the United States.

 

1847 The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party. 1859 Daniel E. Sickles, a New York Congressman, is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity. This is the 1st time this defense is successfully used in the United States.

   

1861 Serfdom is abolished in Russia. 1876 Founding of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA) in Philadelphia. 1878 Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. 1884 More than sixty tornadoes strike the Southern United States, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.

1915 World War I: The first naval attack on the Dardanelles begins when a strong Anglo-French task force bombards Ottoman artillery along the coast of Gallipoli.

 

1921 Rez Sh h takes control of Tehran during a successful coup 1937 Yekatit 12: During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Eritrean nationalists attempt to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades. Italian authorities exact vicious reprisals on the population.

1942 World War II: nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin killing 243 people.

1942 World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internmentcamps.

      

1943 World War II: Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia begins. 1945 World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima about 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima. 1949 Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University. 1953 Censorship: Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States. 1959 The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is then formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960. 1960 China successfully launches the T-7, its first sounding rocket. 1963 The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique reawakens the Feminist Movement in the United States as women's organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.

 

1972 The Asama-Sans hostage standoff begins in Japan. 1976 Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4417

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1978 Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.

  

1985 Artificial heart recipient William J. Schroeder becomes the first such patient to leave hospital. 1985 Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 crashes into Mount Oiz in Spain, killing 148. 1986 Akkaraipattu massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 80 Tamil farm workers the eastern province of Sri Lanka.

1986 The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for 10 of those years.

  

1999 President Bill Clinton issues a posthumous pardon for U.S. Army Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper. 2001 The Oklahoma City bombing museum is dedicated at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. 2002 NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

2006 A methane explosion in coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners.

FEBRUARY 20

1339 The Milanese army and the St. George's (San Giorgio) Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti clashed in the Battle of Parabiago.

  

1472 Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark. 1547 Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. 1685 Ren-Robert Cavelier establishes Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.

1792 The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.

        

1798 Louis Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power. 1810 Andreas Hofer, Tirolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, is executed. 1813 Manuel Belgrano defeats the royalist army of Po de Tristn during the Battle of Salta. 1835 Concepcin, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Olustee occurs the largest battle fought in Florida during the war. 1872 In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens. 1873 The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco, California. 1877 Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its premire performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. 1901 The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.

102

 

1909 Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro. 1913 King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.

1931 The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.

1933 The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution that will end Prohibition in the United States.

1933 Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.

    

1935 Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica. 1942 Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace. 1943 American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. 1943 The Parcutin volcano begins to form in Parcutin, Mexico. 1943 The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.

1944 World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.

 

1944 World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Island. 1952 Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.

1959 The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.

1962 Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes.

1965 Ranger 8 crashes into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.

  

1978 The last Order of Victory is bestowed upon Leonid Brezhnev. 1987 Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, a bomb explodes in a computer store. 1988 The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

 

1989 An IRA bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England 1991 A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.

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1998 American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2003 During a Great White concert in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a pyrotechnics display sets the club ablaze, killing 100 and injuring over 200 others.

2005 Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

2009 Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en-route to the national airforce headquarters are shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in akamikaze style attack.

2010 In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.

FEBRUARY 21
   
362 Athanasius returns to Alexandria. 1245 Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, is granted resignation after confessing to torture and forgery. 1440 The Prussian Confederation is formed. 1543 Battle of Wayna Daga A combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeats a Muslim army led by Ahmed Gragn.

1613 Mikhail I is elected unanimously as Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

          

1804 The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales. 1842 John Greenough is granted the first U.S. patent for the sewing machine. 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Valverde is fought near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory. 1874 The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first edition. 1878 The first telephone book is issued in New Haven, Connecticut. 1885 The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated. 1913 Ioannina is incorporated into the Greek state after the Balkan Wars. 1916 World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins. 1918 The last Carolina Parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. 1919 Kurt Eisner, German socialist, is assassinated. His death results in the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament and government fleeing Munich,Germany.

 

1921 Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopts the country's first constitution. 1925 The New Yorker publishes its first issue.

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1937 Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman's Arrowbile. 1937 The League of Nations bans foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War. 1945 World War II: Japanese Kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier Bismarck Sea and damage the Saratoga. 1947 In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

 

1948 NASCAR is incorporated. 1952 The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to "set the people free".

1958 The Peace symbol, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed byGerald Holtom.

 

1965 Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam. 1970 Swissair Flight 330: A mid-air bomb explosion and subsequent crash kills 38 passengers and nine crew members near Zrich, Switzerland.

     

1971 The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna. 1972 President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations. 1972 The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon. 1973 Over the Sinai Desert, Israeli fighter aircraft shoot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 jet killing 108. 1974 The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt. 1975 Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.

1995 Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2004 The first European political party organization, the European Greens, is established in Rome.

FEBRUARY 22
       
1371 Robert II becomes King of Scotland, beginning the Stuart dynasty. 1495 King Charles VIII of France enters Naples to claim the city's throne. 1632 Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published. 1744 War of the Austrian Succession: The Battle of Toulon begins. 1797 The Last Invasion of Britain begins near Fishguard, Wales. 1819 By the Adams-Ons Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars. 1847 Mexican-American War: The Battle of Buena Vista 5,000 American troops defeat 15,000 Mexicans. 1853 Washington University in St. Louis is founded as Eliot Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.

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1855 The Pennsylvania State University is founded in State College, Pennsylvania (as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania)

 

1856 The Republican Party opens its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1862 Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861.

1872 The Prohibition Party holds its first national convention in Columbus, Ohio, nominating James Black as its presidential nominee.

  

1879 In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of 5 and dime Woolworth stores. 1882 The Serbian kingdom is refounded. 1889 President Grover Cleveland signs a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.

1904 The United Kingdom sells a meteorological station on the South Orkney Islands to Argentina, the islands are subsequently claimed by the United Kingdom in 1908.

1909 The sixteen battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut, return to the United States after a voyage around the world.

 

1915 World War I: Germany institutes unrestricted submarine warfare. 1924 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.

1942 World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as the Japanese victory becomes inevitable.

 

1943 World War II: Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany. 1944 World War II: American aircraft mistakenly bomb the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.

    

1948 Communist revolution in Czechoslovakia. 1957 Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam survives a communist shooting assassination attempt in Ban Me Thuot. 1958 Egypt and Syria join to form the United Arab Republic. 1959 Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500. 1972 The Official Irish Republican Army detonates a car bomb at Aldershot barracks, killing seven and injuring nineteen others.

1973 Cold War: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China, the two countries agree to establish liaison offices.

1974 The Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit begins in Lahore, Pakistan. Thirty-seven countries attend and twenty-two heads of state and government participate. It also recognizes Bangladesh.

1974 Samuel Byck tries and fails to assassinate U.S. President Richard Nixon.

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1979 Independence of Saint Lucia from the United Kingdom. 1980 Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3.

1983 The notorious Broadway flop Moose Murders opens and closes on the same night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

 

1986 Start of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines. 1994 Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.

   

1995 The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, is declassified. 1997 In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned. 2002 Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush. 2006 At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery, stealing 53m (about $92.5 million or 78 million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

FEBRUARY 23

303 Roman Emperor Diocletian orders the destruction of the Christian church in Nicomedia, beginning eight years of Diocletianic Persecution.

1455 Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.

  

1660 Charles XI becomes King of Sweden. 1739 Richard Palmer is identified at York Castle, by his former schoolteacher, as the outlaw Dick Turpin. 1778 American Revolution: Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to help to train the Continental Army.

   

1820 Cato Street Conspiracy: A plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers is exposed. 1836 The Battle of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas. 1846 John Henry Newman leaves the Church of England and is received into the Roman Catholic Church. 1847 Mexican-American War: Battle of Buena Vista In Mexico, American troops under General Zachary Taylor defeat Mexican General Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna.

1848 The French Revolution of 1848, which would lead to the establishment of the French Second Republic, begins.

 

1854 The official independence of the Orange Free State is declared. 1861 President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington, D.C., after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.

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1870 In the United States, post-Civil War military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union. 1883 Alabama becomes the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law. 1886 Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum, after several years of intensive work. He was assisted in this project by his older sister Julia Brainerd Hall.

  

1887 The French Riviera is hit by a large earthquake, killing around 2,000. 1896 The Tootsie Roll is invented. 1898 mile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse", a letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

  

1900 In South Africa, Boers and British troops fight in the Battle of Hart's Hill. 1903 Cuba leases Guantnamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity". 1905 Chicago attorney Paul Harris and three other businessmen meet for lunch to form the Rotary Club, the world's first service club.

  

1909 The AEA Silver Dart makes the first powered flight in Canada and the British Empire. 1917 First demonstrations in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The beginning of the February Revolution. 1918 First victory of Red Army over the Kaiser's German troops near Narva and Pskov. In honor of this victory, the date is celebrated from 1923 onward as "Red Army Day"; it is renamed Defender of the Fatherland Day after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and is colloquially known as "Men's Day".

1927 The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) begins to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the United States.

1927 German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his uncertainty principle for the first time.

   

1934 Leopold III becomes King of Belgium. 1941 Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg. 1942 World War II: Japanese submarines fire artillery shells at the California coastline near Santa Barbara. 1943 A fire breaks out at St. Joseph's Orphanage, County Cavan, Ireland, killing 36 people (35 of whom are children).

1944 The Soviet Union begins the forced deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people from the North Caucasus to Central Asia.

1945 World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a commonly forgotten U.S. Navy Corpsman, reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.

1945 World War II: The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, free the captives of the Los Baos internment camp.

1945 World War II: The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by American forces.

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1945 World War II: Capitulation of German garrison in Pozna . The city is liberated by Soviet and Polish forces. 1945 World War II: The German town of Pforzheim is completely destroyed in a raid by 379 British bombers. 1947 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is founded. 1954 The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh. 1955 First meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). 1958 Cuban rebels kidnap 5-time world driving champion Juan Manuel Fangio. 1966 In Syria, Baath party member Salah Jadid leads an intra-party military coup that replaces the previous government of General Amin Hafiz, also a Baathist.

 

1974 The Symbionese Liberation Army demands $4 million more to release kidnap victim Patty Hearst. 1980 Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini states that Iran's parliament will decide the fate of the American embassy hostages.

 

1981 In Spain, Antonio Tejero attempts a coup d'tat by capturing the Spanish Congress of Deputies. 1983 The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.

 

1987 Supernova 1987a is seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud. 1991 Gulf War: Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, thus beginning the ground phase of the war.

1991 In Thailand, General Sunthorn Kongsompong leads a bloodless coup d'tat, deposing Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan.

  

1997 A small fire occurs in the Russian Space station, Mir. 1998 In the United States, tornadoes in central Florida destroy or damage 2,600 structures and kill 42. 1998 Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and "Crusaders"; the latter term is commonly interpreted to refer to the people of Europe and the United States.

  

1999 Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah calan is charged with treason in Ankara, Turkey. 1999 An avalanche destroys the Austrian village of Galtr, killing 31. 2005 The controversial French law on colonialism is passed, requiring teachers to teach the "positive values of colonialism". After public outcry, it is repealed at the beginning of2006.

2007 A train derails on an evening express service near Grayrigg, Cumbria, England, killing one person and injuring 22. This results in hundreds of points being checked over the UK after a few similar accidents.

 

2008 A United States Air Force B-2 Spirit crashes on Guam. It is the first operational loss of a B-2. 2010 Unknown criminals pour more than 2.5 million liters of diesel oil and other hydrocarbons into the river Lambro, in Northern Italy, causing an environmental disaster.

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FEBRUARY 24

303 Diocletian, Roman Emperor, publishes his edict that begins the persecution of Christians in his portion of the Empire.

    

1303 Battle of Roslin, of the First War of Scottish Independence. 1387 King Charles III of Naples and Hungary is assassinated at Buda. 1538 Treaty of Nagyvarad between Ferdinand I and John Zpolya. 1582 Pope Gregory XIII announces the Gregorian calendar. 1607 L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its premire performance.

1711 The London premire of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage.

    

1803 In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the principle of judicial review. 1809 London's Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute. 1822 The 1st Swaminarayan temple in the world, Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Ahmedabad, is inaugurated. 1826 The signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo marks the end of the First Burmese War. 1831 The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the first removal treaty in accordance with the Indian Removal Act, is proclaimed. The Choctaws inMississippi cede land east of the river in exchange for payment and land in the West.

  

1848 King Louis-Philippe of France abdicates the throne. 1863 Arizona is organized as a United States territory. 1868 Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitted in the Senate.

1875 The SS Gothenburg hits the Great Barrier Reef and sinks off the Australian east coast, killing approximately 100, including a number of high profile civil servants and dignitaries.

 

1881 China and Russia sign the Sino-Russian Ili Treaty. 1895 Revolution breaks out in Baire, a town near Santiago de Cuba, beginning the second war for Cuban independence, that ends with the Spanish-American War in 1898.

1917 World War I: The U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom is given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, andArizona to Mexico if Mexico declares war on the United States.

   

1918 Estonian Declaration of Independence. 1920 The Nazi Party is founded. 1944 Merrill's Marauders: The Marauders begin their 1,000 mile journey through Japanese occupied Burma. 1945 Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree.

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1968 Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnam recaptures Hu. 1971 The All India Forward Bloc holds an emergency central committee meeting after its chairman, Hemantha Kumar Bose, is killed 3 days earlier. P.K. Mookiah Thevar is appointed as the new chairman.

 

1976 Cuba: national Constitution is proclaimed. 1980 The United States Olympic Hockey team completes their Miracle on Ice by defeating Finland 4-2 to win the gold medal.

1981 An earthquake registering 6.7 on the Richter scale hits Athens, killing 16 people and destroying buildings in several towns west of the city.

1983 A special commission of the U.S. Congress releases a report that condemns the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.

1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offers a USD $3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.

1989 United Airlines Flight 811, bound for New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii, rips open during flight, sucking 9 passengers out of the business-class section.

1996 The last occurrence of February 24 as a leap day in the European Union and for the Roman Catholic Church.

1999 The State of Arizona executes Karl LaGrand, a German national convicted of murder during a botched bank robbery, in spite of Germany's legal action to attempt to save him.

1999 A China Southern Airlines Tupolev TU-154 airliner crashes on approach to Wenzhou airport in eastern the People's Republic of China, killing 61.

2006 Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares Proclamation 1017 placing the country in a state of emergency in attempt to subdue a possible military coup.

2007 Japan launches its fourth spy satellite, stepping up its ability to monitor potential threats such as North Korea.

 

2008 Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba after nearly fifty years. 2011 Final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery (OV-103).

FEBRUARY 25
    
138 The Emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor. 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England. 1797 Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000-1500 soldiers surrender after the Last Invasion of Britain. 1836 Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for the Colt revolver. 1843 Provisional Cession of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands established by Lord George Paulet.

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1866 Miners in Calaveras County, California, discover what is now called the Calaveras Skull, human remains that supposedly indicated that man,mastodons, and elephants had co-existed.

1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.

 

1901 J. P. Morgan incorporates the United States Steel Corporation. 1912 Marie-Adlade, the eldest of six daughters of Guillaume IV, becomes the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

  

1919 Oregon places a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax. 1921 Tbilisi, capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, is occupied by Bolshevist Russia. 1928 Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

1932 Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship by naturalization, which allows him to run in the 1932 election for Reichsprsident.

 

1933 The USS Ranger is launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier. 1941 February Strike: In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike is declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures instituted by the Nazis.

  

1945 World War II: Turkey declares war on Germany. 1947 The State of Prussia ceases to exist. 1948 The Communist Party takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.

  

1951 The first Pan American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1954 Gamal Abdul Nasser is made premier of Egypt. 1956 In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.

1964 Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) beats Sonny Liston in the Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston world heavyweight boxing title fight. This is Clay's 20th pro boxing fight and first heavyweight title.

1964 Eastern Air Lines Flight 304 crashes in Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain, killing all 51 passengers and 7 crew.

1964 North Korean Prime Minister Kim Il-sung calls for the removal of feudalistic land ownership aimed at turning all cooperative farms into state-run ones.

1964 U.S. Air Force launches a satellite employing a US Air Force Atlas/Agena combination from Point Arguello (LC-2-3) in California and from Cape Kennedy in Florida.

1968 Vietnam War: 135 unarmed citizens of Ha My village in South Vietnam's Qu ng Nam Province are killed and buried en masse by South Korean troops in what would come to be known as the Ha My massacre.

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1971 The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online.

1980 The Suriname government is overthrown by a military coup which is initiated with the bombing of the police station from an army ship off the coast of the nation's capital,Paramaribo

1986 People Power Revolution: President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the Philippines' first woman president.

1991 Gulf War: An Iraqi scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.

1992 Khojaly massacre: about 613 civilians are killed by Armenian armed forces during the conflict in NagornoKarabakh region of Azerbaijan

1994 Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinianworshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.

2009 BDR massacre in Pilkhana, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 74 people are killed, including more than 50 army officials, by Bangladeshi Border Guards inside its headquarters.

2011 In the Irish general election, the Fianna Fil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government since the formation of the Irish state in 1921.

FEBRUARY 26
  
747 BCE Epoch (origin) of Ptolemy's Nabonassar Era. 364 Valentinian I is proclaimed Roman Emperor. 1266 Battle of Benevento: An army led by Charles, Count of Anjou, defeats a combined German and Sicilian force led by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred is killed in the battle and Pope Clement IV invests Charles as king of Sicily and Naples.

1658 Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (16551661), the King of DenmarkNorway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.

  

1794 The first Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen burns down. 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba. 1876 Japan and Korea sign a treaty granting Japanese citizens extraterritoriality rights, opening three ports to Japanese trade, and ending Korea's status as a tributary state of Qing Dynasty China.

1909 Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, is first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

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1917 The Original Dixieland Jass Band records the first jazz record, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York.

1919 An act of the U.S. Congress establishes most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park (see Grand Canyon National Park).

1920 The first German Expressionist film and early horror movie, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, premired in Berlin.

 

1935 Adolf Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to be re-formed, violating the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. 1935 Robert Watson-Watt carries out a demonstration near Daventry which leads directly to the development of RADAR in the United Kingdom.

1936 In the February 26 Incident, young Japanese military officers attempt to stage a coup against the government.

  

1946 Finnish observers report the first of many thousands of sightings of ghost rockets. 1952 Vincent Massey is sworn in as the first Canadian-born Governor-General of Canada. 1960 A New York bound Alitalia airliner crashed into a cemetery at Shannon, Ireland, shortly after takeoff, killing 34 of the 52 persons on board.

  

1961 Hassan II becomes King of Morocco. 1966 Apollo Program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket 1966 Vietnam War: The ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army massacres 380 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam.

   

1971 U.N. Secretary General U Thant signs United Nations proclamation of the vernal equinox as Earth Day. 1972 The Buffalo Creek Flood caused by a burst dam kills 125 in West Virginia. 1980 Egypt and Israel establish full diplomatic relations. 1987 Iran-Contra affair: The Tower Commission rebukes President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.

 

1991 Gulf War: United States Army forces capture the town of Al Busayyah. 1992 Nagorno-Karabakh War: Khojaly Massacre: Armenian armed forces open fire on Azeri civilians at a military post outside the town of Khojaly leaving hundreds dead.

1993 World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.

1995 The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking institute, Barings Bank, collapses after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts.

2004 Republic of Macedonia President Boris Trajkovski is killed in a plane crash near Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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FEBRUARY 27

1560 The Treaty of Berwick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Congregation of Scotland.

 

1594 Henry IV is crowned King of France. 1617 Sweden and Russia sign the Treaty of Stolbovo, ending the Ingrian War and shutting Russia out of the Baltic Sea.

1626 Yuan Chonghuan is appointed Governor of Liaodong, after he led the Chinese into a great victory against the Manchurians under Nurhaci.

 

1700 The island of New Britain is discovered. 1801 Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.

 

1812 Manuel Belgrano raises the Flag of Argentina in the city of Rosario for the first time. 1812 Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.

 

1844 The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti. 1860 Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.

1861 Russian troops fire on a crowd in Warsaw protesting against Russian rule over Poland, killing five protesters.

  

1864 American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. 1870 The current flag of Japan is first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships. 1900 Second Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronje at theBattle of Paardeberg.

   

1900 The British Labour Party is founded. 1902 Second Boer War: Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant is executed in Pretoria. 1921 The International Working Union of Socialist Parties is founded in Vienna. 1922 A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

 

1933 Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire. 1939 United States labor law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes violate property owners' rights and are therefore illegal.

1940 Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14

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1942 World War II: During the Battle of the Java Sea, an allied strike force is defeated by a Japanese task force in the Java Sea in the Dutch East Indies

  

1943 The Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana, explodes, killing 74 men. 1943 The Rosenstrasse protest starts in Berlin 1951 The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.

  

1955 Soviet Union regional elections, 1955. 1961 The first congress of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation is inaugurated. 1963 The Dominican Republic receives its first democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, since the end of the dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo.

   

1964 The government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over. 1971 Doctors in the first Dutch abortion clinic (the Mildredhuis in Arnhem) start to perform aborti provocati. 1973 The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota. 1976 The formerly Spanish territory of Western Sahara, under the auspices of the Polisario Front declares independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

   

1986 The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis. 1989 Venezuela is rocked by the Caracazo riots. 1991 Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated". 2002 Ryanair Flight 296 catches fire at London Stansted Airport. Subsequent investigations criticize Ryanair's handling of the evacuation.

  

2002 Godhra train burning: a Muslim mob kills 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya; 2004 A bombing of a Superferry by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines' worst terrorist attack kills 116. 2004 The initial version of the John Jay Report, with details about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States, is released.

 

2007 The Chinese Correction: the Shanghai Stock Exchange falls 9%, the largest drop in 10 years. 2010 An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggered a tsunami which struck Hawaii shortly after.

FEBRUARY 28

202 BC coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han takes place, initiating four centuries of the Han Dynasty's rule over China

 

870 The Fourth Council of Constantinople closes. 1638 The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.

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1700 Today is followed by March 1 in Sweden, thus creating the Swedish calendar. 1710 In the Battle of Helsingborg, 14,000 Danish invaders under Jrgen Rantzau are decisively defeated by an equally sized Swedish force underMagnus Stenbock.

  

1784 John Wesley charters the Methodist Church. 1811 Cry of Asencio, begin of the Uruguayan War of Independence 1827 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

 

1838 Robert Nelson, leader of the Patriotes, proclaims the independence of Lower Canada (today Quebec) 1844 A gun on USS Princeton explodes while the boat is on a Potomac River cruise, killing eight people, including two United States Cabinetmembers.

1849 Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, 4 months 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

   

1854 The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. 1870 The Bulgarian Exarchate is established by decree of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz of the Ottoman Empire. 1883 The first vaudeville theater opens in Boston, Massachusetts. 1885 The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York State as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone. (American Bell would later merge with its subsidiary.)

1893 The USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, is launched.

  

1897 Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, is deposed by a French military force. 1900 The Second Boer War: The 118-day "Siege of Ladysmith" is lifted. 1914 The Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus is proclaimed in Gjirokastr, by the Greeks living in southern Albania.

    

1922 The United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. 1928 C.V. Raman discovers Raman effect. 1933 Gleichschaltung: The Reichstag Fire Decree is passed in Germany a day after the Reichstag fire. 1935 DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon. 1939 The erroneous word "dord" is discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.

1940 Basketball is televised for the first time (Fordham University vs. the University of Pittsburgh in Madison Square Garden).

1942 The heavy cruiser USS Houston is sunk in the Battle of Sunda Strait with 693 crew members killed, along with HMAS Perth which lost 375 men.

1947 228 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of 30,000 civilian lives.

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1953 James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature (pub. April 2).

 

1954 The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public. 1958 A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork River. The driver and 26 children die in what remains the worst school bus accident in U.S. history.

 

1959 Discoverer 1, an American spy satellite that is the first object to achieve a polar orbit, is launched. 1972 Sino-American relations: The United States and People's Republic of China sign the Shanghai Communiqu.

  

1975 A major tube train crash at Moorgate station, London kills 43 people. 1980 Andalusia approves its statute of autonomy through a referendum. 1985 The Provisional Irish Republican Army carries out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers in the highest loss of life for the RUC on a single day.

  

1986 Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm. 1991 The first Gulf War ends. 1993 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh. Four BATF agents and five Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

  

1997 An earthquake of magnitude 6.1 in Armenia and Azerbaijan kills around 1,100 people 1997 An earthquake in northern Iran is responsible for about 3,000 deaths. 1997 The North Hollywood shootout takes place, resulting in the injury of 19 people and the deaths of both perpetrators.

1997 GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.

1998 First flight of RQ-4 Global Hawk, the first unmanned aerial vehicle certified to file its own flight plans and fly regularly in U.S. civilian airspace.

 

1998 Kosovo War: Serbian police begin the offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo. 2001 The Nisqually Earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale hits the Nisqually Valley and the Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia area of the U.S. state of Washington.

2001 Six passengers and four railway staff are killed and a further 82 people suffer serious injuries in the Selby rail crash.

2004 Over 1 million Taiwanese participating in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally form a 500-kilometre (300-mile) long human chain to commemorate the 228 Incident in 1947

2005 A suicide bombing at a police recruiting centre in Al Hillah, Iraq kills 127.

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MARCH
MARCH 1

752 BC Romulus, legendary first king of Rome, celebrates the first Roman triumph after his victory over the Caeninenses, following The Rape of the Sabine Women.

509 BC Publius Valerius Publicola, Roman consul, celebrates the first triumph of the Roman Republic after his victory over the deposed king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus at the Battle of Silva Arsia.

86 BC Lucius Cornelius Sulla, at the head of a Roman Republic army, enters Athens, removing the tyrant Aristion who was supported by troops ofMithridates VI of Pontus.

 

293 Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus as Caesar to Maximian. 317 Crispus and Constantine II, sons of Roman Emperor Constantine I, and Licinius Iunior, son of Emperor Licinius, are made Caesares

 

350 Vetranio is asked by Constantina, sister of Constantius II, to proclaim himself Caesar. 1457 The Unitas Fratrum is established in the village of Kunvald, on the Bohemian-Moravian borderland. It is to date the second oldest Protestant denomination.

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1562 23 Huguenots are massacred by Catholics in Wassy, France, marking the start of the French Wars of Religion.

  

1565 The city of Rio de Janeiro is founded. 1593 The Uppsala Synod is summoned to confirm the exact forms of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. 1628 Writs issued in February by Charles I of England mandate that every county in England (not just seaport towns) pay ship tax by this date.

 

1633 Samuel de Champlain reclaims his role as commander of New France on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu. 1642 Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine), becomes the first incorporated city in the United States.

1692 Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

1700 Sweden introduces its own Swedish calendar, in an attempt to gradually merge into the Gregorian calendar, reverts to the Julian calendar on this date in 1712, and introduces the Gregorian Calendar on this date in 1753.

      

1781 The Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation. 1790 The first United States census is authorized. 1803 Ohio is admitted as the 17th U.S. state. 1805 Justice Samuel Chase is acquitted at the end of his impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate. 1811 Leaders of the Mameluke dynasty are killed by Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali. 1815 Napoleon returns to France from his banishment on Elba. 1836 A convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas, to deliberate independence from Mexico.

   

1845 President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas. 1847 The state of Michigan formally abolishes capital punishment. 1852 Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 1854 German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears; two years later his remains are found in a canal near Charlottenburg.

1867 Nebraska becomes the 37th U.S. state; Lancaster, Nebraska is renamed Lincoln and becomes the state capital.

1870 Marshal F.S. Lpez dies during the Battle of Cerro Cor thus marking the end of the War of the Triple Alliance.

  

1872 Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park. 1873 E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York begins production of the first practical typewriter. 1886 The Anglo-Chinese School, Singapore is founded by Bishop William Oldham.

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1893 Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri. 1896 Battle of Adowa: an Ethiopian army defeats an outnumbered Italian force, ending the First ItaloEthiopian War.

 

1896 Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity. 1910 The worst avalanche in United States history buries a Great Northern Railway train in northeastern King County, Washington, killing 96 people.

    

1912 Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a moving airplane. 1914 The Republic of China joins the Universal Postal Union. 1917 The U.S. government releases the unencrypted text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public. 1919 March 1st Movement begins in Korea. 1921 The Australian cricket team captained by Warwick Armstrong becomes the first team to complete a whitewash of The Ashes, something that would not be repeated for 86 years.

  

1932 The son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, is kidnapped. 1936 The Hoover Dam is completed. 1936 A strike occurs aboard the S.S. California, leading to the demise of the International Seamen's Union and the creation of the National Maritime Union.

  

1939 A Japanese Imperial Army ammunition dump explodes at Hirakata, Osaka, Japan, killing 94. 1941 World War II: Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact, allying itself with the Axis powers. 1941 W47NV (now known as WSM-FM) begins operations in Nashville, Tennessee becoming the first FM radio station in the U.S..

  

1946 The Bank of England is nationalised. 1947 The International Monetary Fund begins financial operations. 1950 Cold War: Klaus Fuchs is convicted of spying for the Soviet Union by disclosing top secret atomic bomb data.

 

1953 Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses. He dies four days later. 1954 Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

 

1954 Puerto Rican nationalists attack the United States Capitol building, injuring five Representatives. 1956 The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organization.

 

1956 Formation of the National People's Army 1958 Samuel Alphonsus Stritch is appointed Pro-Prefect of the Propagation of Faith and thus becomes the first American member of the Roman Curia.

1961 President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

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1961 Uganda becomes self-governing and holds its first elections. 1962 American Airlines Flight 1 crashes on take off in New York. 1964 Villarrica Volcano begins a strombolian eruption causing lahars that destroy half of the town of Coaripe. 1966 Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.

 

1966 The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria. 1971 A bomb explodes in a men's room in the United States Capitol: the Weather Underground claims responsibility.

1971 President of Pakistan Yahya Khan indefinitely postpones the pending national assembly session, precipitating massive civil disobedience in East Pakistan.

 

1972 The Thai province of Yasothon is created after being split off from the Ubon Ratchathani province. 1973 Black September storms the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, resulting in the assassination of three Western hostages.

1974 Watergate scandal: Seven are indicted for their role in the Watergate break-in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

 

1981 Provisional Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begins his hunger strike in HM Prison Maze. 1989 The United States becomes a member of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

1990 Steve Jackson Games is raided by the United States Secret Service, prompting the later formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

 

1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina declares its independence from Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 1995 Prime Minister of Poland Waldemar Pawlak resigns from parliament and is replaced by ex-communist Jzef Oleksy.

    

1995 Yahoo! is incorporated. 2000 The Constitution of Finland is rewritten. 2000 Hans Blix assumes the position of Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC. 2002 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan. 2002 The Envisat environmental satellite successfully reaches an orbit 800 kilometers (500 miles) above the Earth on its 11th launch, carrying the heaviest payload to date at 8500 kilograms (9.5 tons).

 

2002 The peseta is discontinued as official currency of Spain and is replaced by the euro (). 2003 Management of the United States Customs Service and the United States Secret Service move to the United States Department of Homeland Security.

 

2003 The International Criminal Court holds its inaugural session in The Hague. 2004 Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum becomes President of Iraq.

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2006 English-language Wikipedia reaches its one millionth article, Jordanhill railway station. 2007 Tornadoes break out across the southern United States, killing at least 20; eight of the deaths are at a high school in Enterprise, Alabama.

2007 "Squatters" are evicted from Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Denmark, provoking the March 2007 Denmark Riots.

2008 The Armenian police clashed with peaceful opposition rally protesting against allegedly fraudulent presidential elections 2008 killing at least 10 people.

MARCH 2
   
986 Louis V becomes King of the Franks. 1127 Assassination of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders. 1444 Skanderbeg organizes a group of Albanian nobles to form the League of Lezh. 1476 Burgundian Wars: The Old Swiss Confederacy hands Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a major defeat in the Battle of Grandson in Canton of Neuchtel.

 

1717 The Loves of Mars and Venus is the first ballet performed in England. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Patriot militia units arrest the Royal Governor of Georgia James Wright and attempt to prevent capture of supply ships in the Battle of the Rice Boats.

  

1791 Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris. 1797 The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound banknotes. 1807 The U.S. Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, disallowing the importation of new slaves into the country.

1808 The inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is held in Edinburgh.

1811 Argentine War of Independence: A royalist fleet defeats a small flotilla of revolutionary ships in the Battle of San Nicols on the River Plate.

 

1815 Signing of the Kandyan Convention treaty by British invaders and the King of Sri Lanka. 1825 Roberto Cofres, one of the last successful Caribbean pirates, is defeated in combat and captured by authorities.

  

1836 Texas Revolution: Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico. 1855 Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia. 1861 Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia: Tsar Alexander II signs the emancipation reform into law, abolishing Russian serfdom.

1865 East Cape War: The Volkner Incident in New Zealand.

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1867 The U.S. Congress passes the first Reconstruction Act. 1877 U.S. presidential election, 1876: Just two days before inauguration, the U.S. Congress declares Rutherford B. Hayes the winner of the election even though Samuel J. Tildenhad won the popular vote on November 7, 1876.

 

1882 Queen Victoria narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by Roderick McLean in Windsor. 1888 The Convention of Constantinople is signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace.

1901 The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition of the withdrawal of American troops.

    

1903 In New York City the Martha Washington Hotel opens, becoming the first hotel exclusively for women. 1917 The enactment of the Jones-Shafroth Act grants Puerto Ricans United States citizenship. 1919 The first Communist International meets in Moscow. 1933 The film King Kong opens at New York's Radio City Music Hall. 1937 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signs a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel, leading to unionization of the United States steel industry.

    

1939 Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope and takes the name Pius XII. 1941 World War II: First German military units enter Bulgaria after it joined the Axis Pact. 1943 World War II: Battle of the Bismarck Sea United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships. 1946 Ho Chi Minh is elected the President of North Vietnam. 1949 Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

     

1949 The first automatic street light is installed in New Milford, Connecticut. 1953 The Academy Awards are first broadcast on television by NBC. 1955 King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicates the throne in favor of his father, King Norodom Suramarit. 1956 Morocco gains its independence from France. 1962 In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seizes power in a coup d'tat. 1962 Wilt Chamberlain sets the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association by scoring 100 points.

1965 The US and South Vietnamese Air Force begin Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

   

1969 In Toulouse, France, the first test flight of the Anglo-French Concorde is conducted. 1969 Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River. 1970 Rhodesia declares itself a republic, breaking its last links with the British crown. 1972 The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.

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1978 Czech Vladimr Remek becomes the first non-Russian or non-American to go into space, when he is launched aboard Soyuz 28.

1983 Compact Disc players and discs are released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had only been available in Japan before then.

1989 Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.

  

1990 Nelson Mandela is elected deputy President of the African National Congress. 1991 Battle at Rumaila Oil Field brings an end to the 1991 Gulf War. 1992 Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, San Marino, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan join the United Nations.

 

1995 Researchers at Fermilab announce the discovery of the top quark. 1998 Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

2002 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities).

2004 War in Iraq: Al-Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.

MARCH 3
   
1284 The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporates the Principality of Wales into England. 1575 Indian Mughal Emperor Akbar defeats Bengali army at the Battle of Tukaroi. 1585 The Olympic Theatre, designed by Andrea Palladio, is inaugurated in Vicenza. 1776 American Revolutionary War: The first amphibious landing of the United States Marine Corps begins the Battle of Nassau.

1779 American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army is routed at the Battle of Brier Creek near Savannah, Georgia.

     

1820 The U.S. Congress passes the Missouri Compromise. 1845 Florida is admitted as the 27th U.S. state. 1857 Second Opium War: France and the United Kingdom declare war on China. 1861 Alexander II of Russia signs the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing serfs. 1865 Opening of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the founding member of the HSBC Group. 1873 Censorship in the United States: The U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.

1875 Georges Bizet's opera Carmen receives its premire at the Opra Comique in Paris.

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1875 The first ever organized indoor game of ice hockey is played in Montreal, Canada as recorded in The Montreal Gazette.

1878 The Russo-Turkish War ends as Bulgaria regains its independence from Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of San Stefano; shortly afterCongress of Berlin stripped its status to an autonomous state of the Ottoman Empire.

 

1885 The American Telephone & Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York. 1904 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison's phonograph cylinder.

 

1905 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia agrees to create an elected assembly, the Duma. 1910 Rockefeller Foundation: J.D. Rockefeller Jr. announces his retirement from managing his businesses so that he can devote all his time to philanthropy.

 

1915 NACA, the predecessor of NASA, is founded. 1918 Germany, Austria and Russia sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending Russia's involvement in World War I, and leading to the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia,Lithuania and Poland.

 

1923 TIME magazine is published for the first time. 1924 The 1400-year-old Islamic caliphate is abolished when Caliph Abdul Mejid II of the Ottoman Empire is deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gives way to the reformedTurkey of Kemal Atatrk.

    

1924 The Free State of Fiume is annexed by Kingdom of Italy. 1931 The United States adopts The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem. 1938 Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia. 1939 In Mumbai, Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest at the autocratic rule in India. 1940 Five people are killed in an arson attack on the offices of the communist newspaper Norrskensflamman in Lule, Sweden.

1942 World War II: Ten Japanese warplanes raid the town of Broome, Western Australia, killing more than 100 people.

1943 World War II: In London, England, 173 people are killed in a crush while trying to enter an air-raid shelter at Bethnal Green tube station.

  

1944 The Order of Nakhimov and Order of Ushakov are instituted in USSR as the highest naval awards. 1945 World War II: American and Filipino troops recapture Manila in the Philippines. 1945 World War II: A former Armia Krajowa unit massacres at least 150 Ukrainian civilians in Paw okoma, Poland.

1951 Jackie Brenston, with Ike Turner and his band, records "Rocket 88", often cited as "the first rock and roll record", at Sam Phillips' recording studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

1953 A Canadian Pacific Airlines De Havilland Comet crashes in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 11.

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1958 Nuri as-Said becomes the prime minister of Iraq for the 14th time. 1969 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 to test the lunar module. 1972 Mohawk Airlines Flight 405 crashes as a result of a control malfunction and insufficient training in emergency procedures.

  

1974 Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashes at Ermenonville near Paris, France killing all 346 aboard. 1980 The USS Nautilus is decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. 1985 Arthur Scargill declares that the National Union of Mineworkers national executive voted to end the longest-running industrial dispute in Great Britain without any peace deal over pit closures.

1985 A magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck the Valparaso Region of Chile, killing 177 and leaving nearly a million people homeless.

 

1991 An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. 1991 In concurrent referenda, 74% of the population of Latvia votes for independence from the Soviet Union, and 83% in Estonia.

 

1991 United Airlines Flight 585 crashes on approach into Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing 25. 1997 The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction.

 

2002 Citizens of Switzerland narrowly vote in favor of their country becoming a member of the United Nations. 2004 Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival AmBev agree to merge in a $11.2 billion deal that forms InBev, the world's largest brewer.

2005 Mayerthorpe Incident: James Roszko murders four Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables during a drug bust at his property in Rochfort Bridge, Alberta, then commits suicide. It is the deadliest peace-time incident for the RCMP since 1885 and the North-West Rebellion.

 

2005 Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane non-stop around the world solo without refueling. 2009 The building of the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Kln (Historical Archives) in Cologne, Germany, collapses.

MARCH 4
  
51 Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth). 306 Martyrdom of Saint Adrian of Nicomedia. 852 Croatian Duke Trpimir I issues a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croats name in Croatian sources.

 

932 Translation of the relics of martyr Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Prince of the Czechs. 1152 Frederick I Barbarossa is elected King of the Germans.

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1238 The Battle of the Sit River is fought in the northern part of the present-day Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia between the Mongol Hordes of Batu Khan and the Russians under Yuri II of VladimirSuzdal during the Mongol invasion of Russia.

  

1351 Ramathibodi becomes King of Siam. 1386 W adys aw II Jagie o (Jogaila) is crowned King of Poland. 1461 Wars of the Roses in England: Lancastrian King Henry VI is deposed by his Yorkist cousin, who then becomes King Edward IV.

1493 Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal, aboard his ship Nia from his voyage to what is now The Bahamas and other islands in the Caribbean.

     

1519 Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and their wealth. 1628 The Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a Royal charter. 1665 English King Charles II declares war on the Netherlands marking the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. 1675 John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England. 1681 Charles II grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania. 1776 American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army fortifies Dorchester Heights with cannon, leading the British troops to abandon the Siege of Boston.

1789 In New York City, the first Congress of the United States meets, putting the United States Constitution into effect.

1790 France is divided into 83 dpartements, cutting across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on ownership of land by the nobility.

1791 A Constitutional Act is introduced by the British House of Commons in London which envisages the separation of Canada into Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada(Ontario).

  

1791 Vermont is admitted to the U.S. as the fourteenth state. 1794 The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed by the U.S. Congress. 1797 In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams is sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.

1804 Castle Hill Rebellion: Irish convicts rebel against British colonial authority in the Colony of New South Wales.

1814 Americans defeat the British at the Battle of Longwoods between London, Ontario and Thamesville, near present-day Wardsville, Ontario.

1848 Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia

 

1861 The first national flag of the Confederate States of America (the "Stars and Bars") is adopted. 1882 Britain's first electric trams run in east London.

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1890 The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet (520 m) long, is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later becomes King Edward VII.

1899 Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 metres (39 ft) wave that reaches up to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) inland, killing over 300.

 

1908 The Collinwood School Fire, Collinwood near Cleveland, Ohio, kills 174 people. 1909 U.S. President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution's Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State

 

1913 First Balkan War: The Greek army engages the Turks at Bizani, resulting in victory two days later. 1917 Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.

 

1918 The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic. 1918 The USS Cyclops (AC-4) departs from Barbados and is never seen again, presumably lost with all hands in the Bermuda Triangle.

1925 Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio.

1933 Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet.

1933 The Parliament of Austria is suspended because of a quibble over procedure Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss initiates an authoritarian rule by decree.

         

1941 World War II: The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands. 1943 World War II: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea in the South West Pacific comes to an end. 1944 World War II: After the success of Big Week, the USAAF begins a daylight bombing campaign of Berlin. 1945 Lapland War: Finland declares war on Nazi Germany. 1957 The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90. 1960 The French freighter La Coubre explodes in Havana, Cuba killing 100. 1966 A Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people. 1970 French submarine Eurydice explodes underwater, resulting in the loss of the entire 57-man crew. 1974 People magazine is published for the first time. 1976 The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland resulting in direct rule of Northern Ireland from London by the British parliament.

 

1977 The 1977 Bucharest Earthquake in southern and eastern Europe kills more than 1,500. 1980 Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.

1983 Bertha Wilson is appointed the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada.

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1985 The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States.

 

1986 The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus. 1991 Sheikh Saad Al-Abdallah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, returns to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.

1996 A derailed train in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, US, causes the emergency evacuation of 2,300 people for 16 days.

1998 Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

2001 4 March 2001 BBC bombing: a massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring 1 person. The attack was attributed to the Real IRA.

 

2001 Hintze Ribeiro disaster: A bridge collapses in northern Portugal, killing up to 70 people. 2002 Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers are killed as they attempt to infiltrate the Shahi Kot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission.

2007 Estonian parliamentary election, 2007: Approximately 30,000 voters take advantage of electronic voting in Estonia, the world's first nationwide voting where part of the votecasting is allowed in the form of remote electronic voting via the Internet.

2009 The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan alBashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.

MARCH 5

363 Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death.

1046 Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama.

 

1279 the Livonian Order is defeated in the Battle of Aizkraukle by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1496 King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.

 

1766 Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans. 1770 Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, and a boy, are killed by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence) five years later. At a subsequent trial the soldiers are defended by John Adams.

1824 First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.

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1836 Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber. 1850 The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.

   

1860 Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna vote in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. 1868 Mefistofele, an opera by Arrigo Boito receives its premire performance at La Scala. 1872 George Westinghouse patents the air brake. 1906 Moro Rebellion: United States Army troops bring overwhelming force against the native Moros in the First Battle of Bud Dajo, leaving only six survivors.

1912 Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, employing them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.

1931 The British Viceroy of India, Governor-General Edward Frederick Lindley Wood and Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) sign an agreement envisaging the release of political prisoners and allowing salt to be freely used by the poorest members of the population.

1933 Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.

1933 Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.

1940 Members of Soviet politburo sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.

    

1943 First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom. 1944 World War II: The Red Army begins the UmanBoto ani Offensive in western Ukrainian SSR. 1946 Winston Churchill uses the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri. 1946 Hungarian Communists and Social Democrats co-found the Left Bloc. 1960 Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase, giving rise to the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.

       

1960 Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. 1965 March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence. 1966 BOAC Flight 911 crashes on Mount Fuji, Japan, killing 124. 1970 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations. 1974 Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal. 1975 First meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club 1978 The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 1979 Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

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1979 America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles. 1981 The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.

   

1984 6,000 miners in the United Kingdom begin their strike at Cortonwood Colliery. 1988 The Constitution of Turks and Caicos Islands is restored and revised. 1999 Paul Okalik is elected first Premier of Nunavut. 2003 In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.

MARCH 6

1454 Thirteen Years' War: Delegates of the Prussian Confederation pledge allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland who agrees to commit his forces in aiding the Confederation's struggle for independence from the Teutonic Knights.

  

1521 Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam. 1788 The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement. 1820 The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, but makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

 

1834 York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto. 1836 Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers defending theAlamo are defeated and the fort is captured.

      

1840 The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery opens, the first dental school. 1857 The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society. 1899 Bayer registers aspirin as a trademark. 1921 Portuguese Communist Party is founded as the Portuguese Section of the Communist International. 1945 Cologne is captured by American Troops. 1946 Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

 

1951 The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins. 1953 Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1957 Ghana becomes the first Sub-Saharan country to gain Independence from the British

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1964 Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

     

1964 Constantine II becomes King of Greece. 1965 Premier Tom Playford of South Australia loses power after 27 years in office. 1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States. 1968 The first of the East L.A. Walkouts take place at several high schools. 1970 Blast at Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three. 1975 For the first time, ever, the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.

    

1975 Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute. 1981 After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time. 1983 The first United States Football League game is played. 1987 The British ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes in about 90 seconds killing 193. 1988 Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are killed by Special Air Service on the territory of Gibraltar in the conclusion of Operation Flavius.

 

1992 Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers. 2008 A Palestinian gunman shoots and kills 8 students and critically injures 11 in the library of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, in Jerusalem, Israel.

MARCH 7
    
161 Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by his adoptive sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. 238 Roman subjects in Africa revolt against Maximinus Thrax and elect Gordian I as emperor. 321 Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire. 1277 Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, condemns 219 philosophical and theological theses. 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.

  

1814 Emperor Napoleon I of France wins the Battle of Craonne. 1827 Brazil marines unsuccessfully attack the temporary naval base of Carmen de Patagones, Argentina. 1827 Shrigley Abduction: Ellen Turner is abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a future politician in colonial New Zealand.

1850 Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1862 American Civil War: Union forces defeat Confederate troops at Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas.

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1876 Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone. 1886 The City of Lbrea in Amazonas, Brazil is founded. Today, the town is the seat of the Territorial Prelature of Lbrea.

 

1900 The German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse becomes the first ship to send wireless signals to shore. 1902 Second Boer War: In the Battle of Tweebosch, a Boer commando led by Koos de la Rey inflicts the biggest defeat upon the British since the beginning of the war

  

1912 Roald Amundsen announces that his expedition had reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911. 1914 Prince William of Wied arrives in Albania to begin his reign. 1936 World War II (Prelude to): In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.

  

1945 World War II: American troops seize the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen. 1950 Cold War: The Soviet Union issues a statement denying that Klaus Fuchs served as a Soviet spy. 1951 Korean War: Operation Ripper United Nations troops led by General Matthew Ridgeway begin an assault against Chinese forces.

 

1965 Bloody Sunday: A group of 600 civil rights marchers are forcefully broken up in Selma, Alabama. 1968 Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnamese military begin Operation Truong Cong Dinh to root out Viet Cong forces from the area surrounding M Tho.

  

1985 The song "We Are the World" has its international release. 1986 Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor. 1989 Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel.

1994 Copyright Law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use.

  

2006 The terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba coordinates a series of bombings in Varanasi, India. 2007 The British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected. 2009 The Real Irish Republican Army kills two British soldiers and two civilians, the first British military deaths in Northern Ireland since The Troubles.

2009 The Kepler space observatory, designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, is launched.

MARCH 8
  
1010 Ferdowsi completes his Sh hn meh. 1126 Following the death of his mother Urraca, Alfonso VII is proclaimed king of Castile and Len. 1618 Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.

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1655 John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in England's North American colonies. 1702 Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 1722 The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.

 

1736 Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran. 1775 An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes "African Slavery in America", the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.

1777 Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutiny in the town of Ochsenfurt.

1782 Gnadenhtten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity are killed by Pennsylvaniamilitiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.

  

1817 The New York Stock Exchange is founded. 1844 King Oscar I ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway. 1862 American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

  

1868 Sakai incident: Japanese samurai kill 11 French sailors in the port of Sakai near Osaka. 1910 French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot's license. 1911 International Women's Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

1916 World War I: A British force unsuccessfully attempts to relieve the siege of Kut (present-day Iraq) in the Battle of Dujaila.

1917 International Women's Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar).

         

1917 The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule. 1920 The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established. 1921 Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid. 1924 The Castle Gate mine disaster kills 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah. 1936 Daytona Beach Road Course holds its first oval stock car race. 1937 Spanish Civil War: The Battle of Guadalajara begins. 1942 World War II: The Dutch surrender to Japanese forces on Java. 1949 Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is condemned to prison for treason 1957 Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis. 1957 The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the U.S. state of Georgia.

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1957 Ghana joins the United Nations. 1963 The Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'tat by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.

  

1966 A bomb planted by young Irish protesters destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin. 1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France. 1978 The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.

  

1979 Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time. 1983 President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire". 1985 A failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.

1999 The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.

 

2004 A new constitution is signed by Iraq's Governing Council. 2010 The stolen body of Tassos Papadopoulos, fifth President of Cyprus, is discovered in a cemetery near the capital.

MARCH 9

141 BC Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han Dynasty of China.

   

1009 First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg. 1230 Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II defeats Theodore of Epirus in the Battle of Klokotnitsa. 1276 Augsburg becomes an Imperial Free City. 1500 The fleet of Pedro Alvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet will discover Brazil which lies within boundaries granted to Portugal in theTreaty of Tordesillas.

1566 David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland.

1765 After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually committed suicide.

  

1796 Napolon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Josphine de Beauharnais. 1811 Paraguayan forces defeat Manuel Belgrano at the Battle of Tacuar. 1841 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.

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1842 Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, receives its premire performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera writers.

1842 The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush.

1847 Mexican-American War: The first large-scale amphibious assault in U.S. history is launched in the Siege of Veracruz.

1862 American Civil War: The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.

 

1896 Prime Minister Francesco Crispi resigns following the Italian defeat at the Battle of Adowa. 1910 The Westmoreland County Coal Strike, involving 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers, begins.

 

1916 Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico. 1925 Pink's War: The first Royal Air Force operation conducted independently of the British Army or Royal Navy begins.

1933 Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies.

1944 World War II: Japanese troops counter-attack American forces on Hill 700 in Bougainville in a battle that would last five days.

 

1944 The Soviet Air Forces conduct heavy bombing on Tallinn, Estonia, killing up to 800 people, mostly civilians. 1945 The Bombing of Tokyo by the United States Army Air Forces began, one of the most destructive bombing raids in history.

 

1946 Bolton Wanderers stadium disaster at Burnden Park, Bolton, England, 33 killed and hundreds injured 1954 McCarthyism: CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy", produced by Fred Friendly.

1956 Soviet military suppresses a mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's deStalinization policy.

1957 A magnitude 8.3 earthquake in the Andreanof Islands, Alaska triggers a Pacific-wide tsunami causing extensive damage to Hawaii and Oahu.

 

1959 The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. 1960 Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.

1961 Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.

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1967 Trans World Airlines Flight 553, a Douglas DC-9-15, crashes in a field in Concord Township, Ohio following a mid-air collision with a Beechcraft Baron, killing 26.

 

1976 Forty-two people die in the 1976 Cavalese cable-car disaster, the worst cable-car accident to date. 1977 The Hanafi Muslim Siege: In a thirty-nine hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seize three Washington, D.C., buildings, killing two and taking 149 hostage.

 

1989 Financially-troubled Eastern Air Lines filed for bankruptcy. 1990 Dr. Antonia Novello is sworn in as Surgeon General of the United States, becoming the first female and Hispanic American to serve in that position.

 

1991 Massive demonstrations are held against Slobodan Milo evi in Belgrade. 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.

 

2010 The first same-sex marriages in Washington, D.C., take place. 2011 Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights.

MARCH 10

241 BC First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end.

298 Roman Emperor Maximian concludes his campaign in North Africa against the Berbers, and makes a triumphal entry into Carthage.

1607 Susenyos defeats the combined armies of Yaqob and Abuna Petros II at the Battle of Gol in Gojjam, making him Emperor of Ethiopia.

1629 Charles I of England dissolves the Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.

1735 An agreement between Nadir Shah and Russia is signed near Ganja and Russian troops are withdrawn from Baku.

1762 French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaireto begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.

1804 Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to theUnited States.

   

1814 Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France. 1830 The KNIL also known as the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army is created. 1831 The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria. 1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican-American War.

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1861 El Hadj Umar Tall seizes the city of Sgou, destroying the Bambara Empire of Mali. 1864 American Civil War: The Red River Campaign begins as Union troops reach Alexandria, Louisiana. 1876 Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

1891 Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.

 

1906 The Courrires mine disaster, Europe's worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France. 1909 By signing the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, Thailand relinquishes its sovereignty over the Malay states of Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu, which become British protectorates.

 

1917 Batangas is formally founded as one of the Philippines's earliest encomiendas. 1922 Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.

1933 An earthquake in Long Beach, California kills 115 people and causes an estimated $40 million dollars in damage.

1944 Greek Civil War: The Political Committee of National Liberation is established in Greece by the National Liberation Front.

1945 The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting firestorm kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.

 

1952 Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the "provisional president". 1959 Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama's palace to prevent his removal.

1966 Military Prime Minister of South Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky sacked rival General Nguyen Chanh Thi, precipitating large-scale civil and military dissension in parts of the nation.

1969 In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. He later retracts his plea.

 

1970 Vietnam War: Captain Ernest Medina is charged by the U.S. Military with My Lai war crimes. 1975 Vietnam War: North Vietnamese troops attack Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, on their way to capturing Saigon.

    

1977 Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus. 1980 Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower 1980 Formation of the Irish Army Ranger Wing 1990 In Haiti, Prosper Avril is ousted 18 months after seizing power in a coup. 2000 The NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaks at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.

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2005 Tung Chee Hwa resigns from his post as the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong after widespread public dissatisfaction of his tenure.

 

2006 The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars. 2008 The New York Times reveals that Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer had patronized a prostitution service.

MARCH 11

222 Emperor Elagabalus is assassinated, along with his mother, Julia Soaemias, by the Praetorian Guard during a revolt. Their mutilated bodies are dragged through the streets of Rome before being thrown into the Tiber.

1387 Battle of Castagnaro: English condottiero Sir John Hawkwood leads Padova to victory in a factional clash with Verona.

  

1649 The Frondeurs and the French sign the Peace of Rueil. 1702 The Daily Courant, England's first national daily newspaper is published for the first time. 1708 Queen Anne withholds Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, the last time a British monarch vetoes legislation.

 

1784 The signing of the Treaty of Mangalore brings the Second Anglo-Mysore War to an end. 1811 During Andr Massna's retreat from the Lines of Torres Vedras, a division led by French Marshal Michel Ney fights off a combined Anglo-Portuguese force to give Massna time to escape.

 

1824 The United States Department of War creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1845 The Flagstaff War: Unhappy with translational differences regarding the Treaty of Waitangi, chiefs Hone Heke, Kawiti and M ori tribe members chop down the British flagpole for a fourth time and drive settlers out of Kororareka, New Zealand.

1848 Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin become the first Prime Ministers of the Province of Canada to be democratically elected under a system of responsible government.

  

1851 The first performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi takes place in Venice. 1861 American Civil War: The Constitution of the Confederate States of America is adopted. 1864 The Great Sheffield Flood: The largest man-made disaster ever to befall England kills over 250 people in Sheffield.

 

1867 The first performance of Don Carlos by Giuseppe Verdi takes place in Paris. 1872 Construction of the Seven Sisters Colliery, South Wales, begins; located on one of the richest coal sources in Britain.

1872 The Meiji Japanese government officially annexes the Ryukyu Kingdom into what would become the Okinawa prefecture.

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1888 The Great Blizzard of 1888 begins along the eastern seaboard of the United States, shutting down commerce and killing more than 400.

   

1917 World War I: Baghdad falls to Anglo-Indian forces commanded by General Stanley Maude. 1927 In New York City, Samuel Roxy Rothafel opens the Roxy Theatre. 1931 Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR, abbreviated as GTO, is introduced in the Soviet Union. 1941 World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

 

1942 World War II: General Douglas MacArthur leaves Corregidor. 1945 World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy attempts a large-scale kamikaze attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Ulithi atoll in Operation Tan No. 2.

 

1945 World War II: The Empire of Vietnam, a short-lived puppet state, is established with B o

i as its ruler.

1977 The 1977 Hanafi Muslim Siege: more than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims are set free after ambassadors from three Islamic nations join negotiations.

1978 Coastal Road massacre: At least 37 are killed and more than 70 are wounded when Al Fatah hijack an Israeli bus, prompting Israel's Operation Litani.

    

1983 Pakistan successfully conducts a cold test of a nuclear weapon. 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1990 Lithuania declares itself independent from the Soviet Union. 1990 Patricio Aylwin is sworn in as the first democratically elected President of Chile since 1970. 1993 Janet Reno is confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States.

   

1999 Infosys becomes the first Indian company listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. 2004 Madrid train bombings: Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, kill 191 people. 2006 Michelle Bachelet is inaugurated as first female president of Chile. 2007 Russian helicopters reportedly attack the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia, an accusation that Russia categorically denies later.

 

2009 Winnenden school shooting 17 people are killed at a school in Germany. 2010 Economist and businessman Sebastin Piera is sworn in as President of Chile, while three earthquakes, the strongest measuring magnitude 6.9 and all centered next toPichilemu, capital of Cardenal Caro Province, hit central Chile during the ceremony.

2011 An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

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MARCH 12

538 Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Roman general,Belisarius.

1622 Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, are canonized as saints by the Catholic Church.

  

1664 New Jersey becomes a colony of England. 1689 The Williamite War in Ireland begins. 1811 Peninsular War: A day after a successful rear guard action, French Marshal Michel Ney once again successfully delayed the pursuing Anglo-Portuguese force at the Battle of Redinha.

 

1868 Henry O'Farrell attempts to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. 1881 Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain.

 

1912 The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States. 1913 Canberra Day: The future capital of Australia is officially named Canberra. (Melbourne remained temporary capital until 1927 while the new capital is still under construction.)

   

1918 Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years. 1922 Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan formed The Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic 1928 In California, the St. Francis Dam fails; the resulting floods kill over 600 people. 1930 Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march, known as the Salt March, to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt.

1933 Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats".

  

1934 Konstantin Pts and General Johan Laidoner stage a coup in Estonia, and ban all political parties. 1938 Anschluss: German troops occupy Austria. 1940 Winter War: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. Finnish troops and the remaining population are immediately evacuated.

 

1947 The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism. 1950 The Llandow air disaster occurs near Sigingstone, Wales, in which 80 people die when their aircraft crashed, making it the world's deadliest air disaster at the time.

1964 New Hampshire Lottery: New Hampshire becomes the first U.S. state to legally sell lottery tickets in the 20th century.

 

1966 Suharto takes over from Sukarno to become President of Indonesia. 1968 Mauritius achieves independence.

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1971 The March 12 Memorandum is sent to the Demirel government of Turkey and the government resigns. 1992 Mauritius becomes a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. 1993 Several bombs explode in Bombay (Mumbai), India, killing about 300 and injuring hundreds more. 1993 North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea says that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

1993 The Blizzard of 1993 Snow begins to fall across the eastern portion of the US with tornadoes, thunder snow storms, high winds and record low temperatures. The storm lasts for 30 hours.

   

1994 The Church of England ordains its first female priests. 1999 Former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. 2003 Zoran in i , Prime Minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade.

2004 The President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, is impeached by its national assembly: the first such impeachment in the nation's history.

2011 A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan's earthquake.

MARCH 13
    
1138 Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II. 1639 Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard. 1781 William Herschel discovers Uranus. 1809 Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden is deposed in a coup d'tat. 1845 Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto receives its premire performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist.

1862 American Civil War: The U.S. federal government forbids all Union army officers to return fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

1865 American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops. 1881 Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use inRussia.)

     

1884 The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins, ending on January 26, 1885. 1897 San Diego State University is founded. 1900 Second Boer War: British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State. 1920 The Kapp Putsch briefly ousts the Weimar Republic government from Berlin. 1921 Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China. 1925 Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution.

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1930 The news of the discovery of Pluto is telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory. 1933 Great Depression: Banks in the U.S. begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a "bank holiday".

      

1938 World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States. 1938 Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich. 1940 The Russo-Finnish Winter War ends. 1943 World War II: In Bougainville, Japanese troops end their assault on American forces at Hill 700. 1943 The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Krakw. 1954 Battle of i n Bin Ph : Viet Minh forces attack the French.

1957 Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista.

1962 Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks upon Guantnamo Bay Naval Base, to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.

1964 American Kitty Genovese is murdered, reportedly in view of neighbors who did nothing to help her, prompting research into the bystander effect.

 

1969 Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module. 1979 The New Jewel Movement, headed by Maurice Bishop, ousts Prime Minister Eric Gairy in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat in Grenada.

 

1988 The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan. 1991 The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

 

1992 An earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale kills over 500 in Erzincan, eastern Turkey. 1996 Dunblane massacre: in Dunblane, Scotland, 16 Primary School children and 1 teacher are shot dead by a spree killer, Thomas Watt Hamilton who then committed suicide.

  

1997 India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader. 1997 The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television. 2003 Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an uprightwalking human have been found in Italy.

2005 Terry Ratzmann shoots and kills six members of the Living Church of God and the minister at Sheraton Inn in Brookfield, Wisconsin before killing himself.

2008 Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

MARCH 14

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313 Emperor Jin Huidi is executed by Liu Cong, ruler of the Xiongnu state (Han Zhao). 1489 The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice. 1590 Battle of Ivry: Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeat the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne during the French Wars of Religion.

  

1647 Thirty Years' War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm. 1757 Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMS Monarch for breach of the Articles of War. 1780 American Revolutionary War: Spanish forces capture Fort Charlotte in Mobile, Alabama, the last British frontier post capable of threatening New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana.

    

1782 Battle of Wuchale: Emperor Tekle Giyorgis pacifies a group of Oromo near Wuchale. 1794 Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin. 1885 The Mikado a light opera by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, had its first public performance in London. 1900 The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard. 1903 The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The ColombianSenate would later reject the treaty.

 

1910 Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vented to atmosphere. 1915 World War I: Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden is abandoned and scuttled by her crew.

  

1931 Alam Ara, India's first talkie film, is released. 1939 Slovakia declares independence under German pressure. 1942 Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.

   

1943 World War II The Krakw Ghetto is 'liquidated'. 1945 World War II The R.A.F. first operational use of the Grand Slam bomb, Bielefeld, Germany. 1951 Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul. 1964 A jury in Dallas, Texas, finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy.

1967 The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.

   

1972 Italian publisher and former partisan Giangiacomo Feltrinelli is killed by an explosion near Segrate. 1978 The Israeli Defense Force invades and occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani. 1979 In China, a Hawker Siddeley Trident crashes into a factory near Beijing, killing at least 200. 1980 In Poland, a plane crashes during final approach near Warsaw, killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team.

1984 Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

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1994 Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released. 1995 Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space onboard a Russian launch vehicle.

 

2006 Members of the Chadian military fail in a coup d'tat attempt. 2007 The Left Front government of West Bengal sends at least 3,000 police to Nandigram in an attempt to break Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee resistance there; the resulting clash leaves 14 dead.

2008 A series of riots, protests, and demonstrations erupted in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet.

MARCH 15

44 BC Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutusand several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

221 Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself emperor of Shu-Han and claims his legitimate succession to theHan Dynasty.

351 Constantius II elevates his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and puts him in charge of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

933 After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeats a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade near the Unstrut river.

1311 Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.

 

1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas. 1514 Jodocus Badius Ascensius publishes Christiern Pedersen's Latin version of Saxos Gesta Danorum, the oldest known version of that work.

   

1545 First meeting of the Council of Trent. 1564 Mughal Emperor Akbar abolishes jizya (per capita tax) . 1672 Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence. 1781 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under GeneralCharles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.

1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatenedcoup d'tat never takes place.

 

1820 Maine becomes the 23rd U.S. state. 1848 A revolution breaks out in Hungary. The Habsburg rulers are compelled to meet the demands of the Reform party.

1906 Rolls-Royce Limited is incorporated.

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1916 President Woodrow Wilson sends 4,800 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

    

1917 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar. 1922 After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt. 1926 The dictator Theodoros Pangalos is elected President of Greece without opposition. 1931 SS Viking explodes off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board. 1933 Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascist dictatorship.

1939 World War II: German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.

 

1939 Carpatho-Ukraine declares itself an independent republic, but is annexed by Hungary the next day. 1943 World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov the Germans retake the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.

 

1945 World War II: Soviet forces begin an offensive to push Germans from Upper Silesia. 1952 In Cilaos, Runion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24 hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16).

  

1956 My Fair Lady premiered on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. 1961 South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations. 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, tells U.S. Congress "We shall overcome" while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

    

1985 The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com). 1985 The end of the Brazilian military dictatorship. 1990 Iraq hangs British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying. 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union. 2004 French President Jacques Chirac signs the law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, commonly known as the headscarf ban.

MARCH 16
    
597 BC Babylonians captured Jerusalem, replaced Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king. 37 Caligula became Roman Emperor after the death of his great uncle, Tiberius. 1190 Massacre of Jews at Clifford's Tower, York. 1322 The Battle of Boroughbridge took place in the Despenser Wars. 1521 Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines.

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1621 Samoset, a Mohegan, visited the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset."

   

1660 The Long Parliament dissolved. 1689 The 23rd Regiment of Foot or Royal Welch Fusiliers is founded. 1792 King Gustav III of Sweden is shot; he died on March 29. 1802 The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1812 Battle of Badajoz (March 16 April 6) British and Portuguese forces besieged and defeated French garrison during Peninsular War.

1815 Prince Willem of the House of Orange-Nassau proclaimed himself King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the first constitutional monarchin the Netherlands.

 

1818 Second Battle of Cancha Rayada Spanish forces defeated Chileans under Jos de San Martn. 1861 Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who has been evicted from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.

1865 American Civil War: The Battle of Averasborough began as Confederate forces suffer irreplaceable casualties in the final months of the war.

1872 The Wanderers F.C. won the first FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, beating Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1-0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.

1900 Sir Arthur Evans purchased the land around the ruins of Knossos, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete.

1912 Lawrence Oates, an ill member of Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition, left the tent to die, saying: "I am just going outside and may be some time."

1916 The 7th and 10th US cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing crossed the US-Mexico border to join the hunt for Pancho Villa.

  

1924 In accordance with the Treaty of Rome, Fiume became annexed as part of Italy. 1926 History of Rocketry: Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts. 1935 Adolf Hitler ordered Germany to rearm herself in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.

  

1939 From Prague Castle, Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate. 1939 Marriage of Princess Fawzia of Egypt to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. 1940 First person killed in a German bombing raid on the UK in World War II during a raid on Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, James Isbister.

 

1942 The first V-2 rocket test launch. It exploded at lift-off. 1945 World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted.

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1945 Ninety percent of Wrzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers. 5,000 are killed. 1950 Communist Czechoslovakia's ministry of foreign affairs asked nuncios of Vatican to leave the country. 1958 The Ford Motor Company produced its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company's founding.

  

1962 A Flying Tiger Line Super Constellation disappeared in the western Pacific Ocean, with 107 missing. 1963 Mount Agung erupted on Bali killing 11,000. 1966 Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th manned American space flight and first space docking with the Agena Target Vehicle.

1968 Vietnam War: In the My Lai massacre, between 350 and 500 Vietnamese villagers (men, women, and children) are killed by American troops.

    

1968 General Motors produced its 100 millionth automobile, the Oldsmobile Toronado. 1976 British Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned, citing personal reasons. 1977 Assassination of Kamal Jumblatt the main leader of the anti-government forces in the Lebanese Civil War. 1978 Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped and is later killed by his captors. 1978 Supertanker Amoco Cadiz split in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the 5th-largest oil spill in history.

 

1983 Demolition of the radio tower Ismaning, the last wooden radio tower in Germany. 1984 William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later died in captivity.

 

1985 Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut. He is released on December 4, 1991. 1988 Iran-Contra Affair: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

1988 Halabja poison gas attack: The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.

1995 Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment is officially ratified in 1865.

2005 Israel officially handed over Jericho to Palestinian control.

MARCH 17

45 BC In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda.

 

180 Marcus Aurelius dies leaving Commodus the sole emperor of the Roman Empire. 624 Led by Muhammad, the Muslims of Medina defeat the Quraysh of Mecca in the Battle of Badr.

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1337 Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy in England. 1776 American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.

1780 American Revolution: George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday "as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence".

    

1805 The Italian Republic, with Napoleon as president, becomes the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon as King. 1842 The Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is formed; 1860 The First Taranaki War begins in Taranaki, New Zealand, a major phase of the New Zealand land wars. 1861 The Kingdom of Italy (18611946) is proclaimed. 1891 SS Utopia collides with HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar and sinks, killing 562 of the 880 passengers on board.

   

1921 The Second Republic of Poland adopts the March Constitution. 1939 Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanchang between the Kuomintang and Japan begins, 1941 In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1942 Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.

  

1945 The Ludendorff Bridge in Remagen, Germany collapses, ten days after its capture. 1947 First flight of the B-45 Tornado strategic bomber. 1948 Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.

1950 Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announce the creation of element 98, which they name "Californium".

   

1957 A plane crash in Cebu, Philippines kills Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others. 1958 The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite. 1959 Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet for India. 1960 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the antiCuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

1966 Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.

 

1969 Golda Meir becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel. 1970 My Lai Massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.

1973 The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, depicting a former prisoner of war being reunited with his family.

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1979 The Penmanshiel Tunnel collapses during engineering works, killing two workers. 1985 Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles, California murder spree.

1988 A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into a mountainside near the Venezuelan border killing 143.

1988 Eritrean War of Independence: The Nadew Command, an Ethiopian army corps in Eritrea, is attacked on three sides by military units of the Eritrean People's Liberation Frontin the opening action of the Battle of Afabet.

  

1992 Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires: Suicide car bomb attack kills 29 and injures 242. 1992 A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%. 2000 More than 800 members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in what is considered to be a mass murder and suicide orchestrated by leaders of the cult.

2003 Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Robin Cook, resigns from the British Cabinet in disagreement with government plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

2004 Unrest in Kosovo: More than 22 are killed and 200 wounded. 35 Serbian Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Belgrade and Ni are destroyed.

2008 Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becomes New York State governor.

MARCH 18
 
37 The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius's will and proclaims Caligula emperor. 235 Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamaea are murdered by legionaries near Moguntiacum (modern Mainz). The Severan dynastyends.

     

1229 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declares himself King of Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade. 1241 Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Krakw in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city. 1314 Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake. 1438 Albert II of Habsburg becomes Holy Roman Emperor. 1608 Susenyos is formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia. 1673 John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton sells his part of New Jersey to the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.

  

1766 American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act. 1793 The first republican state in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann. 1834 Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.

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1850 American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo. 1865 American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time. 1871 Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders evacuation of Paris.

 

1874 Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights. 1893 Former Governor General Lord Stanley pledges to donate a silver challenge cup, later named after him, as an award for the best hockey team in Canada; originally presented to amateur champions, the Stanley Cup has been awarded to the top pro team since 1910, and since 1926, only to National Hockey League teams.

  

1906 Traian Vuia flies a heavier-than-air aircraft for 20 meters at 1 meter altitude. 1913 King George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki. 1915 World War I: Massive naval attack in Battle of Gallipoli. Three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.

 

1921 The second Peace of Riga between Poland and Soviet Union. 1922 In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. He would serve only 2 years.

     

1925 The Tri-State Tornado hits the Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people. 1937 The New London School explosion kills three hundred, mostly children. 1937 Spanish Civil War: Spanish Republican forces defeat the Italians at the Battle of Guadalajara. 1937 The human-powered aircraft, Pedaliante, flies 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) outside Milan. 1938 Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders. 1940 World War II: Axis Powers Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.

      

1942 The War Relocation Authority is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody. 1944 The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 and causes thousands to flee their homes. 1945 World War II: 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin. 1946 Diplomatic relations between Switzerland and the Soviet Union are established. 1948 Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia in the first sign of a Tito-Stalin split. 1953 An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 250. 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law allowing for Hawaiian statehood, which would become official on August 21.

 

1962 The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954. 1965 Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

1967 The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off the Cornish coast.

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1968 Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency. 1969 The United States begins secretly bombing the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia, used by communist forces to infiltrate South Vietnam.

  

1970 Lon Nol ousts Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. 1971 In Peru a landslide crashes into Lake Yanahuani, killing 200 at the mining camp of Chungar. 1974 Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.

1980 At Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, 50 people are killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket on its launch pad during a fueling operation.

 

1989 In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found nearby the Pyramid of Cheops. 1990 In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

1992 White South Africans vote overwhelmingly in favour, in a national referendum, to end the racist policy of Apartheid.

1994 Bosnia's Bosniaks and Croats sign the Washington Agreement, ending warring between the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

1996 A nightclub fire in Quezon City, Philippines kills 162. 1997 The tail of a Russian Antonov An-24 charter plane breaks off while en-route to Turkey causing the plane to crash and killing all 50 on board and leading to the grounding of all An-24s.

2002 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda ends (started on March 2) after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters with 11 allied troop fatalities.

2003 FBI agents raid the corporate headquarters of HealthSouth Corporation in Birmingham, Alabama on suspicion of massive corporate fraud led by the company's top executives.

 

2003 In the House of Commons, British MPs vote in favour of military intervention in Iraq by 412 votes to 149. 2003 British Sign Language is recognised as an official British language.

MARCH 19
 
1279 A Mongolian victory in the Battle of Yamen ends the Song Dynasty in China. 1687 Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by his own men.

  

1812 The Cdiz Cortes promulgates the Spanish Constitution of 1812. 1853 The Taiping reform movement occupies and makes Nanjing its capital until 1864. 1861 The First Taranaki War ends in New Zealand.

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1863 The SS Georgiana, said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, medicines and merchandise then valued at over $1,000,000.

1865 American Civil War: The Battle of Bentonville begins. By the end of the battle two days later, Confederate forces had retreated from Four Oaks, North Carolina.

   

1885 Louis Riel declares a Provisional Government in Saskatchewan, beginning the North-West Rebellion. 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumire record their first footage using their newly patented cinematograph. 1915 Pluto is photographed for the first time but is not recognized as a planet. 1916 Eight American planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa, the first United States air-combat mission in history.

 

1918 The U.S. Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time. 1920 The United States Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time (the first time was on November 19, 1919).

1921 Irish War of Independence: One of the biggest engagements of the war takes place at Crossbarry, County Cork. About 100 Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escape an attempt by over 1,300 British forces to encircle them.

1921 Italian Fascists shoot from the Parenzana train at a group of children in Strunjan (Slovenia): two children are killed, two mangled and three wounded.

  

1931 Gambling is legalized in Nevada. 1932 The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened. 1941 World War II: The 99th Pursuit Squadron also known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, is activated.

  

1943 Frank Nitti, the Chicago Outfit Boss after Al Capone, commits suicide at the Chicago Central Railyard. 1944 World War II: Nazi forces occupy Hungary. 1945 World War II: Off the coast of Japan, a dive bomber hits the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing 724 of her crew. Badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under her own power.

1945 World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his "Nero Decree" ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.

 

1946 French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Runion become overseas dpartements of France. 1954 Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in the first televised prize boxing fight shown in colour.

1954 Willie Mosconi sets a world record by running 526 consecutive balls without a miss during a straight pool exhibition at East High Billiard Club in Springfield, Ohio. The record still stands today.

 

1958 The Monarch Underwear Company fire leaves 24 dead and 15 injured. 1962 Algerian War of Independence: A ceasefire takes effect.

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1965 The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000 and said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is discovered by then teenage diver and pioneerunderwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, exactly 102 years after its destruction.

1966 Texas Western becomes the first college basketball team to win the Final Four with an all-black starting lineup.

 

1969 The 385 metres (1,263 ft) tall TV-mast at Emley Moor, United Kingdom, collapses due to ice build-up. 1979 The United States House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.

1982 Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the United Kingdom.

1987 Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns as head of the PTL Club due to a brewing sex scandal; he hands over control to Jerry Falwell.

1989 The Egyptian Flag is raised on Taba, Egypt announcing the end of the Israeli occupation after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the peace negotiations in 1979.

1990 The ethnic clashes of Trgu Mure begin four days after the anniversary of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas.

2002 Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth on charges of human rights abuses and of electoral fraud, following a turbulent presidential election.

 

2003 United States President George W. Bush orders the start of war against Iraq. 2004 Konginkangas bus disaster: A semi-trailer truck and a bus crash head-on in nekoski, Finland. 24 people are killed and 13 injured.

2004 A Swedish DC-3 shot down by a Russian MiG-15 in 1952 over the Baltic Sea is finally recovered after years of work. The remains of the three crewmen are left in place, pending further investigations.

2004 3-19 Shooting Incident: Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian is shot just before the country's presidential election on March 20.

 

2008 GRB 080319B: A cosmic burst that is the farthest object visible to the naked eye is briefly observed. 2011 The moon makes its closest approach to earth by nearly 30,000 miles in the last 18 years, thus dubbing it supermoon.

2011 Libyan Uprising: A coalition of countries intervene and commence military action in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1973.

MARCH 20
 
235 Maximinus Thrax is proclaimed emperor. He is the first foreigner to hold the Roman throne. 1208 Michael IV Autoreianos is appointed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

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1600 The Linkping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linkping, Sweden. 1602 The Dutch East India Company is established. 1616 Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment. 1760 The "Great Fire" of Boston, Massachusetts destroys 349 buildings. 1815 After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

     

1848 Revolutions of 1848 in the German states: King Ludwig I of Bavaria abdicates. 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. 1861 An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, Argentina. 1883 The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property is signed. 1888 The premiere of the very first Romani language operetta is staged in Moscow, Russia. 1913 Sung Chiao-jen, a founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party, is wounded in an assassination attempt and dies 2 days later.

   

1914 In New Haven, Connecticut, the first international figure skating championship takes place. 1916 Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. 1922 The USS Langley (CV-1) is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier. 1923 The Arts Club of Chicago hosts the opening of Pablo Picasso's first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, becoming an early proponent ofmodern art in the United States.

1933 Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida's electric chair for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1942 World War II: General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataanand I shall return".

1948 With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.

1951 Fujiyoshida, a city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in the center of the Japanese main island of Honsh is founded.

  

1952 The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan. 1956 Tunisia gains independence from France. 1964 The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.

1974 Ian Ball attempts, but fails, to kidnap Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London.

 

1980 The Radio Caroline ship, Mi Amigo founders in a gale off the English coast. 1985 Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

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1985 Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.

 

1987 The Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-AIDS drug, AZT. 1988 Eritrean War of Independence: Having defeated the Nadew Command, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front enters the town of Afabet, victoriously concluding the Battle of Afabet.

    

1990 Ferdinand Marcos's widow, Imelda Marcos, goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement, and racketeering. 1993 An IRA bomb explodes, killing two children in Warrington, Northwest England. 1995 A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway kills 12 and wounds 1,300 persons. 1999 Legoland California, the only Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California. 2000 Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black Panther once known as H. Rap Brown, is captured after murdering Georgia sheriff's deputy Ricky Kinchen and critically wounding Deputy Aldranon English.

2003 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.

2005 A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Fukuoka, Japan, its first major quake in over 100 years. One person is killed, hundreds are injured and evacuated.

 

2006 Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop. 2006 Over 150 Chadian soldiers are killed in eastern Chad by members of the rebel UFDC. The rebel movement sought to overthrow Chadian president Idriss Deby.

MARCH 21
      
717 Battle of Vincy between Charles Martel and Ragenfrid. 1152 Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. 1188 Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan. 1413 Henry V becomes King of England. 1556 In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake. 1788 A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins. 1800 With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mch.

   

1801 The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt. 1804 Code Napolon is adopted as French civil law. 1814 Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube. 1821 Greek War of Independence: First revolutionary act in the monastery of Agia Lavra, Kalavryta.

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1844 The Bah' calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Bah' calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Bah' Faith as the Bah' New Year or Nw-Rz.

     

1857 An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000. 1871 Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire. 1871 Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone. 1913 Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio. 1918 World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins. 1919 The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.

1921 The New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of War Communism.

  

1928 Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. 1933 Construction of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed. 1935 Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means 'Land of the Aryans.'

1937 Ponce Massacre: 18 people and a 7-year-old girl in Ponce, Puerto Rico, are gunned down by a police squad acting under orders of US-appointed Governor, Blanton C. Winship.

1943 Wehrmacht officer Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through. Von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.

 

1945 World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma. 1945 World War II: Operation Carthage British planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also hit a school and 125 civilians are killed.

1945 World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of Drava concludes.

1946 The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in the American football since 1933.

 

1952 Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio. 1960 Apartheid: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

 

1963 Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes. 1964 In Copenhagen, Denmark, Gigliola Cinquetti wins the ninth Eurovision Song Contest for Italy singing "Non ho l'et" ("I'm not old enough").

1965 Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9 which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.

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1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

  

1968 Battle of Karameh in Jordan between Israeli Defense Forces and Fatah. 1970 The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Mayor of San Francisco Joseph Alioto. 1980 US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1980 On the season finale of the soap opera Dallas, the infamous character J.R. Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant, leading to the catchphrase "Who shot J.R.?"

     

1989 Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling. 1990 Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule. 1994 The last episode of the Australian TV series Mother and Son was broadcast. 1997 In a Tel Aviv, Israel coffee shop, a suicide bomber kills 3 and injures 49. 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. 2002 In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh along with three other suspects are charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporterDaniel Pearl.

2006 Immigrant workers constructing the Burj Khalifa and a new terminal of Dubai International Airport riot causing $1M in damage.

MARCH 22
 

238 Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman Emperors. 1621 The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags. 1622 Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians kill 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony's population. 1630 The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables. 1638 Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent. 1739 Nadir Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne. 1765 The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies. 1784 The Emerald Buddha is moved with great ceremony to its current location in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand. 1809 Charles XIII succeeds Gustav IV Adolf to the Swedish throne.

 

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1829 The three protecting powers (United Kingdom, France and Russia) establish the borders of Greece. 1849 The Austrians defeat the Piedmontese at the Battle of Novara. 1871 In North Carolina, William Woods Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment. 1873 A law is approved by the Spanish National Assembly in Puerto Rico to abolish slavery. 1888 In England, The Football League, the world's oldest professional Association Football league, is founded. 1894 The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts. 1906 First Anglo-French rugby union match at Parc des Princes in Paris 1916 The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China is restored. 1920 Azeri and Turkish army soldiers with participation of Kurdish gangs attacked the Armenian inhabitants of Shushi (Nagorno Karabakh). 1923 The first radio broadcast of ice hockey is made by Foster Hewitt. 1939 World War II: Germany takes Memel from Lithuania. 1942 World War II: In the Mediterranean Sea, the Royal Navy confronts Italy's Regia Marina in the Second Battle of Sirte. 1943 World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces. 1945 The Arab League is founded when a charter is adopted in Cairo, Egypt. 1954 Closed since 1939, the London bullion market reopens. 1960 Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser 1972 The United States Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. 1975 A fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Alabama causes a dangerous reduction in cooling water levels. 1978 Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 1982 NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, STS-3.

 

  

  

  

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1984 Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded. 1989 Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres suffers a near-fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat. 1992 USAir Flight 405 crashes shortly after liftoff from New York City's LaGuardia Airport, leading to a number of studies into the effect that ice has on aircraft. 1993 The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path. 1995 Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns to earth after setting a record of 438 days in space. 1997 Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest champion women's World Figure Skating Champion. 1997 The Comet Hale-Bopp has its closest approach to Earth. 2004 Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas, two bodyguards, and nine civilian bystanders are killed in the Gaza Strip when hit byIsraeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles. 2006 ETA, the armed Basque separatist group, declares a permanent ceasefire. 2006 Three Christian Peacemaker Team hostages are freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days of captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox. 2009 Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska begins erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.

 

 

MARCH 23

1400 The Tran Dynasty of Vietnam is deposed after one hundred and seventy-five years of rule by Ho Quy Ly, a court official.

 

1708 James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth. 1775 American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

1801 Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle.

1806 After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" begin their arduous journey home.

1821 Greek War of Independence: Battle and fall of city of Kalamata.

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1848 The ship John Wickliffe arrives at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago province is founded.

 

1857 Elisha Otis's first elevator is installed at 488 Broadway New York City. 1862 The First Battle of Kernstown, Virginia, marks the start of Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. Though a Confederate defeat, the engagement distracts Federal efforts to capture Richmond.

 

1868 The University of California is founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act is signed into law. 1879 War of the Pacific: The Battle of Topter, the first battle of the war is fought between Chile and the joint forces of Bolivia and Peru.

 

1889 The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is established by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian India. 1905 Eleftherios Venizelos calls for Crete's union with Greece, and begins what is to be known as the Theriso revolt.

1908 American diplomat Durham Stevens is attacked by Korean assassins Jeon Myeong-un and Jang In-hwan, leading to his death in a hospital two days later.

1909 Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

 

1919 In Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini founds his Fascist political movement. 1931 Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar are hanged for murder during the Indian struggle for independence.

  

1933 The Reichstag passes the Enabling Act of 1933, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany. 1935 Signing of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. 1939 The Hungarian air force attacks the headquarters of Slovak air force in the city of Spi sk Nov Ves, kills 13 people and began the SlovakHungarian War.

1940 The Lahore Resolution (Qarardad-e-Pakistan or the then Qarardad-e-Lahore) is put forward at the Annual General Convention of the All India Muslim League.

  

1942 World War II: In the Indian Ocean, Japanese forces capture the Andaman Islands. 1956 Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan) 1962 NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, is launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative.

1965 NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States' first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).

 

1978 The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line. 1980 Archbishop scar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.

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1982 Guatemala's government, headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas Garca is overthrown in a military coup by right-wing General Efran Ros Montt.

1983 Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

 

1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce their discovery of cold fusion at the University of Utah. 1991 The Revolutionary United Front, with support from the special forces of Charles Taylors National Patriotic Front of Liberia, invades Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrowJoseph Saidu Momoh, sparking a gruesome 11year Sierra Leone Civil War.

1994 At an election rally in Tijuana, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated by Mario Aburto Martnez.

1994 Aeroflot Flight 593 crashes in Siberia when the pilot's fifteen-year old son accidentally disengages the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.

1994 A United States Air Force (USAF) F-16 aircraft collides with a USAF C-130 at Pope Air Force Base and then crashes, killing 24 United States Army soldiers on the ground. This later became known as the Green Ramp disaster.

  

1996 Taiwan holds its first direct elections and chooses Lee Teng-hui as President. 1999 Gunmen assassinate Paraguay's Vice President Luis Mara Argaa. 2001 The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

2003 In Nasiriyah, Iraq, 11 soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company as well as 18 U.S. Marines are killed during the first major conflict of Operation Iraqi Freedom. 654 Iraqi combatants are also killed.

MARCH 24
  
1401 Turko-Mongol emperor Timur sacks Damascus. 1603 James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England. 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.

1707 The Acts of Union 1707 is signed, officially uniting the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.

 

1731 Naturalization of Hieronimus de Salis Parliamentary Act is passed. 1765 American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.

 

1832 In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.. 1837 Canada gives African Canadian men the right to vote.

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1860 Sakuradamon incident (1860): Assassination of Japanese Chief Minister (Tair ) Ii Naosuke 1869 The last of Titokowaru's forces surrendered to the New Zealand government, ending his uprising. 1878 The British frigate HMS Eurydice sinks, killing more than 300. 1882 Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

 

1896 A. A. Popov makes the first radio signal transmission in history. 1900 Mayor of New York City Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan andBrooklyn.

  

1907 The first issue of the Georgian Bolshevik newspaper Dro is published. 1923 Greece becomes a republic. 1927 Nanjing Incident: Foreign warships bombard Nanjing, China, in defense of the foreign citizens within the city.

 

1933 The Enabling Act of 1933 is passed by the German Reichstag, allowing Adolf Hitler to gain plenary power. 1934 U.S. Congress passes the Tydings-McDuffie Act allowing the Philippines to become a selfgoverning commonwealth.

 

1944 Ardeatine Massacre: German troops kill 335 Italian civilians in Rome. 1944 World War II: In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.

1946 The British Cabinet Mission, consisting of Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A. V. Alexander, arrives in India to discuss and plan for the transfer of power from theBritish Raj to Indian leadership.

  

1958 Rock'N'Roll teen idol Elvis Presley is drafted in the U.S. Army. 1959 The Party of the African Federation is launched by Lopold Sdar Senghor and Modibo Keita. 1965 NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash landing.

 

1972 The United Kingdom imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland. 1973 Kenyan athlete Kip Keino defeats Jim Ryun at the first-ever professional track meet in Los Angeles, California.

1976 In Argentina, the armed forces overthrow the constitutional government of President Isabel Pern and start a 7-year dictatorial period self-styled the National Reorganization Process. Since 2006, a public holiday known as Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice is held on this day.

  

1980 Archbishop scar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador. 1986 The Loscoe gas explosion leads to new UK laws on landfill gas migration and gas protection on landfill sites. 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (42,000 m ) of petroleum after running aground.

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1993 Discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. 1998 Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.

 

1998 A tornado sweeps through Dantan in India killing 250 people and injuring 3000 others. 1999 Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.

2000 S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

2003 The Arab League votes 21-1 in favor of a resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional removal of U.S. and British soldiers from Iraq.

2008 Bhutan officially becomes a democracy, with its first ever general election.

MARCH 25
         
421 Venice, Italy is founded at twelve o'clock noon, according to legend. 1199 Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6. 1306 Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland. 1409 The Council of Pisa opens. 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia. 1634 The first settlers arrive in Maryland. 1655 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens. 1802 The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the United Kingdom. 1807 The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. 1807 The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world.

1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.

     

1821 (Julian Calendar) Greece revolts against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence. 1865 American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union. 1894 Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C. 1911 In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers. 1917 The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811. 1918 The Belarusian People's Republic is established.

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1924 On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.

     

1931 The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape. 1941 The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact. 1943 Start of the American amphibious landings in the Philippines a turning point in the Pacific War. 1947 An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111. 1948 The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. 1949 The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.

 

1957 United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on the grounds of obscenity. 1957 The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

 

1958 Canada's Avro Arrow makes its first flight. 1965 Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

1969 During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).

1971 Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistani Armed Forces against East Pakistani civilians.

  

1971 The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. 1975 Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew. 1979 The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.

1988 The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

1990 The Happy Land fire was an arson fire that kills 87 people trapped inside an illegal nightclub in the New York City borough of The Bronx.

 

1992 Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station. 1995 WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.

1996 An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.

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1996 The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).

2006 Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

2006 Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.

MARCH 26
                
1026 Pope John XIX crowns Conrad II as Holy Roman Emperor. 1484 William Caxton prints his translation of Aesop's Fables. 1552 Guru Amar Das becomes the Third Sikh Guru. 1636 Utrecht University is founded in the Netherlands. 1808 Charles IV of Spain abdicates in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. 1812 An earthquake destroys Caracas, Venezuela. 1830 The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York. 1839 The first Henley Royal Regatta is held. 1881 Thessaly is freed and becomes part of Greece again. 1913 Balkan War: Bulgarian forces invade Adrianople. 1917 World War I: First Battle of Gaza British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance. 1934 The driving test is introduced in the United Kingdom. 1942 World War II: In Poland, the first female prisoners arrive at Auschwitz. 1958 The United States Army launches Explorer 3. 1958 The African Regroupment Party is launched at a meeting in Paris. 1967 Ten thousand people gather for one of many Central Park be-ins in New York City 1971 East Pakistan declares its independence from Pakistan to form People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Liberation War begins.

1974 Gaura Devi leads a group of 27 women of Laata village, Henwalghati, Garhwal Himalayas, to form circles around trees to stop them being felled and giving rise to the Chipko Movement in India.

  

1975 The Biological Weapons Convention comes into force. 1976 Queen Elizabeth II sends the first royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. 1979 Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, D.C..

1982 A groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, D.C..

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1991 Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay sign the Treaty of Asuncin, establishing Mercosur, the South Common Market.

  

1995 The Schengen Treaty comes into effect. 1997 Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven's Gate cult suicides. 1998 Oued Bouaicha massacre in Algeria: 52 people are killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.

 

1999 The "Melissa worm" infects Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems around the world. 1999 A jury in Michigan finds Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man.

 

2001 World Championship Wrestling is purchased by the World Wrestling Federation. 2005 The Taiwanese government calls on 1 million Taiwanese to demonstrate in Taipei, in opposition to the AntiSecession Law of the People's Republic of China. Around 200,000 to 300,000 attend the demonstration.

2006 The military junta ruling Burma officially names Naypyidaw, a new city in Mandalay Division, as the new capital. Yangon had formerly been the nation's capital.

MARCH 27
          
196 BC Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt. 1306 Robert the Bruce is crowned King of Scotland at Scone. 1309 Pope Clement V excommunicates Venice and all its population. 1329 Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical. 1613 The first English child born in Canada at Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland to Nicholas Guy. 1625 Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France. 1782 Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1794 The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates. 1794 Denmark and Sweden form a neutrality compact. 1809 Peninsular War: A combined Franco-Polish force defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Ciudad-Real. 1814 War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

1836 Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.

  

1846 Mexican-American War: Siege of Fort Texas. 1851 First reported sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans. 1854 Crimean War: The United Kingdom declares war on Russia.

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1871 The first international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, is played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place. 1881 Rioting takes place in Basingstoke in protest against the daily vociferous promotion of rigid Temperance by the Salvation Army.

1884 A mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, US, attacks members of a jury who had returned a verdict of manslaughter in a clear case of murder, and then over the next few days would riot and destroy the courthouse.

1886 Famous Apache warrior, Geronimo, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.

  

1890 A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 and injuring 200. 1910 A fire during a barn-dance in kritflps, Hungary, kills 312. 1915 Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life.

   

1918 Moldova and Bessarabia join Romania. 1938 Second Sino-Japanese War: The Battle of Taierzhuang takes place. 1941 World War II: Yugoslavian Air Force officers topple the pro-axis government in a bloodless coup. 1943 World War II: Battle of the Komandorski Islands In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce agarrison at Kiska.

   

1945 World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins. 1948 The Second Congress of the Workers Party of North Korea is convened. 1958 Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union. 1963 Beeching Axe: Dr. Richard Beeching issues a report calling for huge cuts to the United Kingdom's rail network.

1964 The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

  

1975 Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins. 1976 The first 4.6 miles of the Washington Metro subway system opens. 1977 Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). 61 survived on the Pan Am flight.

 

1980 The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212. 1980 Silver Thursday: A steep fall in silver prices, resulting from the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the market in silver, led to panic on commodity and futures exchanges.

1981 The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.

1986 A car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing 1 police officer and injuring 21 people.

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1990 The United States begins broadcasting TV Mart to Cuba in an effort to bridge the information blackout imposed by the Castro regime.

 

1993 Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People's Republic of China. 1993 Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.

1994 One of the biggest tornado outbreaks in recent memory hits the Southeastern United States. One tornado slams into a church in Piedmont, Alabama during Palm Sundayservices killing 20 and injuring 90.

 

1994 The Eurofighter takes its first flight in Manching, Germany. 1998 The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.

 

2000 A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills 1 and injures 71. 2002 Passover Massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people partaking of the Passover meal in Netanya, Israel.

2004 HMS Scylla (F71), a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.

 

2009 Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Indonesia, fails, killing at least 99 people. 2009 A suicide bomber kills at least 48 at a mosque in the Khyber Agency of Pakistan.

MARCH 28
 
37 Roman Emperor Caligula accepts the titles of the Principate, entitled to him by the Senate. 193 Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus.

 

364 Roman Emperor Valentinian I appoint his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor. 845 Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.

  

1776 Juan Bautista de Anza finds the site for the Presidio of San Francisco. 1794 Allies under the prince of Coburg defeat French forces at Le Cateau. 1795 Partitions of Poland: The Duchy of Courland, a northern fief of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ceases to exist and becomes part of Imperial Russia.

   

1802 Heinrich Wilhelm Matthus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man. 1809 Peninsular War: France defeats Spain in the Battle of Medelin. 1854 Crimean War: France and Britain declare war on Russia. 1860 First Taranaki War: The Battle of Waireka begins.

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1862 American Civil War: Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of New Mexico territory. The battle began on March 26.

  

1871 The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris. 1889 The Yngsj murder occurs in Yngsj, Sweden and Anna Mnsdotter is arrested along with her son. 1910 Henri Fabre becomes the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from a water runway near Martigues, France.

    

1913 Guatemala becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1920 affects the Great Lakes region and Deep South states. 1930 Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara. 1939 Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquers Madrid. 1941 World War II: Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean Sea, British Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham leads the Royal Navy in the destruction of three major Italianheavy cruisers and two destroyers.

1942 World War II: In occupied France, British naval forces successfully raid the German-occupied port of St. Nazaire.

1946 Cold War: The United States State Department releases the AchesonLilienthal Report, outlining a plan for the international control of nuclear power.

 

1959 The State Council of the People's Republic of China dissolves the Government of Tibet. 1968 Brazilian high school student Edson Lus de Lima Souto is shot by the police in a protest for cheaper meals at a restaurant for low-income students. The aftermath of his death is one of the first major events against the military dictatorship.

1969 Greek poet and Nobel Prize laureate Giorgos Seferis makes a famous statement on the BBC World Service opposing the junta in Greece.

1969 The McGill franais movement protest occurs, the second largest protest in Montreal's history with 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, CEGEP students, and even some McGill students at McGill's Roddick Gates. This led to the majority of the protesters getting arrested.

1978 The US Supreme Court hands down 5-3 decision in Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.

1979 Operators of Three Mile Island's Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania fail to recognize that a relief valve in the primary coolant system has stuck open following an unexpected shutdown. As a result, enough coolant drains out of the system to allow the core to overheat and partially melt down.

1979 The British House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence against James Callaghan's government, precipitating a general election.

1990 President George H. W. Bush posthumously awards Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.

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1994 In South Africa, Zulus and African National Congress supporters battle in central Johannesburg, resulting in 18 deaths.

 

1999 Kosovo War: Serb paramilitary and military forces kill 146 Kosovo Albanians in the Izbica massacre. 2005 The 2005 Sumatra earthquake rocks Indonesia, and at magnitude 8.7 is the fourth strongest earthquake since 1965.

2006 At least 1 million union members, students, and unemployed take to the streets in France in protest at the government's proposed First Employment Contract law.

MARCH 29

1461 Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England.

1500 Cesare Borgia is given the title of Captain General and Gonfalonier by his father Rodrigo Borgia after returning from his conquests in the Romagna.

 

1549 The city of Salvador da Bahia, the first capital of Brazil, is founded. 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.

 

1638 Swedish colonists establish the first European settlement in Delaware, naming it New Sweden. 1792 King Gustav III of Sweden dies after being shot in the back at a midnight masquerade ball at Stockholm's Royal Opera 13 days earlier. He is succeeded by Gustav IV Adolf.

1806 Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.

1809 King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicates after a coup d'tat. At the Diet of Porvoo, Finland's four Estates pledge allegiance to Alexander I of Russia, commencing the secession of the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden.

   

1831 Great Bosnian uprising: Bosniaks rebel against Turkey. 1847 Mexican-American War: United States forces led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege. 1849 The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab. 1857 Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the British rule in India and inspires a long-drawn War of Independence of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.

1865 American Civil War: Federal forces under Major General Philip Sheridan move to flank Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee as the Appomattox Campaign begins.

1867 Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1871 The Royal Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria.

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1879 Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus. 1882 The Knights of Columbus are established. 1886 Dr. John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. 1911 The M1911 .45 ACP pistol becomes the official U.S. Army side arm. 1930 Heinrich Brning is appointed German Reichskanzler. 1936 In Germany, Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany's illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.

 

1941 The North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement goes into effect at 03:00 local time. 1941 World War II: British Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy forces defeat those of the Italian Regia Marina off the Peloponnesian coast of Greece in the Battle of Cape Matapan.

1942 The Bombing of Lbeck in World War II is the first major success for the RAF Bomber Command against Germany and a German city.

   

1945 World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England. 1946 Instituto Tecnolgico Autnomo de Mxico, one of Mexico's leading universities, is founded. 1951 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. 1957 The New York, Ontario and Western Railway makes its final run, the first major U.S. railroad to be abandoned in its entirety.

1961 The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections.

1971 My Lai massacre: Lieutenant William Calley is convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

1971 A Los Angeles, California jury recommends the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers.

 

1973 Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam. 1973 Operation Barrel Roll, a covert US bombing campaign in Laos to stop communist infiltration of South Vietnam, ends.

 

1974 NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury. It was launched on November 3, 1973. 1982 The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) receives the Royal Assent from Queen Elizabeth II, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1990 The Czechoslovak parliament is unable to reach an agreement on what to call the country after the fall of Communism, sparking the so-called Hyphen War.

1993 Catherine Callbeck becomes premier of Prince Edward Island and the first woman to be elected in a general election as premier of a Canadian province.

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1999 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark (10,006.78) for the first time, during the height of the internet boom.

 

1999 A magnitude 6.8 earthquake strikes the Chamoli district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, killing 103. 2002 In reaction to the Passover massacre two days prior, Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield against Palestinian militants, its largest military operation in the West Banksince the 1967 Six-Day War.

 

2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members. 2004 The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants.

 

2008 Thirty-five countries and over 370 cities join Earth Hour for the first time. 2010 Two female suicide bombers hit the Moscow Metro system at the peak of the morning rush hour, killing 40.

MARCH 30

1282 The people of Sicily rebel against the Angevin king Charles I, in what becomes known as the Sicilian Vespers.

     

1296 Edward I sacks Berwick-upon-Tweed, during armed conflict between Scotland and England. 1814 Napoleonic Wars: Sixth Coalition forces march into Paris. 1814 Joachim Murat issues the Rimini Declaration which would later inspire Italian Unification. 1822 The Florida Territory is created in the United States. 1842 Anesthesia is used for the first time, in an operation by the American surgeon Dr. Crawford Long. 1844 One of the most important battles of the Dominican War of Independence from Haiti takes place near the city of Santiago de los Caballeros.

1855 Origins of the American Civil War: Bleeding Kansas "Border Ruffians" from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slaverylegislature.

  

1856 The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War. 1863 Danish prince Wilhelm Georg is chosen as King George of Greece. 1867 Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million, about 2 cent/acre ($4.19/km ), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward.

 

1870 Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction. 1885 The Battle for Kushka triggers the Panjdeh Incident which nearly gives rise to war between the British Empire and Russian Empire.

  

1909 The Queensboro Bridge opens, linking Manhattan and Queens. 1910 The Mississippi Legislature founds The University of Southern Mississippi. 1912 Sultan Abdelhafid signs the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate.

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1918 Outburst of bloody March Events in Baku and other locations of Baku Governorate. 1939 The Heinkel He 100 fighter sets a world airspeed record of 463 mph. 1940 Sino-Japanese War: Japan declares Nanking capital of a new Chinese puppet government, nominally controlled by Wang Ching-wei.

     

1944 World War II: Allied bombers conduct their most severe bombing run on Sofia, Bulgaria. 1945 World War II: Soviet Union forces invade Austria and take Vienna; Polish and Soviet forces liberate Gda sk. 1949 A riot breaks out in Austurvllur square in Reykjavk, when Iceland joins NATO. 1954 The Yonge Street subway line opens in Toronto. It is the first subway in Canada. 1961 The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed in New York City. 1965 Vietnam War: A car bomb explodes in front of the US Embassy, Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others.

1972 Vietnam War: The Easter Offensive begins after North Vietnamese forces cross into the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of South Vietnam.

 

1976 The first Land Day protests are held in Israel/Palestine. 1979 Airey Neave, a British Member of Parliament, is killed by a car bomb as he exits the Palace of Westminster. The Irish National Liberation Army claims responsibility.

 

1981 President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr. 1982 Space Shuttle program: STS-3 Mission is completed with the landing of Columbia at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

 

2006 The United Kingdom Terrorism Act 2006 becomes a law. 2009 Twelve gunmen attack the Manawan Police Academy in Lahore, Pakistan.

MARCH 31

307 After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.

1146 Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vzelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.

1492 Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1717 A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.

1774 American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.

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1822 The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following an attempted rebellion, depicted by the French artist Eugne Delacroix.

1854 Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate toAmerican trade.

     

1866 The Spanish Navy bombs the harbor of Valparaso, Chile. 1877 The family with samurai antecedents that responded to the Saig army in 1885 The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland. 1889 The Eiffel Tower is officially opened. 1903 Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft. 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. ita Nakatsu, rebels.

  

1909 Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1910 Six North Staffordshire Pottery towns federate to form modern Stoke-on-Trent. 1917 The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.

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 Pictures 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 destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000. 1931 TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas killing 8 including Knute Rockne, head football coach at the University of Notre Dame

  

1933 The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment. 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.

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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, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum. 1964 A coup d'tat in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castello Branco. 1965 An Iberia Airlines Convair 440 crashes into the sea on approach to Tangier, killing 47 of 51 occupants. 1966 The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.

 

1970 Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit. 1970 Nine terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijack Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.

 

1979 The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien). 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.

1986 A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166.

   

1986 Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England. 1990 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax. 1991 The Islamic Constitutional Movement, or Hadas, is established in Kuwait. 1991 Georgian independence referendum, 1991: 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.

1994 Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

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APRIL
APRIL 1

286 Emperor Diocletian elevates his general Maximian to co-emperor with the rank of Augustus and gives him control over the Western regions of theRoman Empire.

     

325 Crown Prince Jin Chengdi, age 4, succeeds his father Jin Mingdi as emperor of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. 527 Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne. 1293 Robert Winchelsey leaves England for Rome, to be consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury. 1318 Berwick-upon-Tweed is captured by the Scottish from England. 1340 Niels Ebbesen kills Gerhard III of Holstein in his bedroom, ending the 1332-1340 interregnum in Denmark. 1572 In the Eighty Years' War, the Watergeuzen capture Brielle from the Spaniards, gaining the first foothold on land for what would become the Dutch Republic.

1789 In New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its firstHouse Speaker.

 

1826 Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine. 1833 The Convention of 1833, a political gathering of settlers in Mexican Texas to help draft a series of petitions to the Mexican government, begins in San Felipe de Austin

 

1854 Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens' magazine, Household Words. 1865 American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.

      

1867 Singapore becomes a British crown colony. 1871 The first stage of the Brill Tramway opened. 1873 The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547. 1887 Mumbai Fire Brigade is established. 1891 The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois. 1893 The rank of Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy is established. 1908 The Territorial Force (renamed Territorial Army in 1920) is formed as a volunteer reserve component of the British Army.

 

1918 The Royal Air Force is created by the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. 1919 The Staatliches Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar.

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1922 Six Irish Catholic civilians are shot and beaten-to-death by a gang of policemen in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1924 Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch". However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.

 

1924 The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed. 1933 The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organize a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts.

1933 English cricketer Wally Hammond set a record for the highest individual Test innings of 336 not out, during a Test match against New Zealand.

  

1936 Orissa formerly known as Kalinga or Utkal becomes a state in India. 1937 Aden becomes a British crown colony. 1939 Generalsimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.

    

1941 The Blockade Runner Badge for the German navy is instituted. 1941 A military coup in Iraq overthrows the regime of 'Abd al-Ilah and installs Rashid Ali as Prime Minister. 1944 Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen. 1945 World War II: Operation Iceberg United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war. 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake: A 7.8 magnitude earthquake near the Aleutian Islands creates a tsunami that strikes the Hawaiian Islands killing 159, mostly in Hilo.

  

1946 Formation of the Malayan Union. 1947 Paul becomes king of Greece, on the death of his childless elder brother, George II. 1948 Cold War: Berlin Airlift Military forces, under direction of the Russian-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.

 

1948 Faroe Islands receive autonomy from Denmark. 1949 Chinese Civil War: The Communist Party of China holds unsuccessful peace talks with the Kuomintang in Beijing, after three years of fighting.

  

1949 The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years. 1949 The 26 counties of the Irish Free State become the Republic of Ireland. 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.

1955 The EOKA rebellion against The British Empire begins in Cyprus, with the goal of obtaining the desired unification ("enosis") with Greece.

 

1957 The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama. 1959 Iakovos is enthroned as Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America.

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1960 The TIROS-1 satellite transmits the first television picture from space. 1967 The United States Department of Transportation begins operation. 1969 The Hawker Siddeley Harrier enters service with the Royal Air Force. 1970 President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigaretteadvertisements on television and radio in the United States, starting on January 1, 1971.

1971 Bangladesh Liberation War: The Pakistan Army massacred over 1,000 people in Keraniganj Upazila, Bangladesh.

     

1973 Project Tiger, a tiger conservation project, is launched in the Corbett National Park, India. 1974 In the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties come into being. 1976 Apple Inc. is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. 1976 Conrail takes over operations from six bankrupt railroads in the Northeastern U.S.. 1976 The Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect hoax is first reported by British astronomer Patrick Moore. 1978 The Philippine College of Commerce, through a presidential decree, becomes the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

 

1979 Iran becomes an Islamic Republic by a 98% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah. 1989 Margaret Thatcher's new local government tax, the Community Charge (commonly known as the "poll tax"), is introduced in Scotland.

   

1992 Start of the Bosnian war. 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp is seen passing over perihelion. 1999 Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories. 2001 An EP-3E United States Navy surveillance aircraft collides with a Chinese People's Liberation Army Shenyang J-8 fighter jet. The Navy crew makes an emergency landing inHainan, People's Republic of China and is detained.

2001 Former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milo evi surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on war crimes charges.

   

2001 Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands, the first country to allow it. 2006 The Serious Organised Crime Agency, dubbed the "British FBI", is created in the United Kingdom. 2009 Croatia and Albania join NATO 2011 After protests against the burning of the Quran turned violent, a mob attacked a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan and killed thirteen people, including eight foreign workers.

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APRIL 2
     
1755 Commodore William James captures the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on west coast of India. 1792 The Coinage Act is passed establishing the United States Mint. 1800 Ludwig van Beethoven leads the premiere of his First Symphony in Vienna. 1801 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Copenhagen The British destroy the Danish fleet. 1851 Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand. 1863 Richmond Bread Riot: Food shortages incite hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand that the Confederate government release emergency supplies.

1865 American Civil War: The Siege of Petersburg is broken Union troops capture the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia, forcing Confederate GeneralRobert E. Lee to retreat.

1865 American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet flee the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

  

1885 Cree warriors attacked the village of Frog Lake, North-West Territories, Canada, killing 9. 1900 The Congress passes the Foraker Act, giving Puerto Rico limited self-rule. 1902 Dmitry Sipyagin, Minister of Interior of the Russian Empire, is assassinated in the Marie Palace, St Petersburg.

     

1902 "Electric Theatre", the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California. 1911 The Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts the country's first national census. 1917 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. 1930 After the mysterious death of Empress Zewditu, Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. 1945 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Brazil are established. 1956 As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiere on CBS-TV. The two soaps become the first daytime dramas to debut in the 30-minute format.

 

1962 The first official Panda crossing is opened outside Waterloo station, London. 1972 Actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s.

  

1973 Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal research service. 1973 The Liberal Movement breaks away from the Liberal and Country League in South Australia. 1975 Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees flee from the Quang Ngai Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops.

1975 Construction of the CN Tower is completed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It reaches 553.33 metres (1,815.4 ft) in height, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure.

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1980 President Jimmy Carter signs the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act in an effort to help the U.S. economy rebound.

  

1982 Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands. 1984 Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched aboard Soyuz T-11, and becomes the first Indian in space. 1989 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro in an attempt to mend strained relations.

1991 Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm (who had resigned) as Premier of British Columbia.

1992 In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison.

2002 Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem into which armed Palestinians had retreated. A siege ensues.

2004 Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid. Their attack is thwarted.

2006 Over 60 tornadoes break out in the United States; hardest hit is in Tennessee with 29 people killed.

APRIL 3
    
1043 Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. 1077 The first Parliament of Friuli is created. 1559 The Peace of Cateau-Cambrsis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars. 1834 The generals in the Greek War of Independence stand trial for treason. 1860 The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.

1865 American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.

  

1882 American Old West: Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford. 1885 Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design. 1888 The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.

1895 Trial of the libel case instigated by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

 

1922 Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1929 RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.

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1933 First flight over Mount Everest, a British expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale, and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston

1936 Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.

1942 World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.

  

1946 Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March. 1948 President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries. 1948 In Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju massacre.

1955 The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.

1956 Hudsonville-Standale Tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.

  

1961 The Leadbeater's Possum is rediscovered in Australia after 72 years. 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. 1969 Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.

1973 Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.

1974 The Super Outbreak occurs, the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history. The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.

1975 Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.

1981 The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

 

1996 Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is arrested at his cabin in Montana, United States. 1996 A United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board.

 

1997 The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but 1 of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas. 2000 United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.

2004 Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.

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2007 Conventional-Train World Speed Record: a French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record.

2008 ATA Airlines, once one of the 10 largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, files for bankruptcy for the second time in 5 years and ceases all operations.

2008 Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be removed and taken into state custody.

APRIL 4

1081 Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, bringing the Komnenian dynasty to full power.

      

1147 First historical record of Moscow. 1581 Francis Drake is knighted for completing a circumnavigation of the world. 1660 Declaration of Breda by King Charles II of England. 1721 Sir Robert Walpole enters office as the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom under King George I. 1812 U.S. President James Madison enacted a ninety-day embargo on trade with the United Kingdom. 1814 Napoleon abdicates for the first time. 1818 The United States Congress adopts the flag of the United States with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (then 20).

1841 William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and the one with the shortest term served.

1850 The Great Fire of Cottenham, a large part of the Cambridgeshire village (England) is burnt to the ground under suspicious circumstances.

  

1850 Los Angeles, California is incorporated as a city. 1859 Bryant's Minstrels debut "Dixie" in New York City in the finale of a blackface minstrel show. 1865 American Civil War: A day after Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln visits the Confederate capital.

   

1866 Alexander II of Russia narrowly escapes an assassination attempt in the city of Kiev. 1873 The Kennel Club is founded, the oldest and first official registry of purebred dogs in the world. 1887 Argonia, Kansas elects Susanna M. Salter as the first female mayor in the United States. 1905 In India, the 1905 Kangra earthquake hits the Kangra valley, kills 20,000, and destroys most buildings in Kangra, Mcleodganj and Dharamshala

1913 The Greek aviator Emmanouil Argyropoulos becomes the first pilot victim of the Hellenic Air Force when his plane crashes.

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1930 The Communist Party of Panama is founded. 1939 Faisal II becomes King of Iraq. 1944 World War II: First bombardment of Bucharest by Anglo-American forces kills 3000 civilians. 1945 World War II: American troops liberate Ohrdruf forced labor camp in Germany. 1945 World War II: Soviet Army takes control of Hungary. 1945 World War II: American troops capture Kassel. 1949 Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1958 The CND Peace Symbol displayed in public for the first time in London. 1960 France agrees to grant independence to the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal and French Sudan. 1964 The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. 1965 The first model of the new Saab Viggen fighter aircraft plane is unveiled. 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech in New York City's Riverside Church.

      

1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 1968 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 6. 1968 AEK Athens BC becomes the first Greek team to win the European Basketball Cup. 1969 Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart. 1973 The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated. 1975 Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico 1975 Vietnam War: Operation Baby Lift A United States Air Force C-5A Galaxy crashes near Saigon, South Vietnam shortly after takeoff, transporting orphans 172 die.

      

1976 Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest. 1979 President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan is executed. 1979 The 2nd Congress of the Communist Youth of Greece starts. 1983 Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space (STS-6). 1984 President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons. 1988 Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona is convicted in his impeachment trial and removed from office. 1991 Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their plane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania.

1994 Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications Corporation under the name "Mosaic Communications Corporation".

  

1996 Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. 2002 The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War. 2002 In what is known as the Society Murders, Matthew Wales kills his parents in Melbourne, Australia.

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2007 15 British Royal Navy personnel held in Iran are released by the Iranian President.

APRIL 5

1242 During a battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, Russian forces, led by Alexander Nevsky, rebuff an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.

1566 Two-hundred Dutch noblemen, led by Hendrik van Brederode, force themselves into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise, denouncing the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. The Inquisition is suspended and a delegation is sent to Spain to petition Philip II.

1609 Daimyo (Lord) of the Satsuma Domain in southern Ky sh , Japan, completes his successful invasion of the Ry ky Kingdom in Okinawa.

   

1614 In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe. 1621 The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to Great Britain. 1722 The Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island. 1792 U.S. President George Washington exercises his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power is used in the United States.

 

1804 High Possil Meteorite: The first recorded meteorite in Scotland falls in Possil. 1818 In the Battle of Maip, Chile's independence movement led by Bernardo O'Higgins and Jos de San Martn win a decisive victory over Spain, leaving 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead.

   

1862 American Civil War: The Battle of Yorktown begins. 1874 Birkenhead Park, the first civic public park, is opened in Birkenhead. 1879 Chile declares war on Bolivia and Peru, starting the War of the Pacific. 1900 Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover a large cache of clay tablets with hieroglyphic writing in a script they call Linear B.

1904 The first international rugby league match is played between England and an Other Nationalities team (Welsh & Scottish players) in Central Park, Wigan, England.

  

1923 Firestone Tire and Rubber Company begins production of balloon-tires. 1932 Alcohol prohibition in Finland ends. Alcohol sales begin in Alko liquor stores. 1932 Dominion of Newfoundland: 10,000 rioters seize the Colonial Building leading to the end of selfgovernment.

1933 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs two executive orders: 6101 to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps, and 6102 "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates" by U.S. citizens.

1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado kills 233 in Tupelo, Mississippi.

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1942 World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a carrier-based air attack on Colombo, Ceylon during the Indian Ocean Raid. Port and civilian facilities are damaged and the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire are sunk southwest of the island.

1943 World War II: American bomber aircraft accidentally cause more than 900 civilian deaths, including 209 children, and 1300 wounded among the civilian population of theBelgian town of Mortsel. The target is the Erla factory one kilometer from the residential area hit.

 

1944 World War II: 270 inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans. 1945 Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip "Tito" Broz signs an agreement with the Soviet Union to allow "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory".

  

1946 Soviet troops leave the island of Bornholm, Denmark after an 11 month occupation. 1949 Fireside Theater debuts on television. 1949 A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois, kills 77 people and leads to nationwide fire code improvements in the United States.

   

1951 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death for performing espionage for the Soviet Union. 1955 Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health. 1956 Fidel Castro declares himself at war with the President of Cuba. 1956 In Sri Lanka, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna win the general elections in a landslide and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike is sworn in as the Prime Minister.

1957 In India, Communists win the first elections in united Kerala and E.M.S. Namboodiripad is sworn in as the first chief minister.

1958 Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest non-nuclear controlled explosions of the time.

 

1969 Vietnam War: Massive antiwar demonstrations occur in many U.S. cities. 1971 In Sri Lanka, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna launches insurrection against the United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

    

1976 In the People's Republic of China, the April Fifth Movement leads to the Tiananmen incident. 1986 Three people are killed in the bombing of the La Belle Discothque in West Berlin, Germany. 1991 An ASA EMB 120 crashes in Brunswick, Georgia, killing all 23 aboard. 1992 Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru, dissolves the Peruvian congress by military force. 1992 The Siege of Sarajevo begins when Serb paramilitaries murder peace protesters Suada Dilberovic and Olga Su i on the Vrbanja Bridge.

1998 In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honsh opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.

and costing about $3.8 billion USD,

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1999 Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 are handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.

 

2007 Georgia establishes a Provisional Administrative Entity in the disputed region of South Ossetia. 2009 North Korea launches its controversial Kwangmy ngs ng-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council, as well as participating states of Six-party talks.

2010 Twenty-nine coal miners are killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia.

APRIL 6

46 BC Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) in the battle of Thapsus.

       

402 Stilicho stymies the Visigoths under Alaric in the Battle of Pollentia. 1199 King Richard I of England dies from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder. 1250 Seventh Crusade: Ayyubids of Egypt capture King Louis IX of France in the Battle of Fariskur. 1320 The Scots reaffirm their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath. 1327 The poet Petrarch first sees his idealized love, Laura, in the church of Saint Clare in Avignon. 1385 John, Master of the Order of Aviz, is made king John I of Portugal. 1453 Mehmed II begins his siege of Constantinople (Istanbul), which falls on May 29. 1580 One of the largest earthquakes recorded in the history of England, Flanders, or Northern France, takes place.

1652 At the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp that eventually becomes Cape Town .

 

1667 An earthquake devastates Dubrovnik, then an independent city-state. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Ships of the Continental Navy fail in their attempt to capture a Royal Navy dispatch boat.

  

1782 Rama I of Siam (modern day Thailand) founds the Chakri dynasty. 1793 During the French Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety becomes the executive organ of the republic. 1808 John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company, that would eventually make him America's first millionaire.

1812 British forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington assault the fortress of Badajoz. This would be the turning point in the Peninsular War against Napoleon-ledFrance.

1814 Nominal beginning of the Bourbon Restoration anniversary date that Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba. (Rule by the Bourbon's is delayed a few weeks, though allies held most key locales of France.)

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1830 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the original church of the Latter Day Saint movement, is organized by Joseph Smith, Jr. and others at Fayette or Manchester, New York.

1860 The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saintslater renamed Community of Christis organized by Joseph Smith III and others at Amboy, Illinois

1861 First performance of Arthur Sullivan's debut success, his suite of incidental music for The Tempest, leading to a career that included the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

1862 American Civil War: The Battle of Shiloh begins in Tennessee, forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant meet Confederate troops led by General Albert Sidney Johnston.

1865 American Civil War: The Battle of Sayler's Creek Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia fights its last major battle while in retreat from Richmond, Virginia.

1866 The Grand Army of the Republic, an American patriotic organization composed of Union veterans of the American Civil War, is founded. It lasts until 1956.

 

1869 Celluloid is patented. 1888 Thomas Green Clemson dies, bequeathing his estate to the State of South Carolina to establish Clemson Agricultural College.

 

1893 Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is dedicated by Wilford Woodruff. 1895 Oscar Wilde is arrested in the Cadogan Hotel, London after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.

1896 In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

1903 The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev (Bessarabia) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Israel and the Western world.

 

1909 Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole. 1911 During the Battle of Deiq, Ded Gjon Luli Dedvukaj, leader of the Malsori Albanians, raises the Albanian flag in the town of Tuzi, Montenegro, for the first time after George Kastrioti (Skenderbeg).

1917 World War I: The United States declares war on Germany (see President Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress).

    

1919 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi orders a general strike. 1923 The first Prefects Board in Southeast Asia is formed in Victoria Institution, Malaysia. 1926 Varney Airlines makes its first commercial flight (Varney is the root company of United Airlines). 1929 Huey P. Long Governor of Louisiana is impeached by the Louisiana House of Representatives. 1930 Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." beginning the Salt Satyagraha.

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1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak: Another tornado from the same storm system as the Tupelo tornado hits Gainesville, Georgia, killing 203.

1941 World War II: Nazi Germany launches Operation 25 (the invasion of Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and Operation Marita (the invasion of Greece).

  

1945 World War II: Sarajevo is liberated from German and Croatian forces by the Yugoslav Partisans. 1947 The first Tony Awards are presented for theatrical achievement. 1957 Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis buys the Hellenic National Airlines (TAE) and founds Olympic Airlines.

1962 Leonard Bernstein causes controversy with his remarks from the podium during a New York Philharmonic concert featuring Glenn Gould performing Brahms' First Piano Concerto.

        

1965 Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit. 1965 The British Government announces the cancellation of the TSR-2 aircraft project. 1968 In Richmond, Indiana's downtown district, a double explosion kills 41 and injures 150. 1970 Newhall Incident: Four California Highway Patrol officers are killed in a shootout. 1972 Vietnam War: Easter Offensive American forces begin sustained air strikes and naval bombardments. 1973 Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft. 1973 The American League of Major League Baseball begins using the designated hitter. 1974 ABBA win the 19th annual Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with Waterloo. 1982 Estonian Communist Party bureau declares "fight against bourgeois TV" meaning Finnish TV a top priority of the propagandists of Estonian SSR

1984 Members of Cameroon's Republican Guard unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya.

1994 The Rwandan Genocide begins when the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvnal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down.

 

1998 Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of reaching India. 1998 Travelers Group announces an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger is completed on October 8, of that year, formingCitibank.

2004 Rolandas Paksas becomes the first president of Lithuania to be peacefully removed from office by impeachment.

2005 Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani becomes Iraqi president; Shiite Arab Ibrahim al-Jaafari is named premier the next day.

 

2009 A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near L'Aquila, Italy, killing 307. 2010 Maoist rebels kill 76 CRPF officers in Dantewada district, India.

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APRIL 7

529 First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.

   

1348 Charles University is founded in Prague. 1521 Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu. 1541 Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies. 1724 Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion BWV 245 at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

 

1776 Captain John Barry and the USS Lexington captures the Edward. 1788 American Pioneers to the Northwest Territory arrive at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio, as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory, and opening the westward expansion of the new country.

1798 The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.

1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

 

1827 John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year. 1829 Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, commences translation of the Book of Mormon, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.

 

1831 D. Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, resigns. He goes to his native Portugal to become King D. Pedro IV. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Shiloh ends the Union Army under General Ulysses S. Grant defeats the Confederates near Shiloh, Tennessee.

1868 Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation is assassinated by the Irish, in one of the few Canadian political assassinations, and the only one of a federal politician.

   

1890 Completion of the first Lake Biwa Canal. 1906 Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples. 1906 The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco. 1908 H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

1922 Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior leases Teapot Dome petroleum reserves in Wyoming.

1927 First distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

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1933 Prohibition is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment.

  

1939 World War II: Italy invades Albania. 1940 Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp. 1943 Holocaust: In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka where they are shot dead and buried in ditches.

 

1943 Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the WWII Axis Occupation. 1945 World War II: The Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, is sunk by American planes 200 miles north of Okinawa while en-route to a suicide mission in Operation Ten-Go.

1945 World War II: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th, and 17th Krajina brigades from the Tenth division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.

       

1946 Syria's independence from France is officially recognised. 1948 The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations. 1948 A Buddhist monastery burns in Shanghai, China, leaving twenty monks dead. 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference. 1956 Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco. 1964 IBM announces the System/360. 1969 The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1. 1971 President Richard Nixon announces his decision to increase the rate of American troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

 

1976 Former British Cabinet Minister John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party. 1977 German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.

  

1978 Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter. 1983 During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first space shuttle spacewalk. 1985 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.

 

1989 Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway killing 42 sailors. 1990 Iran Contra Affair: John Poindexter is found guilty of five charges for his part in the scandal (the conviction is later reversed on appeal).

  

1992 Republika Srpska announces its independence. 1994 Rwandan Genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda. 1994 Auburn Calloway attempts to hijack FedEx Express Flight 705 and crash it to insure his family with his life insurance policy. The crew subdues him and lands the aircraft safely.

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1995 First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya. 1999 The World Trade Organization rules in favor of the United States in its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas.

  

2001 Mars Odyssey is launched. 2003 U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's regime falls two days later. 2009 Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

2009 Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.

APRIL 8

217 Roman Emperor Caracalla is assassinated (and succeeded) by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.

       

1093 The new Winchester Cathedral is dedicated by Walkelin. 1139 Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated. 1149 Pope Eugene III takes refuge in the castle of Ptolemy II of Tusculum. 1271 In Syria, sultan Baybars conquers the Krak of Chevaliers. 1730 Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated. 1740 War of Jenkin's Ear: Three British ships capture the Spanish third-rate Princesa. 1767 Ayutthaya kingdom falls to Burmese invaders. 1808 The Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore is promoted to an archdiocese, with the founding of the dioceses of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, andBardstown (now Louisville) by Pope Pius VII.

 

1820 The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos. 1832 Black Hawk War: Around three-hundred United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Mansfield Union forces are thwarted by the Confederate army at Mansfield, Louisiana.

   

1866 Italy and Prussia ally against Austrian Empire. 1886 William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons. 1893 The first recorded college basketball game occurs in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. 1895 In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. the Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.

1904 The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.

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1904 British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the first chapter of The Book of the Law. 1904 Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times. 1906 Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, dies. 1908 Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School. 1911 Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity. 1913 The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring direct election of Senators, becomes law. 1916 In Corona, California, race car driver Bob Burman crashes, killing three, and badly injuring five, spectators.

1918 World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City's financial district.

1929 Indian Independence Movement: At the Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw handouts and bombs to court arrest.

1935 The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.

  

1942 World War II: Siege of Leningrad Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad. 1942 World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines. 1943 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.

1945 World War II: After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.

 

1946 The last meeting of the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations, is held. 1946 lectricit de France, the world's largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.

   

1950 India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat-Nehru Pact. 1952 U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike. 1953 Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by Kenya's British rulers. 1954 A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collided with a Trans-Canada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.

1959 A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be calledCOBOL.

 

1959 The Organization of American States drafts an agreement to create the Inter-American Development Bank. 1960 The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks asWiedergutmachung.

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1961 A large explosion on board the MV Dara in the Persian Gulf kills 238. 1968 BOAC Flight 712 catches fire shortly after take off. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.

 

1970 Bahr el-Baqar incident: Israeli bombers strike an Egyptian school. 46 children are killed. 1974 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run to surpass Babe Ruth's 39year-old record.

1975 Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.

 

1975 Voyageurs National Park is established in northern Minnesota. 1985 Bhopal disaster: India files suit against Union Carbide for the disaster which killed an estimated 2,000 and injured another 200,000.

1987 Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid controversy over racially charged remarks he had made while on Nightline.

1992 Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.

 

1993 The Republic of Macedonia joins the United Nations. 1999 Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.

2004 Darfur conflict: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.

 

2005 Over four million people attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II. 2006 Shedden massacre: The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Ontario, Canada. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos motorcycle gang.

 

2008 The construction of the world's first building to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain. 2008 Yi So-Yeon becomes the first Korean and second Asian woman to go into space.

APRIL 9
 
193 Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans). 475 Byzantine Emperor Basiliscus issues a circular letter (Enkyklikon) to the bishops of his empire, supporting the Monophysite christological position.

 

1241 Battle of Liegnitz: Mongol forces defeat the Polish and German armies. 1388 Despite being outnumbered 16 to 1, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy are victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Nfels.

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1413 Henry V is crowned King of England. 1440 Christopher of Bavaria is appointed King of Denmark. 1511 St John's College, Cambridge, England, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, receives its charter. 1585 The expedition organised by Sir Walter Raleigh departs England for Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina) to establish the Roanoke Colony.

1609 Eighty Years' War: Spain and the Dutch Republic sign the Treaty of Antwerp to initiate twelve years of truce.

1682 Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.

 

1782 American War of Independence: Battle of the Saintes begins. 1860 On his phonautograph machine, douard-Lon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.

1852 At a general conference of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young explains the AdamGod doctrine, an important part of the theology of Mormon fundamentalism.

1865 American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

1867 Alaska purchase: Passing by a single vote, the United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.

 

1909 The U.S. Congress passes the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act. 1914 Mexican Revolution: One of the world's first naval/air skirmishes takes place off the coast of western Mexico.

 

1916 World War I: The Battle of Verdun German forces launch their third offensive of the battle. 1917 World War I: The Battle of Arras the battle begins with Canadian Corps executing a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.

1918 World War I: The Battle of the Lys the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps is crushed by the German forces during what is called the Spring Offensive on the Belgian region ofFlanders.

  

1918 The National Council of Bessarabia proclaims union with the Kingdom of Romania. 1937 The Kamikaze arrives at Croydon Airport in London it is the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe. 1939 Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial, after being denied the right to sing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall.

 

1940 World War II: Operation Weserbung Germany invades Denmark and Norway. 1942 World War II: The Battle of Bataan/Bataan Death March United States forces surrender on the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee inCeylon (Sri Lanka); Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire are sunk off the island's east coast.

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1945 World War II: The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer is sunk. 1945 World War II: The Battle of Knigsberg, in East Prussia, ends. 1945 The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed. 1947 The Glazier-Higgins-Woodward tornadoes kill 181 and injure 970 in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. 1947 The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court's 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel.

1948 Jorge Elicer Gaitn's assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogot (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in Colombia known as La violencia.

1948 Fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, killing over 100.

1952 Hugo Ballivian's government is overthrown by the Bolivian National Revolution, starting a period of agrarian reform, universal suffrage and the nationalisation of tin mines

 

1957 The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping. 1959 Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

    

1961 The Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, once the largest electric railway in the world, ends operations. 1965 Astrodome opens. First indoor baseball game is played. 1967 The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight. 1968 Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. 1969 The "Chicago Eight" plead not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

 

1969 The first British-built Concorde 002 makes its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford. 1975 The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world.

 

1975 8 people in South Korea, who are involved in People's Revolutionary Party Incident, are hanged. 1980 The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kills philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Bint alHuda after three days of torture.

1981 The U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington (SSBN-598) accidentally collides with the Nissho Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, sinking it.

1989 The April 9 tragedy in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR an anti-Soviet peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes, demanding restoration of Georgian independence is dispersed by theSoviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

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1992 A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison.

1992 John Major's Conservative Party wins an unprecedented fourth general election victory in the United Kingdom.

2003 2003 invasion of Iraq: Baghdad falls to American forces;Saddam Hussein statue topples as Iraqis turn on symbols of their former leader, pulling down the statue and tearing it to pieces.

2005 Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Charles, Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony at Windsor's Guildhall.

2009 In Tbilisi, Georgia, up to 60,000 people protest against the government of Mikheil Saakashvili.

APRIL 10
 
428 Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople. 837 Halley's Comet and Earth experienced their closest approach to one another when their separating distance equalled 0.0342 AU (3.2 million miles).

 

879 Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks. 1407 the lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded with the title Great Treasure Prince of Dharma.

 

1500 Ludovico Sforza is captured by the Swiss troops at Novara and is handed over to the French. 1606 The Charter of the Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.

  

1710 The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, enters into force in Great Britain. 1741 War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz. 1815 The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth's climate for the next two years.

 

1816 The United States Government approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States. 1821 Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Turks from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.

1826 The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Messolonghi start leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.

 

1856 The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University. 1858 The original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonne bell for the Palace of Westminster is cast in Stockton-on-Tees by Warner's of Cripplegate. This however cracked during testing and is recast into the 13.76 tonne bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry and is still in use to date.

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1864 Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is elected emperor of Mexico. 1865 American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.

1866 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.

1868 At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two die from the British/Indian troops.

       

1874 The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska. 1887 On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America. 1904 British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the third and final chapter of The Book of The Law. 1912 The Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage. 1916 The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City. 1919 Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos. 1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons. 1941 World War II: The Axis Powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Paveli 's Usta e fascist insurgents in power.

      

1944 Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp. 1953 Warner Brothers premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax. 1957 The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months. 1959 Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, weds Michiko. 1963 129 people die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea. 1968 Shipwreck of the New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine outside Wellington harbour. 1971 Ping Pong Diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a weeklong visit.

 

1972 20 days after he is kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is executed by communist guerrillas. 1972 Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.

1972 Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.

   

1973 A British Vanguard turboprop crashes during a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104. 1979 Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people. 1991 Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140. 1991 A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.

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1992 The Maraghar Massacre, killing of ethnic Armenian civil population of the village Maraghar by Azerbaijani troops during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

2009 President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis.

2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board including President Lech Kaczy ski.

APRIL 11
         
491 Flavius Anastasius becomes Byzantine Emperor, with the name of Anastasius I. 1079 Bishop Stanislaus of Krakow is executed by order of Boles aw II of Poland. 1241 Batu Khan defeats Bla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Muhi. 1512 War of the League of Cambrai: French forces led by Gaston de Foix win the Battle of Ravenna. 1689 William III and Mary II are crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain. 1713 War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War): Treaty of Utrecht. 1727 Premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion BWV 244b at the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig 1775 The last execution for witchcraft in Germany takes place. 1809 Battle of the Basque Roads Naval battle fought between France and the United Kingdom 1814 The Treaty of Fontainebleau ends the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte, and forces him to abdicate unconditionally for the first time.

 

1856 Battle of Rivas: Juan Santamaria burns down the hostel where William Walker's filibusters are holed up. 1868 Former Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces, marking the end of the Tokugawa shogunate.

 

1876 The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is organized. 1881 Spelman College is founded in Atlanta, Georgia as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, an institute of higher education for African-American women.

   

1888 The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is inaugurated. 1908 SMS Blcher, the last armored cruiser to be built by the German Imperial Navy, launches. 1919 The International Labour Organization is founded. 1921 Emir Abdullah establishes the first centralised government in the newly created British protectorate of Transjordan.

 

1945 World War II: American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp. 1951 Korean War: President Harry Truman relieves General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea.

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1951 The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, is found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by Scottish nationalist students from its place in Westminster Abbey.

 

1952 The Battle of Nanri Island takes place. 1955 The Air India Kashmir Princess is bombed and crashes in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by the Kuomintang.

  

1957 United Kingdom agrees to Singaporean self-rule. 1961 The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem. 1965 The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: Fifty-one tornadoes hit in six Midwestern states, killing 256 people.

1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

   

1970 Apollo 13 is launched. 1976 The Apple I is created. 1979 Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is deposed. 1981 A massive riot in Brixton, South London, results in almost 300 police injuries and 65 serious civilian injuries.

1986 The FBI Miami shootout between eight Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and two heavily-armed and well-trained gunmen.

1987 The London Agreement is secretly signed between Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan.

1990 Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, United Kingdom, say they have seized what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq.

1993 450 prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs.

 

2000 AT&T Park in San Francisco, Minute Maid Park in Houston, and Comerica Park in Detroit open. 2001 The detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, China after a collision with a J8 fighter is released.

 

2002 The Ghriba synagogue bombing by Al Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia. 2002 Over two hundred thousand people marched in Caracas towards the Presidential Palace of Miraflores, to demand the resignation of president Hugo Chavez. 19 of the protesters are killed, and the Minister of Defense Gral. Lucas Rincon announced Hugo Chavez resignation on national TV.

2006 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium.

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2007 2007 Algiers bombings: Two bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers, kills 33 people and wounds a further 222 others.

2011 2011 Minsk Metro bombing

APRIL 12

238 Gordian II lost the Battle of Carthage against the Numidian forces loyal to Maximinus Thrax and is killed. Gordian I, his father, commits suicide.

 

467 Anthemius is elevated to Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.

1204 The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.

   

1557 Cuenca is founded in Ecuador. 1606 The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of Great Britain. 1633 The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins. 1776 American Revolution: With the Halifax Resolves, the North Carolina Provincial Congress authorizes its Congressional delegation to vote for independence from Britain.

1820 Alexander Ypsilantis is declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece.

 

1831 Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse. 1861 American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1862 American Civil War: The Andrews Raid (the Great Locomotive Chase) occurred, starting from Big Shanty, Georgia (now Kennesaw).

1864 American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow,Tennessee.

    

1865 American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army. 1877 The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal. 1910 The SMS Zrinyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, is launched. 1917 World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans. 1927 April 12 Incident: Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.

1934 The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

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1934 The U.S. Auto-Lite Strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers.

  

1935 First flight of the Bristol Blenheim. 1937 Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England. 1945 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.

  

1954 Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in New York City. 1955 The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective. 1961 The Russian (Soviet) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).

1963 The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danishstraits.

 

1968 Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.

1970 Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.

1980 Samuel Doe takes control of Liberia in a coup d'tat, ending over 130 years of minority AmericoLiberian rule over the country.

   

1980 Terry Fox begins his "Marathon of Hope" at St. John's, Newfoundland. 1981 The first launch of a Space Shuttle (Columbia) launches on the STS-1 mission. April 12, 1981: First Space Shuttle launch, flown by Commander John Young and Pilot Bob Crippen onColumbia.

1990 Jim Gary's "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs" exhibition opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

1992 The Euro Disney Resort officially opens with its theme park Euro Disneyland. The resort and its park's name are subsequently changed to Disneyland Paris.

  

1994 Canter & Siegel post the first commercial mass Usenet spam. 1998 An earthquake in Slovenia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale occurs near the town of Bovec. 1999 US President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassmentcivil lawsuit.

2002 A female suicide bomber detonated at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market, killing 7 and wounding 104.

2007 A suicide bomber penetrated the Green Zone and detonated in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MPMohammed Awad and wounding more than twenty other people.

2009 Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwe Dollar as their official currency.

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2010 A train derailed near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.

APRIL 13
  
1111 Henry V is crowned Holy Roman Emperor. 1204 Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire. 1256 The Grand Union of the Augustinian order formed when Pope Alexander IV issues a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae.

1598 Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots. (Edict repealed in 1685.)

          

1612 Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojiro at Funajima island. 1742 George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland. 1796 The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India. 1829 The British Parliament grants freedom of religion to Roman Catholics. 1849 Hungary becomes a republic. 1861 American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces. 1868 The Abyssinian War ends as British and Indian troops capture Magdala. 1870 The Metropolitan Museum of Art founded. 1873 The Colfax Massacre takes place. 1902 James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. 1909 The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the deposal of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

 

1919 The Establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British troops massacre at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India. At least 1200 wounded.

1919 Eugene V. Debs enters prison at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I.

 

1941 Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed. 1943 World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war executed by Soviet forces in the Katy Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in

exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.

1943 The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth.

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1944 Diplomatic relations between New Zealand and the Soviet Union are established. 1945 World War II: German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen Germany. 1945 World War II: Soviet and Bulgarian forces capture Vienna, Austria. 1948 The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.

 

1953 CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA. 1958 During the Cold War, American Van Cliburn wins the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

 

1960 The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world's first satellite navigation system. 1964 At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.

1970 An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.

1972 The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of Chinaadministering Taiwan.

 

1972 Vietnam War: The Battle of An L c begins. 1974 Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the United States' first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.

1975 Bus massacre in Lebanon: Attack by the Phalangist resistance kill 26 militia members of the P.F.L. of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.

1976 The United States Treasury Department reintroduced the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.

 

1984 India moves into Siachen Glacier thus annexing more territory from the Line of Control. 1987 Portugal and the People's Republic of China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.

 

1992 The Great Chicago Flood. 1997 Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.

APRIL 14

43 BC Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus in Mutina, defeats the forces of theconsul Pansa, who is wounded.

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69 Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeats Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.

 

70 Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital, with four Roman legions. 966 After his marriage to the Christian Dobrawa of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converts to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.

  

1028 Henry III, son of Conrad, is elected king of the Germans. 1205 Battle of Adrianople between Bulgarians and Crusaders. 1294 Temr, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong.

  

1341 Sack of Saluzzo (Italy) by Italian-Angevine troops under Manfred V of Saluzzo. 1434 The foundation stone of Cathedral St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France is laid. 1471 In England, the Yorkists under Edward IV defeat the Lancastrians under the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Barnet; the Earl is killed and Edward IVresumes the throne.

1699 Khalsa: Birth of Khalsa, the brotherhood of the Sikh religion, in Northern India in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.

1775 The first abolition society in North America is established. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

1816 Bussa, a slave in British-ruled Barbados, leads a slave rebellion and is killed. For this, he is remembered as the first national hero of Barbados.

 

1828 Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary. 1846 The Donner Party of pioneers departs Springfield, Illinois, for California, on what will become a year-long journey of hardship, cannibalism, and survival.

     

1849 Hungary declares itself independent of Austria with Lajos Kossuth as its leader. 1860 The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California. 1865 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. 1865 U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell. 1881 The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight is fought in El Paso, Texas. 1890 The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.

1894 The first ever commercial motion picture house opened in New York City using ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films.

 

1906 The Azusa Street Revival opens and will launch Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement. 1909 A massacre is orgaized by Ottoman Empire against Armenian population of Cilicia.

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1912 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.

     

1927 The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden. 1931 Spanish Cortes depose King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic. 1931 First edition of the Highway Code published in Great Britain. 1935 "Black Sunday Storm", the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl. 1939 The Grapes of Wrath, by American author John Steinbeck is first published by the Viking Press. 1940 World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway in preparation for a larger force to arrive two days later.

1941 World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organization is put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers after the Axis Operation 25 invasion.Rommel attacks Tobruk.

1944 Bombay Explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor kills 300 and causes economic damage valued then at 20 million pounds.

   

1945 Osijek, Croatia, is liberated from fascist occupation. 1956 In Chicago, Illinois, videotape is first demonstrated. 1958 The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. 1967 Gnassingb Eyadma overthrows President of Togo Nicolas Grunitzky and installs himself as the new president, a title he would hold for the next 38 years.

1969 At the U.S. Academy Awards there is a tie for the Academy Award for Best Actress between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.

1978 1978 Tbilisi Demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.

 

1981 STS-1 The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102) completes its first test flight. 1986 In retaliation for the April 5 bombing in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen, U.S. president Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people.

1986 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.

 

1988 The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will. 1988 In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

1991 The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President after its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.

1994 In a U.S. friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two United States Armyhelicopters, killing 26 people.

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1999 NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed. 1999 A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.

2002 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military.

2003 The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.

2003 U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the MS Achille Lauro in 1985.

2005 The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County.

2007 At least 200,000 demonstrators in Ankara, Turkey protest against the possible candidacy of incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo an.

2010 Nearly 2,700 are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.

APRIL 15
 
1071 Bari, the last Byzantine possession in southern Italy, is surrendered to Robert Guiscard. 1450 Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English forces, ending English domination in Northern France.

1632 Battle of Rain; Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.

   

1715 Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina. 1738 Premiere in London, England, Great Britain of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel. 1755 Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London. 1783 Preliminary articles of peace ending the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence) are ratified.

1802 William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

1817 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.

1865 Abraham Lincoln dies without regaining consciousness after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth.

 

1892 The General Electric Company is formed. 1896 Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.

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1900 PhilippineAmerican War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and begin a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines.

1912 The British passenger liner, the RMS Titanic, sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people are killed.

1920 Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy.

1921 Black Friday: mine owners announce more wage and price cuts, leading to the threat of a strike all across England.

      

1923 Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. 1924 Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas. 1927 The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, begins. 1935 Roerich Pact signed in Washington, D.C. 1936 First day of the Arab revolt in Palestine. 1940 The Allies begin their attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik which is occupied by Nazi Germany. 1941 In the Belfast Blitz, two-hundred bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) attack Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdomkilling one thousand people.

1942 The George Cross is awarded to "to the island fortress of Malta its people and defenders" by King George VI.

   

1945 The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated. 1947 Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line. 1952 The maiden flight of the B-52 Stratofortress 1955 McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois

1957 White Rock, British Columbia officially separates from Surrey, British Columbia and is incorporated as a new city.

1958 Walter O'Malley's Los Angeles Dodgers host the first Major League Baseball game played on the West Coast of the United States.

1960 At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

1969 The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.

1970 During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River into South Vietnam.

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1979 A disastrous earthquake (of M 7.1) occurs on Montenegro coast. 1983 Tokyo Disney Resort (and the Tokyo Disneyland park) opens in Tokyo Bay (Japan) 1986 The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen.

1989 Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi Final, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool F.C.fans.

  

1989 Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People's Republic of China. 1992 The National Assembly of Vietnam adopts the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 1994 Representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities sign the Marrakesh Agreements revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and initiating the World Trade Organization (effective January 1, 1995).

2002 An Air China Boeing 767-200, flight CA129 crashes into a hillside during heavy rain and fog near Busan, South Korea, killing 128.

2010 Volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajkull in Iceland leads to the closure of airspace over most of Europe.

2011 2011 Cirebon bombing : a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in an Indonesian Police compound in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia.

APRIL 16

1457 BC Likely date of the Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.

   

1178 BC The calculated date of the Greek king Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War. 73 Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Jewish Revolt. 1346 The Serbian Empire is proclaimed in Skopje by Dusan Silni, occupying much of the Balkans. 1521 Martin Luther's first appearance before the Diet of Worms to be examined by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the other estates of theempire.

 

1582 Spanish conquistador Hernando de Lerma founds the settlement of Salta, Argentina. 1746 The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

 

1780 The University of Mnster in Mnster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany is founded. 1799 Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Mount Tabor Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.

1818 The United States Senate ratified the Rush-Bagot Treaty, establishing the border with Canada.

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1847 The accidental shooting of a M ori by an English sailor results in the opening of the Wanganui Campaign of the New Zealand land wars.

    

1853 The first passenger rail opens in India, from Bori Bunder, Bombay to Thane. 1858 The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up. 1862 American Civil War: The Battle at Lee's Mills in Virginia. 1862 American Civil War: A bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia becomes law. 1863 American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg ships led by Union Admiral David Dixon Porter move through heavy Confederate artillery fire on approach to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

    

1881 In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle. 1908 Natural Bridges National Monument is established in Utah. 1912 Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel. 1917 Lenin returns to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland. 1919 Gandhi organizes a day of "prayer and fasting" in response to the killing of Indian protesters in the Amritsar Massacre by the British.

 

1919 PolishSoviet War: The Polish army launches the Vilna offensive to capture Vilnius in modern Lithuania. 1922 The Treaty of Rapallo, pursuant to which Germany and the Soviet Union re-establish diplomatic relations, is signed.

  

1925 During the Communist St Nedelya Church assault in Sofia, 150 are killed and 500 are wounded. 1941 World War II: The Italian convoy Duisburg, directed to Tunisia, is attacked and destroyed by British ships. 1941 Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians throws the only Opening Day no-hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, beating the Chicago White Sox 1-0.

1944 Allied forces started bombing of Belgrade, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter.

1945 The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin, with nearly one million troops fighting in the Battle of the Seelow Heights.

1945 The United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz).

 

1945 More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo. 1947 Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600.

1947 Bernard Baruch coins the term "Cold War" to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

1953 Queen Elizabeth II launches the Royal Yacht HMY Britannia.

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1962 Walter Cronkite takes over as the lead news anchor of the CBS Evening News, during which time he would become "the most trusted man in America".

1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation.

   

1972 Apollo program: The launch of Apollo 16 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. 1990 The "Doctor of Death", Jack Kevorkian, participates in his first assisted suicide. 1992 The Katina P. runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique and 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean. 2001 India and Bangladesh begin a five-day border conflict, but are unable to resolve the disputes about their border.

 

2003 The Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the European Union. 2007 Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest spree killing in modern American history. Seung-Hui Cho, kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide.

2007 President of Cte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo declares the First Ivorian Civil War to be over.

APRIL 17
 
69 After the First Battle of Bedriacum, Vitellius becomes Roman Emperor. 1080 King of Denmark Harald III dies and is succeeded by Canute IV, who would later be the first Dane to be canonized.

1397 Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) the start of the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury.

1492 Spain and Christopher Columbus sign the Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices.

  

1521 Martin Luther speaks to the assembly at the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings. 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano reaches New York harbor. 1555 After 18 months of siege, Siena surrenders to the Florentine-Imperial army. The Republic of Siena is incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

1797 Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico in what would be one of the largest invasions of the Spanish territories in America.

1797 Citizens of Verona, Italy, begin an eight-day rebellion against the French occupying forces, which will end unsuccessfully.

 

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Plymouth begins Confederate forces attack Plymouth, North Carolina. 1895 The Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan is signed. This marks the end of the First SinoJapanese War, and the defeated Qing Empireis forced to renounce its claims on Korea and to concede the southern portion of the Fengtien province, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands to Japan.

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1905 The Supreme Court of the United States decides Lochner v. New York which holds that the "right to free contract" is implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

    

1907 The Ellis Island immigration center processes 11,747 people, more than on any other day. 1912 Russian troops open fire on striking goldfield workers in northeast Siberia, killing at least 150. 1941 World War II: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany. 1942 French prisoner of war General Henri Giraud escapes from his castle prison in Festung Knigstein. 1944 Forces of the Communist-controlled Greek People's Liberation Army attack the smaller National and Social Liberation resistance group, which surrenders. Its leader Dimitrios Psarros is murdered.

  

1945 Brazilian forces liberate the town of Montese, Italy, from German Nazi forces. 1946 Syria obtains its Independence from the French occupation. 1949 At midnight 26 Irish counties officially leave the British Commonwealth. A 21-gun salute on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, ushers in the Republic of Ireland.

1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

     

1964 Jerrie Mock becomes the first woman to circumnavigate the world by air. 1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. 1969 Czechoslovakian Communist Party chairman Alexander Dub ek is deposed. 1970 Apollo program: The ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely. 1971 The People's Republic of Bangladesh forms, under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Mujibnagor. 1975 The Cambodian Civil War ends. The Khmer Rouge captures the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrender.

 

1982 Patriation of the Canadian constitution in Ottawa by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. 1984 Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from the Libyan People's Bureau in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others are wounded. The events lead to an 11-day siege of the building.

 

1986 The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ends. 2006 Sami Hammad, a Palestinian suicide bomber, detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70.

APRIL 18
 
1025 Boles aw Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland. 1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica is laid.

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1518 Bona Sforza is crowned as queen consort of Poland. 1738 Real Academia de la Historia ("Royal Academy of History") is founded in Madrid. 1775 American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.

    

1797 The Battle of Neuwied French victory against the Austrians. 1831 The University of Alabama is founded. 1848 American victory at the battle of Cerro Gordo opens the way for invasion of Mexico. 1857 "The Spirits Book" by Allan Kardec is published, marking the birth of Spiritualism in France. 1864 Battle of Dybbl: A Prussian-Austrian army defeats Denmark and gains control of Schleswig. Denmark surrenders the province in the following peace settlement.

        

1880 An F4 tornado strikes Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100. 1881 Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico. 1897 The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. 1899 The St. Andrew's Ambulance Association is granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria. 1902 Quetzaltenango, the second largest city of Guatemala, is destroyed by an earthquake. 1906 An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California. 1909 Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome. 1912 The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City. 1915 French pilot Roland Garros is shot down and glides to a landing on the German side of the lines during World War I.

      

1923 Yankee Stadium, "The House that Ruth Built", opens. 1924 Simon & Schuster publishes the first crossword puzzle book. 1936 The first Champions Day is celebrated in Detroit, Michigan. 1930 BBC Radio announces that there is no news on that day. 1942 World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed. 1942 Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France. 1943 World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.

  

1945 Over 1,000 bombers attack the small island of Heligoland, Germany. 1946 The International Court of Justice holds its inaugural meeting in The Hague, Netherlands. 1949 The aircraft carrier USS United States is laid down at Newport News Drydock and Shipbuilding. However, construction is canceled five days later, resulting in the Revolt of the Admirals.

 

1954 Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power in Egypt. 1955 29 nations meet at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference.

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1958 A United States federal court rules that poet Ezra Pound be released from an insane asylum. 1961 The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a cornerstone of modern international relations, is adopted.

1961 CONCP is founded in Casablanca as a united front of African movements opposing Portuguese colonial rule.

 

1974 The Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto inaugurates Lahore dry port. 1980 The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President. The Zimbabwe Dollar replaces the Rhodesian Dollar as the official currency.

1981 The longest professional baseball game is begun in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The game is suspended at 4:00 the next morning and finally completed on June 23.

 

1983 A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people. 1988 The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

1992 General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolts against President Mohammad Najibullah of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and allies with Ahmed Shah Massoud to captureKabul.

1996 In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

 

2007 The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision. 2007 A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.

APRIL 19
  
65 The freedman Milichus betrayed Pisos plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators were arrested. 1012 Martyrdom of lfheah in Greenwich, London. 1529 At the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers (German: Frst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of theEdict of Worms.

 

1587 Francis Drake's expedition sinks the Spanish fleet in Cdiz harbor. 1713 With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).

  

1770 Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia. 1770 Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI in a proxy wedding. 1775 American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory at the battles of Lexington and Concord.

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1782 John Adams secures the Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased inThe Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.

1809 An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four day campaign that ended in a French victory.

1810 Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a junta is installed.

  

1839 The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom. 1855 Visit of Napoleon III to Guildhall, London 1861 American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861: a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.

1892 Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1919 Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.

  

1927 Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex. 1928 The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published. 1942 World War II: In Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.

1943 World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

      

1943 Bicycle Day Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time. 1945 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Guatemala are established. 1948 Burma (now Myanmar) joins the United Nations. 1950 Argentina becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1951 General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military. 1954 The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan recognises Urdu and Bengali as the national languages of Pakistan. 1955 The German automaker Volkswagen, after six years of selling cars in the United States, founds Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey to standardize its dealer and service network.

 

1956 Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco. 1960 Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.

1961 The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in success for the defenders.

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1971 Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president. 1971 Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C.. 1971 Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station. 1971 Charles Manson is sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders. 1975 India's first satellite Aryabhata is launched. 1984 Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.

    

1985 FBI siege on the compound of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSAL) in Arkansas 1985 U.S.S.R performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk. 1987 The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show

1989 A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors. 1993 The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.

1993 South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to one of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

1997 The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.

1999 The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1945.

2005 His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is elected the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church following the death of Pope John Paul II. The new Pope takes on the regnal name Benedict XVI.

2011 Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee after 45 years of holding the title.

APRIL 20
1303 The University of Rome La Sapienza is instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.

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1453 The last naval battle in Byzantine history occurs, as three Genoese galleys escorting a Byzantine transport fight their way through the huge Ottoman blockade fleet and into the Golden Horn.

1526 The last ruler of the Lodi Dynasty, Ibrahim Lodi is defeated and killed by Babur in the First Battle of Panipat.

      

1534 Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador. 1535 The Sun dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting "Vdersolstavlan". 1653 Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament. 1657 Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. 1657 Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City). 1689 The former King James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry. 1770 The Georgian king Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.

  

1775 American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord. 1792 France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars. 1809 Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four day campaign that ended in a French victory.

 

1810 The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain. 1818 The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle is upheld.

  

1828 Ren Cailli becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbouctou. 1836 U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory. 1861 American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.

 

1862 Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests. 1865 Astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the LImmaculata Concezion.

 

1871 The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law. 1876 The April Uprising a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from ottoman slavery, as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.

    

1884 Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum Genus. 1902 Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride. 1908 Opening day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League. 1912 Opening day for baseball's Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. 1914 19 men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner's strike.

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1916 The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.

     

1922 The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR. 1926 Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film. 1939 Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany 1939 Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song "Strange Fruit". 1945 World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union. 1945 World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.

           

1946 The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations. 1961 Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed troops against Cuba. 1964 BBC Two launches with a power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station. 1968 English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech. 1972 Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon . 1978 Korean Air Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union. 1980 Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested. 1984 The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada. 1985 The ATF raids The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas. 1986 Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years. 1998 German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years. 1999 Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado.

2007 Johnson Space Center Shooting: A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

 

2008 Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race. 2010 The Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last five months.

APRIL 21

753 BC Romulus and Remus founded Rome (traditional date).

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43 BC Battle of Mutina: Mark Antony is again defeated in battle by Aulus Hirtius, who is killed. Antony fails to capture Mutina and Decimus Brutus is murdered shortly after.

900 AD The Laguna Copperplate Inscription: the Honourable Namwaran and his children, Lady Angkatan and Bukah, are granted pardon from all their debts by the Commander and Chief of Tundun, as represented by the Honourable Jayadewa, Lord Minister of Pailah. Luzon, Philippines.

   

1509 Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII. 1519 Hernn Corts lands in Veracruz, Veracruz 1792 Tiradentes, a revolutionary leading a movement for Brazil's independence, is hanged, drawn and quartered. 1809 Two Austrian army corps are driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France as two French corps to the north hold off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmhl.

1836 Texas Revolution: The Battle of San Jacinto Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna.

 

1863 Bah'u'llh, the founder of the Bah' Faith, declares his mission as "He whom God shall make manifest". 1894 Norway formally adopts the Krag-Jrgensen rifle as the main arm of its armed forces, a weapon that would remain in service for almost 50 years.

1898 Spanish-American War: The U.S. Congress, on April 25, recognizes that a state of war exists between the United States and Spain as of this date.

1918 World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme in France.

1922 The first Aggie Muster is held as a remembrance for fellow Texas A&M graduates who had died in the previous year.

 

1941 Emmanouil Tsouderos becomes the 132nd Prime Minister of Greece. 1942 World War II: The most famous (and first international) Aggie Muster is held on the Philippine island of Corregidor, by Brigadier General George F. Moore (with 25 fellow Texas A&M graduates who are under his command), while 1.8 million pounds of shells pounded the island over a 5 hour attack.

1945 World War II: Soviet Union forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters.

 

1952 Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated. 1960 Braslia, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 9:30 am the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro.

 

1960 Founding of the Orthodox Bah' Faith in Washington, D.C. 1962 The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II.

1963 The Universal House of Justice of the Bah' Faith is elected for the first time.

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1964 A Transit-5bn satellite fails to reach orbit after launch; as it re-enters the atmosphere, 2.1 pounds (0.95 kg) of radioactive plutonium in its SNAP RTG power source is widely dispersed.

  

1965 The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opens for its second and final season. 1966 Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day. 1967 Greek military junta of 19671974: A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel George Papadopoulos leads a coup d'tat, establishing a military regime that lasts for seven years.

 

1970 The Hutt River Province Principality secedes from Australia. 1975 Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu flees Saigon, as Xuan Loc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls.

 

1982 Baseball: Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first pitcher to record 300 saves. 1987 The Tamil Tigers are blamed for a car bomb that explodes in the Sri Lankan city of Colombo, killing 106 people.

1989 Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang.

1993 The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentences former dictator Luis Garcia Meza to 30 years in jail without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution.

 

1994 The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan. 2004 Five suicide car bombers target police stations in and around Basra, killing 74 people and wounding 160.

APRIL 22

238 Year of the Six Emperors: The Roman Senate outlaws emperor Maximinus Thrax for his bloodthirsty proscriptions in Rome and nominates two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, to the throne.

 

1500 Portuguese navigator Pedro lvares Cabral lands in Brazil. 1529 Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17 east of the Moluccas.

1809 The second day of the Battle of Eckmhl: the Austrian army is defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France and driven over the Danube in Regensburg.

1836 Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio Lpez de Santa Anna.

1863 American Civil War: Grierson's Raid begins troops under Union Army Colonel Benjamin Grierson attack central Mississippi.

1864 The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandates that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.

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1889 At high noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Run of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.

1898 Spanish-American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship.

   

1906 The 1906 Summer Olympics, not now recognized as part of the official Olympic Games, open in Athens. 1912 Tsinghua University, one of mainland China's leading universities, is founded. 1912 Pravda, the "voice" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. 1915 The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.

1930 The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.

1944 World War II: Operation Persecution is initiated Allied forces land in the Hollandia (currently known as Jayapura) area of New Guinea.

 

1945 World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolt. 520 are killed and 80 escape. 1945 World War II: Fhrerbunker: After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicideis his only recourse.

   

1948 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa, a major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces. 1954 Red Scare: Witnesses begin testifying and live television coverage of the Army-McCarthy Hearings begins. 1964 The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opens for its first season. 1969 British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.

 

1970 The first Earth Day is celebrated. 1972 Vietnam War: Increased American bombing in Vietnam prompts anti-war protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.

1983 The German magazine Der Stern claims that the "Hitler Diaries" had been found in wreckage in East Germany; the diaries are subsequently revealed to be forgeries.

     

1992 In an explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico, 206 people are killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 left homeless. 1993 Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser is released. 1997 Haouch Khemisti massacre in Algeria 93 villagers killed. 1997 The Japanese embassy hostage crisis ends in Lima, Peru. 1998 Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States. 2000 In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elin Gonzlez from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.

2000 The Big Number Change takes place in the United Kingdom.

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2000 Second Battle of Elephant Pass: Tamil Tigers capture a strategic Sri Lankan Army base and hold it for 8 years.

  

2004 Two fuel trains collide in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people. 2005 Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japan's war record. 2006 243 people are injured in pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.

2008 The United States Air Force retires the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service.

APRIL 23

215 BC A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene.

        

1014 Battle of Clontarf: Brian Boru defeats Viking invaders, but is killed in battle. 1016 Edmund Ironside succeeds his father thelred the Unready as king of England, 1343 Estonia: St. George's Night Uprising. 1348 The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III is announced on St George's Day. 1521 Battle of Villalar: King Charles I of Spain defeats the Comuneros. 1635 The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts. 1660 Treaty of Oliwa is established between Sweden and Poland. 1661 King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey. 1815 The Second Serbian Uprising a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.

 

1910 Theodore Roosevelt made his The Man in the Arena speech. 1918 World War I: The British Royal Navy makes a raid in an attempt to neutralise the Belgian port of BrugesZeebrugge.

1920 The national council in Turkey denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces a temporary constitution.

  

1920 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) is founded in Ankara. 1927 Turkey becomes the first country to celebrate Children's Day as a national holiday. 1932 The 153-year old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem, Netherlands burns down. It is rebuilt and reopens exactly 70 years later.

  

1935 The Polish Constitution of 1935 is adopted. 1940 The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people. 1941 World War II: The Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.

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1942 World War II: Baedeker Blitz German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lbeck.

 

1949 Chinese Civil War: Establishment of the People's Liberation Army Navy. 1955 The Canadian Labour Congress is formed by the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour.

 

1961 Algiers putsch by French generals. 1967 Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov. 1, Union 1) is a manned spaceflight, Launched into orbit

1968 Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

1985 Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than 3 months.

1987 28 construction workers die when the L'Ambiance Plaza apartment building collapses while under construction in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

1990 Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

  

1993 Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum. 1997 Omaria massacre in Algeria: 42 villagers are killed. 2003 Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus.

APRIL 24

1479 BC Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to Hatshepsut (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).

  

1558 Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, Franois, at Notre Dame de Paris. 1704 The first regular newspaper in the United States, the News-Letter, is published in Boston, Massachusetts. 1800 The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 USD to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress".

1862 American Civil War: A flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David Farragut passes two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River on its way to capture New Orleans, Louisiana.

  

1877 Russo-Turkish War: Russian Empire declares war on Ottoman Empire. 1898 The Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain. 1904 The Lithuanian press ban is lifted after almost 40 years.

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1907 Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, is opened. 1907 Al Ahly was founded. 1913 The Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York City is opened. 1915 The arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul marks the beginning of the alleged Armenian Genocide.

1916 Easter Rising: The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett starts a rebellion in Ireland.

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance.

1918 First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.

1922 The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation.

1926 The Treaty of Berlin is signed. Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.

1932 Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.

 

1953 Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. 1955 The Bandung Conference ends: 29 non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finish a meeting that condemns colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

 

1957 Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal is reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region. 1963 Marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Kent to Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.

1965 Civil war breaks out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamao, overthrows the triumvirate that had been in power since the coup d'tat against Juan Bosch.

1967 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.

1967 Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."

  

1968 Mauritius becomes a member state of the United Nations. 1970 The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, is launched. 1970 The Gambia becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with Dawda Jawara as the first President.

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1971 Soyuz 10 docks with Salyut 1. 1980 Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis. 1990 STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery. 1990 Gruinard Island, Scotland, is officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine. 1993 An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of London.

1996 In the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is introduced. 2004 The United States lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminatingweapons of mass destruction.

2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.

 

2005 Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, is born in South Korea. 2006 King Gyanendra of Nepal gives into the demands of protesters and restores the parliament that he dissolved in 2002.

2007 Iceland announces that Norway will shoulder the defense of Iceland during peacetime.

APRIL 25
 
404 BC Peloponnesian War: Lysander's Spartan Armies defeated the Athenians and the war ends. 1134 The name Zagreb was mentioned for the first time in the Felician Charter relating to the establishment of the Zagreb Bishopric around 1094.

 

1607 Eighty Years' War: The Dutch fleet destroys the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar. 1644 The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming Dynasty China, commits suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng.

    

1707 The Habsburg army is defeated by Bourbon army at Almansa (Spain) in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1792 Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine. 1792 La Marseillaise (the French national anthem) is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. 1804 The western Georgian kingdom of Imereti accepts the suzerainty of the Russian Empire 1829 Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom.

1846 Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.

1847 The last survivors of the Donner Party are out of the wilderness.

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1849 The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.

  

1859 British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal. 1861 American Civil War: The Union Army arrives in Washington, D.C. 1862 American Civil War: Forces under Union Admiral David Farragut demand the surrender of the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

   

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Marks' Mills. 1898 Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain. 1901 New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates. 1915 World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli beginsThe invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by Australian, British, French and New Zealand troops begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles.

  

1916 Easter Rebellion: The United Kingdom declares martial law in Ireland. 1916 Anzac Day is commemorated for the first time on the first anniversary of the landing at Anzac Cove. 1920 At the San Remo conference, the principal Allied Powers of World War I adopt a resolution to determine the allocation of Class "A"League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East.

1938 U.S. Supreme Court delivers its opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturns a century of federal common law.1939 DC Comics publishes its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; he is Batman, one of the most popular comic booksuperheroes of all time.

  

1943 The Demyansk Shield for German troops in commemoration of Demyansk Pocket is instituted. 1944 The United Negro College Fund is incorporated. 1945 Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

1945 The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini tries to escape. This day is taken as symbolic of the Liberation of Italy.

1945 Fifty nations gather in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organizations.

1945 The last German troops retreat from Finland's soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military acts of Second World War end in Finland.

1953 Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.

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1960 The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. 1961 Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit. 1965 Teenage sniper Michael Andrew Clark kills three and wounds six others shooting from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Santa Maria, California.

 

1966 The city of Tashkent is destroyed by a huge earthquake. 1972 Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive The North Vietnamese 320th Division forces 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest ofKontum.

1974 Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal overthrows the Estado Novo regime and eventually establishes a democratic government.

1975 As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the firstAustralian troop commitment to South Vietnam.

1981 More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan.1982 Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula per the Camp David Accords.

1983 American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

    

1983 Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. 1986 Mswati III is crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II. 1988 In Israel, John Demjanuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II. 2003 The Human Genome Project comes to an end two and a half years earlier than expected. 2005 The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum is returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937.

  

2005 Bulgaria and Romania sign accession treaties to join the European Union. 2005 107 die in Amagasaki rail crash in Japan. 2007 Boris Yeltsin's funeral the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

2011 At least 300 people killed in deadliest tornado outbreak in the Southern United States since the 1974 Super Outbreak.

APRIL 26
1336 Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux 1478 The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence.

 

1607 English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.

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1802 Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious migrs of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.

1803 Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European science that meteors exist.

1805 First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne, Tripoli under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.

1865 American Civil War: Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Placenear Durham, North Carolina.

1865 Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.

1925 Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.

      

1923 The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey. 1928 Los Angeles City Hall dedicated. 1933 The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. 1937 Spanish Civil War: Guernica (or Gernika in Basque), Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe. 1942 The Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead. 1944 Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt. 1945 World War II: Battle of Bautzen last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

  

1954 The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins. 1956 First container ship left Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas. 1958 Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.

1960 Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after twelve years of dictatorial rule.

 

1962 NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. 1963 In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections.

   

1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania. 1965 A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario is shut down by police after 15 minutes due to rioting. 1966 An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 destroys Tashkent. 1966 A new government is formed in the Republic of Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.

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1970 The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force. 1981 Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.

1982 57 people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in Gyeongsangnamdo, South Korea.

1986 A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world's worst nuclear disaster.

1989 The deadliest tornado in world history strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless.

1991 Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado (see Andover, Kansas Tornado Outbreak).

 

1994 China Airlines flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board. 2002 Robert Steinhuser infiltrates and kills 17 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.

2005 Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country ( Syrian occupation of Lebanon ).

APRIL 27
  
1296 Battle of Dunbar: The Scots are defeated by Edward I of England. 1509 Pope Julius II places the Italian state of Venice under interdict. 1521 Battle of Mactan: Explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines led by chief LapuLapu.

1539 Re-founding of the city of Bogot, New Granada (now Colombia), by Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastin de Belalczar.

 

1565 Cebu is established becoming the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines. 1578 Duel of the Mignons claims the lives of two favourites of Henry III of France and two favorites of Henry I, Duke of Guise.

1650 The Battle of Carbisdale: A Royalist army invades mainland Scotland from Orkney Island but is defeated by a Covenanter army.

  

1667 The blind and impoverished John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for 10. 1749 First performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in Green Park, London. 1773 The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.

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1777 American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Ridgefield: A British invasion force engages and defeats Continental Army regulars and militia irregulars at Ridgefield, Connecticut.

1805 First Barbary War: United States Marines and Berbers attack the Tripolitan city of Derna (The "shores of Tripoli" part of the Marines' hymn).

 

1810 Beethoven composes his famous piano piece, Fr Elise. 1813 War of 1812: United States troops capture the capital of Upper Canada in the Battle of York (present day Toronto, Canada).

   

1840 Foundation stone for new Palace of Westminster, London, is laid by wife of Sir Charles Barry. 1861 President of the United States Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus. 1865 The New York State Senate creates Cornell University as the state's land grant institution. 1865 The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,400 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom are Union survivors of the Andersonville andCahaba Prisons.

  

1904 The Australian Labor Party becomes the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson. 1909 Sultan of Ottoman Empire Abdul Hamid II is overthrown, and is succeeded by his brother, Mehmed V. 1911 Following the resignation and death of William P. Frye, a compromise is reached to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the United States Senate.

    

1914 Honduras becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1927 Carabineros de Chile (Chilean national police force and gendarmery) are created. 1936 The United Auto Workers (UAW) gains autonomy from the American Federation of Labor. 1941 World War II: German troops enter Athens. 1941 World War II: The Communist Party of Slovenia, the Slovene Christian Socialists, the left-wing Slovene Sokols (also known as "National Democrats") and a group of progressive intellectuals establish the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.

 

1945 World War II: German troops are finally expelled from Finnish Lapland. 1945 World War II: Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

    

1950 Apartheid: In South Africa, the Group Areas Act is passed formally segregating races. 1953 Operation Moolah is initiated by General Mark W. Clark against Communist pilots. 1959 The last Canadian missionary leaves the People's Republic of China. 1960 Togo gains independence from French-administered UN trusteeship. 1961 Sierra Leone is granted its independence from the United Kingdom, with Milton Margai as the first Prime Minister.

1967 Expo 67 officially opens in Montreal, Canada with a large opening ceremony broadcast around the world. It opens to the public the next day.

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1974 10,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for the impeachment of US President Richard Nixon 1977 28 people are killed in the Guatemala City air disaster. 1978 Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.

 

1981 Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse. 1987 The U.S. Department of Justice bars the Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, saying he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.

 

1992 The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, is proclaimed. 1992 Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history.

1992 Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics become members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

1993 All members of the Zambia national football team lose their lives in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon in route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Senegal.

1994 South African general election, 1994: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote. The Interim Constitution comes into force.

    

1996 The 1996 Lebanon war ends. 2002 The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10. 2005 The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France. 2006 Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City. 2007 Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia.

2011 The deadliest day of the 2011 Super outbreak of tornadoes, the largest tornado outbreak, in United States history.

APRIL 28
 
357 Emperor Constantius II enters Rome for the first time to celebrate his victory over Magnus Magnentius. 1192 Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne is confirmed by election. The killing is carried out by Hashshashin.

1253 Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounds Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for the very first time and declares it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.

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1503 The Battle of Cerignola is fought. It is noted as the first battle in history won by small arms fire using gunpowder.

1611 Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the largest Catholic university in the world.

 

1788 Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the Constitution of the United States. 1789 Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.

 

1792 France invades the Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium), beginning the French Revolutionary War. 1796 The Armistice of Cherasco is signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Vittorio Amedeo III, the King of Sardinia, expanding French territory along theMediterranean coast.

1869 Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay 10 miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.

1887 A week after being arrested by the Prussian Secret Police, Alsatian police inspector Guillaume Schnaebel is released on order of German Emperor William I, defusing a possible war.

   

1920 Azerbaijan is added to the Soviet Union. 1930 The first night game in organized baseball history takes place in Independence, Kansas. 1932 A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans. 1944 World War II: Nine German S-boots attacked US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946.

1945 Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement.

1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

1949 Former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, 61, is assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 others are also killed.

1950 Bhumibol Adulyadej marries Queen Sirikit after their quiet engagement in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 19, 1949.

 

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. 1952 Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ends as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, comes into force.

1952 The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) is signed in Taipei, Taiwan between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.

1965 United States occupation of the Dominican Republic: American troops land in the Dominican Republic to "forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship" and to evacuateU.S. Army troops.

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1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France. 1970 Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.

1975 General Cao Van Vien, chief of the South Vietnamese military, departs for the US as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on victory.

1977 The Red Army Faction trial ends, with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder.

1977 The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure is signed.

1978 President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by procommunist rebels.

1986 The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.

 

1987 American engineer Ben Linder is killed in an ambush by U.S.-funded Contras in northern Nicaragua. 1988 Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing is blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and falls to her death when part of the plane's fuselage rips open in mid-flight.

1994 Former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

 

1996 Whitewater controversy: President Bill Clinton gives a 4 hour videotaped testimony for the defense. 1996 In Tasmania, Australia, Martin Bryant goes on a shooting spree, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 21 more.

 

2001 Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world's first space tourist. 2008 A train collision in Shandong, China, kills 72 people and injures 416 more.

APRIL 29

711 Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).

 

1429 Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans. 1483 Gran Canaria, the main of the Canary Islands is conquered by the Kingdom of Castile, very important step in the expansion of Spain.

  

1587 Francis Drake leads a raid in the Bay of Cdiz, sinking at least 23 ships of the Spanish fleet. 1672 Franco-Dutch War: Louis XIV of France invades the Netherlands. 1770 James Cook arrives at and names Botany Bay, Australia.

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1781 American Revolutionary War: British and French ships clash in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique.

   

1832 variste Galois released from prison. 1861 American Civil War: Maryland's House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union. 1862 American Civil War: New Orleans, Louisiana falls to Union forces under Admiral David Farragut. 1864 Theta Xi fraternity is founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the only fraternity to be founded during the Civil War.

  

1882 The "Elektromote" forerunner of the trolleybus is tested by Ernst Werner von Siemens in Berlin. 1903 A 30 million cubic-metre landslide kills 70 in Frank, Alberta, Canada. 1910 The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.

1916 World War I: The British 6th Indian Division surrenders to Ottoman Forces at the Siege of Kut in one of the largest surrenders of British forces up to that point.

1916 Easter Rebellion: Martial law in Ireland is lifted and the rebellion is officially over with the surrender of Irish nationalists to British authorities in Dublin.

  

1945 World War II: The German Army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies. 1945 World War II: Start of Operation Manna. 1945 World War II Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dnitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun will commit suicide the next day.

  

1945 The Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops. 1945 The Italian commune of Fornovo di Taro is liberated from German forces by Brazilian forces. 1946 The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convenes and indicts former Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders for war crimes.

1946 Father Divine, a controversial religious leader who claims to be God, marries the much-younger Edna Rose Ritchings, a celebrated anniversary in the International Peace Mission movement.

1951 Tibetan delegates to the Central People's Government arrive in Beijing and draft a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy.

1953 The first U.S. experimental 3D-TV broadcast showed an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

1965 Pakistan's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) successfully launches its seventh rocket in its Rehber series.

1967 After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.

1968 The controversial musical Hair opens on Broadway.

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1970 Vietnam War: United States and South Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia to hunt Viet Cong. 1974 Watergate Scandal: President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings related to the scandal.

1975 Vietnam War: Operation Frequent Wind: The U.S. begins to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon prior to an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war comes to an end.

1986 A fire at the Central library of the City of Los Angeles Public Library damages or destroys 400,000 books and other items.

1991 A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 mph, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless.

1992 Los Angeles riots: Riots in Los Angeles, California, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

1997 The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.

 

1999 The Avala TV Tower near Belgrade is destroyed in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. 2004 Dick Cheney and George W. Bush testify before the 9/11 Commission in a closed, unrecorded hearing in the Oval Office.

  

2004 Oldsmobile builds its final car ending 107 years of production. 2005 Syria completes withdrawal from Lebanon, ending 29 years of occupation. 2011 Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate Middleton.

APRIL 30
       
311 The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ends. 313 Battle of Tzirallum: Emperor Licinius defeats Maximinus II and unifies the Eastern Roman Empire. 1006 Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appears in the constellation Lupus. 1315 Enguerrand de Marigny is hanged on the public gallows at Montfaucon. 1492 Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration. 1513 Edmund de la Pole, Yorkist pretender to the English throne, is executed on the orders of Henry VIII. 1671 Petar Zrinski, the Croatian Ban from the Zrinski family, is executed. 1789 On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.

1803 Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.

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1812 The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana. 1838 Nicaragua declares independence from the Central American Federation. 1863 A 65-man French Foreign Legion infantry patrol fought a force of nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers to nearly the last man in Hacienda Camarn, Mexico.

   

1871 The Camp Grant Massacre takes place in Arizona Territory. 1894 Coxey's Army reaches Washington, D.C. to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893. 1900 Hawaii becomes a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor. 1900 Casey Jones dies in a train wreck in Vaughn, Mississippi, while trying to make up time on the Cannonball Express.

   

1904 The Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair opens in St. Louis, Missouri. 1907 Honolulu, Hawaii becomes an independent city. 1920 Peru becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1925 Automaker Dodge Brothers, Inc is sold to Dillon, Read & Company for $146 million plus $50 million for charity.

1927 The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opens in Alderson, West Virginia, as the first women's federal prison in the United States.

1927 Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

1937 The Philippines holds a plebiscite for Filipino women on whether they should be extended the right to suffrage; over 90% would vote in the affirmative.

1938 The animated cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt debuts in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit (a prototype of Bugs Bunny).

  

1938 The first televised FA Cup Final takes place between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End. 1939 The 1939-40 New York World's Fair opens. 1939 NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N.Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

1943 World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine HMS Seraph surfaces in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.

1945 World War II: Fhrerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.

  

1947 In Nevada, the Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam a second time. 1948 In Bogot, Colombia, the Organization of American States is established. 1953 In Warner Robins, Georgia, an F4 tornado kills 18 people.

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1956 Former Vice President and Senator Alben Barkley dies during a speech in Virginia. He collapses after proclaiming "I would rather be a servant in the house of the lord than sit in the seats of the mighty."

 

1961 K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned. 1963 The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company's refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom.

 

1966 The Church of Satan is established at the Black House in San Francisco, California. 1967 The Aldene Connection opened in Roselle Park, NJ, shutting down the CNJ's Jersey City waterfront terminal and transferring commuters to Newark Penn Station.

1973 Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that top White House aids H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and others have resigned.

1975 Fall of Saigon (or Liberation of Saigon from the Communist perspective): Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.

    

1980 Accession of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. 1988 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II officially opens World Expo '88 in Brisbane, Australia. 1993 CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free. 1993 Virgin Radio broadcasts for the first time in the United Kingdom. 1993 Monica Seles is stabbed by Gnter Parche, an obsessed fan, during a quarterfinal match of the 1993 Citizen Cup in Hamburg, Germany

 

1995 U.S. President Bill Clinton became the first President to visit Northern Ireland. 1999 Cambodia joins the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bringing the number of members to 10.

2004 U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

2008 Two skeletal remains found near Ekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia and one of his sisters.

 

2009 Chrysler automobile company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 2009 Seven people are killed and 17 injured at a Queen's Day parade in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.

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MAY
MAY 1

305 Diocletian and Maximian retire from the office of Roman Emperor.

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880 The Nea Ekklesia is inaugurated in Constantinople, setting the model for all later cross-in-square Orthodox churches.

1328 Wars of Scottish Independence end: Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton the Kingdom of England recognises the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state.

1576 Stefan Batory, the reigning Prince of Transylvania, marries Anna Jagiellon and they become the co-rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

1707 The Act of Union joins the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

 

1751 The first cricket match is played in America. 1753 Publication of Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, and the formal start date of plant taxonomy adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

     

1759 Josiah Wedgwood founds the Wedgwood pottery company in Great Britain. 1776 Establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt. 1778 American Revolution: The Battle of Crooked Billet begins in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. 1785 Kamehameha I, the king of Hawai i, defeats Kalanikupule and establishes the Kingdom of Hawai i. 1786 Opening night of the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna, Austria. 1794 War of the Pyrenees: The Battle of Boulou ends, in which French forces defeat the Spanish and regain nearly all the land they lost to Spain in 1793.

           

1840 The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, is issued in the United Kingdom. 1844 Hong Kong Police Force, the world's second, Asia's first modern police force is established. 1846 The few remaining Mormons left in Nauvoo, Illinois, formally dedicate the Nauvoo Temple. 1851 Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition in London. 1852 The Philippine peso is introduced into circulation. 1862 American Civil War: The Union Army completes the Capture of New Orleans. 1863 American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville begins. 1865 The Empire of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay sign the Treaty of the Triple Alliance 1869 The Folies Bergre opens in Paris. 1875 Alexandra Palace reopens after the 1873 fire burnt it down. 1884 Proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States. 1884 Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first black person to play in a professional baseball game in the United States.

 

1885 The original Chicago Board of Trade Building opened for business. 1886 Rallies are held throughout the United States demanding the eight-hour work day culminating in the Haymarket Affair.

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1893 The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago. 1894 Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, arrives in Washington, D.C. 1898 Spanish-American War: The Battle of Manila Bay the United States Navy destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the war.

1900 The Scofield mine disaster kills over 200 men in Scofield, Utah in what is to date the fifth-worst mining accident in United States history.

 

1901 The Pan-American Exposition opens in Buffalo, New York. 1915 The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast ofIreland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American sentiment against Germany.

1925 The All-China Federation of Trade Unions is officially founded. Today it is the largest trade union in the world, with 134 million members.

 

1925 The first Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer is held at the University of Toronto, Canada. 1927 The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight are introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris.

   

1927 The Union Labor Life Insurance Company is founded by the American Federation of Labor. 1930 The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named. 1931 The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City. 1933 The Roca-Runciman Treaty between Argentina and Great Britain is signed by Julio Argentino Roca, Jr., and Sir Walter Runciman.

  

1940 The 1940 Summer Olympics are cancelled due to war. 1941 World War II: German forces launch a major attack on Tobruk. 1944 200 Communist prisoners are shot by the Germans at Kaisariani in Athens as reprisals for the killing of General Franz Krech by partisans at Molaoi

1945 World War II: A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has "fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath againstBolshevism and for Germany".

  

1945 The Yugoslav partisans free Trieste. 1946 Start of 3 year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians. 1946 The Paris Peace Conference concludes that the islands of the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece by Italy.

1947 Portella della Ginestra massacre against May Day celebrations in Sicily by the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano; 11 persons are killed and 33 wounded.

 

1948 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established, with Kim Il-sung as leader. 1950 Guam is organized as a United States commonwealth.

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1956 The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public. 1956 A doctor in Japan reports an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system", marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.

  

1957 34 of 35 people aboard are killed when a Vickers Viking airliner crashed in Hampshire England. 1960 Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. 1960 Cold War: U-2 incident Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.

  

1961 The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections. 1965 Battle of Dong-Yin, a naval conflict between ROC and PRC, takes place. 1970 Protests erupt in Seattle, Washington, following the announcement by U.S. President Richard Nixon that U.S. Forces in Vietnam would pursue enemy troops into Cambodia, a neutral country.

      

1971 Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) takes over operation of U.S. passenger rail service. 1977 36 people are killed in Taksim Square, Istanbul, during the Labour Day celebrations. 1978 Japan's Naomi Uemura, travelling by dog sled, becomes the first person to reach the North Pole alone. 1982 The 1982 World's Fair opens in Knoxville, Tennessee. 1982 Operation Black Buck: The Royal Air Force attacks the Argentine Air Force during Falklands War. 1983 Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis is awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. 1987 Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

 

1989 Disney-MGM Studios opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States. 1990 The former Philippine Episcopal Church (supervised by the Episcopal Church of the United States of America) is granted full autonomy and raised to the status of an Autocephalous Anglican Province and renamed the Episcopal Church of the Philippines.

1991 Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics steals his 939th base, making him the all-time leader in this category. However, his accomplishment is overshadowed later that evening by Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers, when he pitches his seventh career no-hitter, breaking his own record.

1994 Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

 

1995 Croatian forces launch Operation Flash during the Croatian War of Independence. 2001 Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares the existence of "a state of rebellion", hours after thousands of supporters of her arrested predecessor, Joseph Estrada, storm towards the presidential palace at the height of the EDSA III rebellion.

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2003 2003 invasion of Iraq: In what becomes known as the "Mission Accomplished" speech, on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (off the coast of California), U.S. President George W. Bush declares that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended".

2004 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union, celebrated at the residence of the Irish Presidentin Dublin.

2006 The Puerto Rican government closes the Department of Education and 42 other government agencies due to significant shortages in cash flow.

2007 the Los Angeles May Day mle occurs, in which the Los Angeles Police Department's response to a May Day pro-immigration rally become a matter of controversy.

2008 The London Agreement on translation of European patents, concluded in 2000, enters into force in 14 of the 34 Contracting States to the European Patent Convention.

 

2009 Same-sex marriage is legalized in Sweden. 2011 Pope John Paul II is beatified.

MAY 2
   
1194 King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter. 1230 William de Braose is hanged by Prince Llywelyn the Great. 1335 Otto the Merry, Duke of Austria, becomes Duke of Carinthia. 1536 Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.

   

1559 John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the beginning Scottish Reformation. 1568 Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Loch Leven Castle. 1611 King James Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker. 1670 King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America.

  

1672 John Maitland becomes Duke of Lauderdale and Earl of March. 1757 End of Konbaung-Hanthawaddy War, and end of Burmese Civil War (17401757) 1808 Outbreak of the Peninsular War: The people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation. Francisco de Goya later memorializes this event in his painting The Second of May 1808.

 

1816 Marriage of Lopold of Saxe-Coburg and Charlotte Augusta. 1829 After anchoring nearby, Captain Charles Fremantle of the HMS Challenger, declares the Swan River Colony in Australia.

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1863 American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later.

  

1866 Peruvian defenders fight off Spanish fleet at the Battle of Callao. 1876 The April Uprising breaks out in Bulgaria. 1879 The Spanish Socialist Worker's Party is founded in Casa Labra Pub (city of Madrid) by the historical Spanish workers' leader Pablo Iglesias.

 

1885 Good Housekeeping magazine goes on sale for the first time. 1885 Cree and Assiniboine warriors win the Battle of Cut Knife, their largest victory over Canadian forces during the North-West Rebellion.

       

1885 The Congo Free State is established by King Lopold II of Belgium. 1889 Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, signs a treaty of amity with Italy, which gives Italy control over Eritrea. 1906 Closing ceremony of the Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece. 1918 General Motors acquires the Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware. 1920 The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. 1932 Comedian Jack Benny's radio show airs for the first time. 1933 Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler bans trade unions. 1941 Following the coup d'tat against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launches the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power.

1945 World War II: Fall of Berlin: The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building.

1945 World War II: Italian Campaign General Heinrich von Vietinghoff signs the official instrument of surrender of all Wehrmacht forces in Italy.

1945 World War II: The US 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead inmates, most starved to death.

 

1946 The "Battle of Alcatraz" takes place, killing two guards and three inmates. 1952 The world's first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 makes its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg.

 

1955 Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 1963 Berthold Seliger launches a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres near Cuxhaven. It is the only sounding rocket developed inGermany.

1964 Vietnam War: An explosion sinks the USS Card while docked at Saigon. Viet Cong forces are suspected of placing a bomb on the ship.

1964 First ascent of Shishapangma the fourteenth highest mountain in the world and the lowest of the Eightthousanders.

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1969 The British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 departs on her maiden voyage to New York City. 1972 In the early morning hours a fire broke out at the Sunshine mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, ID, killing 91 workers.

1982 Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

 

1994 In a bus disaster in Poland, 32 people die. 1995 During the Croatian War of Independence, Serb forces fire cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing 7 and wounding over 175 civilians.

1998 The European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy.

 

1999 Panamanian election, 1999: Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to be elected President of Panama. 2000 President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

  

2002 Marad massacre of eight Hindus near Palakkad in Kerala. 2004 Yelwa massacre of more than 630 nomad Muslims by Christians in Nigeria. 2008 Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Myanmar killing over 138,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless.

 

2008 Chaitn Volcano begins erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people. 2011 Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man is killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad,Pakistan.

2011 The 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strikes Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others sick from the bacteria outbreak.

MAY 3
 
1481 The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties. 1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of Joo I.

 

1715 "Edmund Halley's" total solar eclipse (the last one visible in London, United Kingdom for almost 900 years). 1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  

1802 Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city. 1808 Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia. 1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are executed near Prncipe Po hill.

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1811 In the first day of fighting at the Peninsular War Battle of Fuentes de Onoro frontal assults by the French army, under Marshall Massena, fail to take the town of Fuentes de Onoro, defended by the Anglo-Portugese army commended by the Duke of Wellington.

1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples is defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.

1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened. It is the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.

      

1837 The University of Athens is founded. 1849 The May Uprising in Dresden begins the last of the German revolutions of 1848. 1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden. 1867 The Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island. 1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world has its first game. 1901 The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida. 1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film is released, marking the beginning of the Indian film industry.

         

1915 The poem In Flanders Fields is written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. 1916 The leaders of the Easter Rising are executed in Dublin. 1920 A Bolshevik coup fails in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. 1921 West Virginia imposes the first state sales tax. 1924 Aleph Zadik Aleph is formed in Omaha, Nebraska 1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China. 1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint. 1937 Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 1939 The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. 1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mothat results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia.

1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lbeck Bay.

 

1947 New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect. 1948 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

1951 London's Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain

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1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.

 

1951 The Kentucky Derby is televised for the first time. 1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole.

1957 Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, California.

1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opens in New York City's Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.

 

1960 The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing newfound attention to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

 

1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out as the world's tallest building. 1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to everyARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

1986 Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.

1987 A crash by Bobby Allison at the Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama fencing at the start-finish line would lead NASCAR to develop restrictor plate racing the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega.

1999 The southwestern portion of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is devastated by an F5 tornado killing forty-five people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado is one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. This is the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.

2000 The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

2001 The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.

   

2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashes into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight. 2003 New Hampshire's famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses. 2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors. 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison in Alexandria, Virginia.

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MAY 4

1256 The Augustinian monastic order is constituted at the Lecceto Monastery when Pope Alexander IV issues a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae.

 

1415 Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance. 1471 Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury: Edward IV defeats a Lancastrian Army and kills Edward, Prince of Wales.

 

1493 Pope Alexander VI divides the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation. 1626 Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw.

   

1675 King Charles II of England orders the construction of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. 1686 The Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines. 1776 Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III. 1799 Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam: The siege of Seringapatam ends when the city is invaded and Tipu Sultan killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris.

   

1814 Emperor Napoleon I of France arrives at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile. 1814 King Ferdinand VII of Spain signs the Decrete of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism. 1855 American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua. 1859 The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.

  

1863 American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with a Union retreat. 1869 The Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay is fought in Japan. 1871 The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1886 Haymarket Square Riot: A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, United States, killing eight and wounding 60. The police fire into the crowd.

    

1904 The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal. 1904 Charles Stewart Rolls meets Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. 1910 The Royal Canadian Navy is created. 1912 Italy occupies the Greek island of Rhodes. 1919 May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations take place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory toJapan.

1932 In Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

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1942 World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea begins with an attack by aircraft from the United States aircraft carrier USS Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in theSolomon Islands. The Japanese forces had invaded Tulagi the day before.

  

1945 World War II: Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is liberated by the British Army. 1945 World War II: The North Germany Army surrenders to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. 1946 In San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines from the nearby Treasure Island Navy Base stop a twoday riot at Alcatraz federal prison. Five people are killed in the riot.

1949 The entire Torino football team (except for two players who did not take the trip: Sauro Tom, due to an injury and Renato Gandolfi, because of coach request) is killed in a plane crash at the Superga hill at the edge of Turin, Italy.

   

1953 Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea. 1959 The 1st Grammy Awards are held. 1961 American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South. 1970 Vietnam War: Kent State shootings: the Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, opens fire killing four unarmed students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia.

1972 The Don't Make A Wave Committee, a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to "Greenpeace Foundation".

1974 An all-female Japanese team reaches the summit of Manaslu, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000meter peak.

 

1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1982 Twenty sailors are killed when the British Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War.

 

1988 The PEPCON disaster rocks Henderson, Nevada, as tons of space shuttle fuel detonate during a fire. 1989 Iran-Contra Affair: Former White House aide Oliver North is convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions, however, are later overturned on appeal.

 

1990 Latvia proclaims the renewal of its independence after the Soviet occupation. 1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign a peace accord regarding Palestinian autonomy granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1998 A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.

 

2000 Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London. 2001 The Milwaukee Art Museum addition, the first Santiago Calatrava-designed structure in the United States, opens to the public.

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2002 An EAS Airlines BAC 1-11-500 crashes in a suburb of Kano, Nigeria shortly after takeoff killing more than 148 people.

 

2007 Greensburg, Kansas is almost completely destroyed by a 1.7mi wide EF-5 tornado. 2007 The Scottish National Party wins the Scottish general election and becomes the largest party in the Scottish Parliament for the first time ever.

MAY 5
 
553 The Second Council of Constantinople begins. 1215 Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to King John of England part of a chain of events leading to the signing of the Magna Carta.

     

1260 Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire. 1494 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica and claims it for Spain. 1640 King Charles I of England dissolves the Short Parliament. 1762 Russia and Prussia sign the Treaty of St. Petersburg. 1789 In France, the Estates-General convenes for the first time since 1614. 1809 Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

 

1809 The Swiss canton of Aargau denies citizenship to Jews. 1811 In the second day of fighting at the Peninsular War Battle of Fuentes de Onoro the French army, under Marshall Massena, drive in the Duke of Wellington's overextended right flank, but French frontal assaults fail to take the town of Fuentes de Onoro and the Anglo-Portugese army holds the field at the end of the day.

  

1821 Emperor Napoleon I dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. 1835 In Belgium, the first railway in continental Europe opens between Brussels and Mechelen. 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi sets sail from Genoa, leading the expedition of the Thousand to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and giving birth to theKingdom of Italy.

    

1862 Cinco de Mayo: troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico. 1864 American Civil War: The Battle of the Wilderness begins in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. 1865 In North Bend, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio), the first train robbery in the United States takes place. 1866 Memorial Day first celebrated in United States at Waterloo, New York. 1877 Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles.

1886 The Bay View Tragedy: A militia fires into a crowd of protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing seven.

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1891 The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

1904 Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.

 

1920 Authorities arrest Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for alleged robbery and murder. 1925 Scopes Trial: serving of an arrest warrant on John T. Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

   

1925 The government of South Africa declares Afrikaans an official language 1936 Italian troops occupy Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1940 World War II: Norwegian refugees form a government-in-exile in London 1940 World War II: Norwegian Campaign Norwegian squads in Hegra Fortress and Vinjesvingen capitulate to the Nazis after all other Norwegian forces in southern Norway had laid down their arms.

1941 Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; the country commemorates the date as Liberation Day or Patriots' Victory Day.

 

1944 German troops execute 216 civilians in the village of Kleisoura in Greece 1945 World War II: Canadian and UK troops liberate the Netherlands and Denmark from Nazi occupation when Wehrmacht troops capitulate.

1946 The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1949 The Treaty of London establishes the Council of Europe in Strasbourg as the first European institution working for European integration.

  

1950 Bhumibol Adulyadej crowns himself King Rama IX of Thailand. 1955 West Germany gains full sovereignty. 1961 The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3 Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, making a sub-orbital flight of 15 minutes.

 

1964 The Council of Europe declares May 5 as Europe Day. 1972 Alitalia Flight 112 crashes into Mount Longa near Palermo, Sicily, killing all 115 aboard, making it the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in Italy.

1980 Operation Nimrod: The British Special Air Service storms the Iranian embassy in London after a six-day siege.

   

1981 Bobby Sands dies in the Long Kesh prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. 1987 Iran-Contra affair: start of Congressional televised hearings in the United States of America 1991 A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after police shoot a Salvadoran man. 1992 Ratification by Alabama brings into effect the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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1994 The signing of the Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan effectively freezes the NagornoKarabakh conflict.

1994 American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism, a punishment that many in the United States deemed to be excessive for a teenager committing a non-violent crime. However, significant numbers of Americans were also in favor of it.

 

2006 The government of Sudan signs an accord with the Sudan Liberation Army. 2007 All 114 aboard Kenya Airways Flight 507 die when the pilots lose control of the plane and it crashes in Douala, Cameroon.

2010 Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek debt crisis.

MAY 6

1527 Spanish and German troops sack Rome; some consider this the end of the Renaissance. 147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, die fighting the forces of Charles V in order to allow Pope Clement VII to escape into Castel Sant'Angelo.

  

1536 King Henry VIII orders English language Bibles be placed in every church. 1542 Francis Xavier reaches Old Goa, the capital of Portuguese India at the time. 1659 English Restoration: A faction of the British Army removes Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth and reinstalls the Rump Parliament.

  

1682 Louis XIV of France moves his court to the Palace of Versailles. 1757 Battle of Prague A Prussian army fights an Austrian army in Prague during the Seven Years' War. 1757 English poet Christopher Smart is admitted into St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement to mental asylums.

     

1801 Captain Thomas Cochrane in the 14-gun HMS Speedy captures the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo. 1816 The American Bible Society is founded in New York City. 1835 James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald. 1840 The Penny Black postage stamp becomes valid for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1844 The Glaciarium, the world's first mechanically frozen ice rink, opens. 1857 The British East India Company disbands the 34th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry whose sepoy Mangal Pandey had earlier revolted against the British and is considered to be the First Martyr in the War of Indian Independence.

 

1861 American Civil War: Arkansas secedes from the Union. 1861 American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia is declared the new capital of the Confederate States of America.

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1863 American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with the defeat of the Army of the Potomac by Confederate troops.

 

1877 Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrenders to United States troops in Nebraska. 1882 Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish are stabbed and killed during the Phoenix Park Murders in Dublin.

     

1882 The United States Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. 1889 The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris. 1910 George V becomes King of the United Kingdom upon the death of his father, Edward VII. 1935 New Deal: Executive Order 7034 creates the Works Progress Administration. 1935 The first flight of the Curtiss P-36 Hawk. 1937 Hindenburg disaster: The German zeppelin Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock atLakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people are killed.

       

1940 John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. 1941 At California's March Field, Bob Hope performs his first USO show. 1941 The first flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. 1942 World War II: On Corregidor, the last American forces in the Philippines surrender to the Japanese. 1945 World War II: Axis Sally delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops. 1945 World War II: The Prague Offensive, the last major battle of the Eastern Front, begins. 1954 Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes. 1960 More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princes Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones atWestminster Abbey.

  

1962 St. Martn de Porres is canonized by Pope John XXIII. 1966 Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are sentenced to life imprisonment for the Moors Murders in England. 1972 Deniz Gezmi , Yusuf Aslan and Hseyin nan are executed in Ankara for attempting to overthrow the Constitutional order.

 

1976 An earthquake strikes Friuli, causing 989 deaths and the destruction of entire villages.

1981 A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Ying Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.

  

1983 The Hitler diaries are revealed as a hoax after examination by experts. 1984 103 Korean Martyrs are canonized by Pope John Paul II in Seoul 1989 Cedar Point opens Magnum XL-200, the first roller coaster to break the 200 ft height barrier, therefore spawning what is considered to be the "coaster wars".

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1994 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and French President Franois Mitterrand officiate at the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

1994 Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones files a lawsuit against President Bill Clinton, alleging that he had sexually harassed her in 1991.

1996 The body of former CIA director William Colby is found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he disappeared.

1997 The Bank of England is given independence from political control, the most significant change in the bank's 300-year history.

1998 Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Houston Astros to tie the major league record held by Roger Clemens. He threw a one-hitter and did not walk a batter in his 5th career start.

   

1999 First elections to the devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly held. 2001 During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque. 2002 Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated by an animal rights activist. 2004 Aslan Abashidze, leader of Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara resigns after public protests and months of stalemate with the central authorities.

2010 The second largest intraday point swing in Dow Jones Industrial Average history occurs.

MAY 7

351 The Jewish revolt against Gallus breaks out. After his arrival at Antioch, the Jews begin a rebellion in Palestine.

558 In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Justinian I immediately orders that the dome be rebuilt.

 

1274 In France, the Second Council of Lyons opens to regulate the election of the Pope. 1348 Charles University in Prague (Universitas Carolina/Univerzita Karlova) is established as the first university in Central Europe.

1429 Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orlans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning, wounded, to lead the final charge. The victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years' War.

 

1664 Louis XIV of France inaugurates the Palace of Versailles. 1697 Stockholm's royal castle (dating back to medieval times) is destroyed by fire. It is replaced by the current Royal Palace in the eighteenth century.

 

1718 The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. 1763 Indian Wars: Pontiac's Rebellion begins Chief Pontiac begins the "Conspiracy of Pontiac" by attacking British forces at Fort Detroit.

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1794 French Revolution: Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic.

1824 World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the composer's supervision.

1832 The independence of Greece is recognized by the Treaty of London. Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria is chosen King.

1840 The Great Natchez Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi killing 317 people. It is the second deadliest tornado in United States history.

1846 The Cambridge Chronicle, America's oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

1847 The American Medical Association is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1864 American Civil War: The Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and moves southwards.

1895 In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector a primitive radio receiver. In some parts of the former Soviet Union the anniversary of this day is celebrated as Radio Day.

1915 World War I: German submarine SM U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turns many formerly pro-Germans in the United States against the German Empire.

1920 Kiev Offensive: Polish troops led by Jzef Pi sudski and Edward Rydz- mig y and assisted by a symbolic Ukrainian force capture Kiev only to be driven out by the Red Armycounter-offensive a month later.

1920 Treaty of Moscow: Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia only to invade the country six months later.

 

1920 The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, opens the first exhibition by the Group of Seven. 1937 Spanish Civil War: The German Condor Legion, equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes, arrives in Spain to assist Francisco Franco's forces.

1940 The Norway Debate in the British House of Commons begins, and leads to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill three days later.

1942 During the Battle of the Coral Sea, United States Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attack and sink the Japanese Imperial Navy light aircraft carrier Sh h . The battle marks the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fight without visual contact between warring ships.

1945 World War II: General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document takes effect the next day.

1946 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with around 20 employees.

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1948 The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress. 1952 The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.

 

1954 Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13). 1960 Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.

1964 Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, a Fairchild F-27 airliner, crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.

  

1974 West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigns. 1986 Canadian Patrick Morrow became the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits. 1992 Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law. This amendment bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise.

 

1992 The Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission (STS-49). 1992 Three employees at a McDonald's Restaurant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, are brutally murdered and a fourth permanently disabled after a botched robbery. It is the first "fast-food murder" in Canada.

1998 Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.

1999 Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.

1999 Kosovo War: In Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, three Chinese citizens are killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

   

1999 In Guinea-Bissau, President Joo Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup. 2000 Vladimir Putin is inaugurated president of Russia 2002 A China Northern Airlines MD-82 plunges into the Yellow Sea, killing 112 people. 2004 American businessman Nick Berg is beheaded by Islamic militants. The act is recorded on videotape and released on the Internet.

 

2007 Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem. 2009 Over 100 New Zealand Police officers begin a 40-hour siege of a lone gunman in Napier, New Zealand.

MAY 8
 
589 Reccared summons the Third Council of Toledo 1450 Jack Cade's Rebellion: Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI.

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1541 Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River and names it Ro de Espritu Santo. 1788 The French Parlement is suspended to be replaced by the creation of forty-seven new courts. 1794 Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Gnrale, is tried, convicted, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris.

 

1821 Greek War of Independence: The Greeks defeat the Turks at the Battle of Gravia. 1846 Mexican-American War: The Battle of Palo Alto Zachary Taylor defeats a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war.

  

1861 American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia is named the capital of the Confederate States of America. 1877 At Gilmore's Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens. 1886 Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.

  

1898 The first games of the Italian football league system are played. 1899 The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin opens. 1902 In Martinique, Mount Pele erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast.

 

1912 Paramount Pictures is founded. 1919 Edward George Honey first proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, which later results in the creation of Remembrance Day. In the United States it was called Armistice Day and is now Veterans Day.

 

1924 the Klaip da Convention is signed formally incorporating Klaip da Region (Memel Territory) into Lithuania. 1927 Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli disappeared after taking off aboardThe White Bird biplane.

  

1933 Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast in protest against British oppression in India. 1941 The German Luftwaffe launch a bombing raid on Nottingham and Derby 1942 World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea comes to an end with Japanese Imperial Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacking and sinking the United States Navy aircraft carrierUSS Lexington. The battle marks the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fight without visual contact between warring ships.

1942 World War II: Gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebel in the Cocos Islands Mutiny. Their mutiny is crushed and three of them are executed, the only British Commonwealth soldiers to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War.

 

1945 Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Stif massacre. 1945 World War II: V-E Day, combat ends in Europe. German forces agree in Rheims, France, to an unconditional surrender.

1945 End of the Prague uprising, today celebrated as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.

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1946 Estonian school girls Aili Jgi and Ageeda Paavel blow up the Soviet memorial which stood in front of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.

1963 South Vietnamese soldiers of Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem open fire on Buddhists defying a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, killing nine.

 

1967 The Philippine province of Davao is split into three: Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental. 1970 The Hard Hat riot occurs in the Wall Street area of New York City as blue-collar construction workers clash with demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.

1972 Vietnam War U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation.

1972 Four Black September terrorists hijack Sabena Flight 571. Israeli Sayeret Matkal commandos recapture the plane the following day.

1973 A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota ends with the surrender of the militants.

    

1976 The rollercoaster Revolution, the first steel coaster with a vertical loop, opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain. 1978 First ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler. 1980 The eradication of smallpox is endorsed by the World Health Organization. 1984 The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. 1984 Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three and wounding 13. Ren Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.

 

1984 Thames Barrier officially opened. 1987 The Loughgall Ambush: The SAS kills eight Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and a civilian during an ambush in Loughgall, Northern Ireland.

1988 A fire at Illinois Bell's Hinsdale Central Office triggers an extended 1AESS network outage once considered the 'worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history' and still the worst to occur on Mother's Day.

1997 A China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 crashes on approach into Bao'an International Airport, killing 35 people.

MAY 9
 
328 Athanasius is elected Patriarch bishop of Alexandria. 1092 Lincoln Cathedral is consecrated.

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1450 'Abd al-Latif (Timurid monarch) is assassinated. 1671 Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

 

1726 Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap's molly house in London are executed at Tyburn. 1864 Second War of Schleswig: The Danish navy defeats the Austrian and Prussian fleets in the Battle of Heligoland.

   

1868 The city of Reno, Nevada, is founded. 1873 Der Krach: Vienna stock market crash heralds the Long Depression. 1874 The first horse-drawn bus makes its dbut in the city of Mumbai, traveling two routes. 1877 Mihail Kog lniceanu reads, in the Chamber of Deputies, the Declaration of Independence of Romania. This day became the Independence Day of Romania.

1877 A magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Peru kills 2,541, including some as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

  

1887 Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show opens in London. 1901 Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne. 1904 The steam locomotive City of Truro becomes the first steam engine in Europe to exceed 100 mph (160 km/h).

  

1911 The works of Gabriele D'Annunzio placed by the Vatican in the Index of Forbidden Books. 1915 World War I: Second Battle of Artois between German and French forces. 1920 Polish-Soviet War: The Polish army under General Edward Rydz- mig y celebrates its capture of Kiev with a victory parade on Khreschatyk.

1926 Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of Byrd's diary seems to indicate that this did not happen).

    

1927 The Australian Parliament first convenes in Canberra. 1936 Italy formally annexes Ethiopia after taking the capital Addis Ababa on May 5. 1937 Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy took to the airwaves becoming an overnight radio sensation. 1940 World War II: The German submarine U-9 sinks the French coastal submarine Doris near Den Helder. 1941 World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.

1942 Holocaust: The SS murders 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast, Ukraine). The Zoludek Ghetto (in Belarus) is destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered or deported.

1945 World War II: Ratification in Berlin-Karlshorst of the German unconditional surrender of May 8 in Rheims, France, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, and for the Western Headquarters Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower's deputy, and for the German side of Colonel-

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General Hans-Jrgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

    

1945 World War II: The Channel Islands are liberated by the British after five years of German occupation. 1946 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by Humbert II. 1948 Czechoslovakia's Ninth-of-May Constitution comes into effect. 1949 Rainier III of Monaco becomes Prince of Monaco. 1950 Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, which according to him was indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the "Schuman declaration", is considered by some people to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.

  

1950 L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is released. 1955 Cold War: West Germany joins NATO. 1955 Sam and Friends debuts on a local United States television channel, marking the first television appearance of both Jim Henson and what would become Kermit the Frog andThe Muppets.

1960 The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.

1961 Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles becomes the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings.

1964 Ngo Dinh Can, de facto ruler of central Vietnam under his brother President Ngo Dinh Diem before the family's toppling, is executed.

1969 Carlos Lamarca leads the first urban guerrilla action against the military dictatorship of Brazil in So Paulo, by robbing two banks.

1970 Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 75,000 to 100,000 war protesters demonstrate in front of the White House.

1974 Watergate Scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

1979 Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is executed by firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000 member strong Jewish community of Iran.

1980 In Florida, Liberian freighter MV Summit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 1,400-ft. section of the southbound span collapse. 35 people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 150 ft. into the water and die.

1980 In Norco, California, five masked gunman hold up a Security Pacific bank, leading to a violent shootout and one of the largest pursuits in California history. Two of the gunmen and one police officer are killed and thirty-three police and civilian vehicles are destroyed in the chase.

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1987 A Polish LOT Ilyushin IL-62M "Tadeusz Ko ciuszko" (SP-LBG) crashes after takeoff in Warsaw, Poland, killing 183 people.

 

1992 Armenian forces capture Shusha, marking a major turning point in the Karabakh War. 2001 In Ghana 129 football fans die in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium Disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede (caused by the firing of teargas by police personnel at the stadium) that followed a controversial decision by the referee.

2002 The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries.

2002 In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-controlled bomb explodes during a holiday parade killing 43 and injuring at least 130.

2004 Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed by a land mine under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.

2006 Estonia ratifies the European Constitution.

MAY 10

70 Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, opens a full-scale assault on Jerusalem and attacks the city's Third Wall to the northwest.

  

1291 Scottish nobles recognize the authority of Edward I of England. 1497 Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves Cdiz for his first voyage to the New World. 1503 Christopher Columbus visits the Cayman Islands and names them Las Tortugas after the numerous turtles there.

 

1534 Jacques Cartier visits Newfoundland. 1655 England, with troops under the command of Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables, annexes Jamaica from Spain.

1768 John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticizing King George III. This action provokes rioting in London.

 

1774 Louis XVI becomes King of France. 1775 American Revolutionary War: A small Colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captures Fort Ticonderoga.

1775 American Revolutionary War: Representatives from the Thirteen Colonies begin the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

1796 First Coalition: Napoleon I of France wins a decisive victory against Austrian forces at Lodi bridge over the Adda River in Italy. The Austrians lose some 2,000 men.

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1801 First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America. 1824 The National Gallery in London opens to the public. 1833 The desecration of the grave of the viceroy of southern Vietnam Le Van Duyet by Emperor Minh Mang provokes his adopted son to start a revolt.

 

1837 Panic of 1837: New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels. 1849 Astor Place Riot: A riot breaks out at the Astor Opera House in Manhattan, New York City over a dispute between actors Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready, killing at least 25 and injuring over 120.

1857 Indian Mutiny: In India, the first war of Independence begins. Sepoys revolt against their commanding officers at Meerut.

1863 American Civil War: Confederate General Stonewall Jackson dies eight days after he is accidentally shot by his own troops.

1864 American Civil War: Colonel Emory Upton leads a 10-regiment "Attack-in-depth" assault against the Confederate works at The Battle of Spotsylvania, which, though ultimately unsuccessful, would provide the idea for the massive assault against the Bloody Angle on May 12. Upton is slightly wounded but is immediately promoted to Brigadier general.

 

1865 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia. 1865 American Civil War: In Kentucky, Union soldiers ambush and mortally wound Confederate raider William Quantrill, who lingers until his death on June 6.

1869 The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike.

 

1872 Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States. 1877 Romania declares itself independent from the Ottoman Empire following the Senate adoption of Mihail Kog lniceanu's Declaration of Independence. This act is recognized on March 26, 1881 after the end of the Romanian War of Independence.

1893 The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit, under the Tariff Act of 1883.

  

1908 Mother's Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia. 1922 The United States annex the Kingman Reef. 1924 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remains so until his death in 1972.

   

1933 Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings. 1940 World War II: The first German bombs of the war fall on England at Chilham and Petham, in Kent. 1940 World War II: Germany invades Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. 1940 World War II: Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

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1940 World War II: Invasion of Iceland by the United Kingdom. 1941 World War II: The House of Commons in London is damaged by the Luftwaffe in an air raid. 1941 World War II: Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.

  

1942 World War II: The Thai Phayap Army invades the Shan States during the Burma Campaign. 1946 First successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground. 1948 The Republic of China implements "temporary provisions" granting President Chiang Kai-shek extended powers to deal with the Communist uprising; they will remain in effect until 1991.

1954 Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock", the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts.

1960 The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.

1969 Vietnam War: The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937. It will ultimately become known as Hamburger Hill.

 

1979 The Federated States of Micronesia become self-governing. 1981 Franois Mitterrand wins the presidential election and becomes the first Socialist President of France in the French Fifth Republic.

  

1993 In Thailand, a fire at the Kader Toy Factory kills 156 workers. 1994 Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. 1997 A 7.3 Mw earthquake strikes Iran's Khorasan Province, killing 1,567, injuring over 2,300, leaving 50,000 homeless, and damaging or destroying over 15,000 homes.

2002 F.B.I. agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash anddiamonds.

2005 A hand grenade thrown by Vladimir Arutinian lands about 65 feet (20 metres) from U.S. President George W. Bush while he is giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, but it malfunctions and does not detonate.

 

2008 An EF4 tornado strikes the Oklahoma-Kansas state line, killing 21 people and injuring over 100. 2008 War in Darfur: The Justice and Equality Movement and Sudanese government forces clash in Omdurman and Khartoum, the first time the fighting takes place in the nation'scapital.

MAY 11

330 Byzantium is renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, but it is more popularly referred to as Constantinople.

912 Alexander becomes Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

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1310 In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics. 1502 Christopher Columbus leaves for his fourth and final voyage to the West Indies. 1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City.

  

1745 War of Austrian Succession: Battle of Fontenoy French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army. 1792 Captain Robert Gray becomes the first documented white person to sail into the Columbia River. 1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London.

1813 In Australia, William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth lead an expedition westwards from Sydney. Their route opens up inland Australia for continued expansion throughout the 19th century.

 

1820 Launch of HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage. 1846 President James K. Polk asked for and received a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the MexicanAmerican War

     

1857 Indian Mutiny: Indian rebels seize Delhi from the British. 1858 Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. State. 1862 American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia. 1867 Luxembourg gains its independence. 1880 Seven people are killed in the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a gun battle in California 1891 The tsu incident: Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Imperial Russia (later Nicholas II) suffers a critical

head injury during a sword attack by Japanese policeman Tsuda Sanz . He is rescued by Prince George of Greece and Denmark.

       

1894 Pullman Strike: Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a wildcat strike in Illinois. 1907 32 Shriners are killed when their chartered train derails at a switch near Surf Depot in Lompoc, California. 1910 An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana. 1918 The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus is officially established. 1924 Mercedes-Benz is formed by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merging their two companies. 1927 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded. 1942 William Faulkner's collections of short stories, Go Down, Moses, is published. 1943 World War II: American troops invade Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces.

 

1944 World War II: The Allies begin a major offensive against the Axis Powers on the Gustav Line. 1945 World War II: Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill, is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of her crew. Although badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under her own power.

1946 UMNO is created.

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1949 Siam officially changes its name to Thailand for the second time. The name had been in use since 1939 but was reverted in 1945.

  

1949 Israel joins the United Nations. 1953 The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: an F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114. 1960 In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement.

1967 Andreas Papandreou, Greek economist and socialist politician, is imprisoned in Athens by the Greek military junta.

1968 The Toronto Transit Commission opens the largest expansion of its BloorDanforth line, going to Scarborough in the East, and Etobicoke in the West.

 

1970 The Lubbock Tornado, a F5 tornado, hits Lubbock, Texas, killing 26 and causing $250 million in damage. 1973 Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.

1985 Bradford City stadium fire: Fifty-six spectators die and more than 200 are injured in a flash fire at Valley Parade football ground during a match against Lincoln City in Bradford, England.

 

1987 Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II. 1987 In Baltimore, Maryland, the first heart-lung transplant takes place. The surgery is performed by Dr. Bruce Reitz of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

1995 In New York City more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.

1996 After the aircraft's departure from Miami, Florida, a fire started by improperly handled oxygen canisters in the cargo hold of Atlanta-bound ValuJet Flight 592 causes theDouglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades killing all 110 on board.

1996 The 1996 Mount Everest disaster: on a single day eight people die during summit attempts on Mount Everest .

1997 Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

 

1998 India conducts three underground atomic tests in Pokhran to include a thermonuclear device. 2000 Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia.

MAY 12

254 Pope Stephen I succeeds Pope Lucius I as the 23rd pope.

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303 Roman Emperor Diocletian orders the beheading of the 14-year-old Pancras of Rome. 922 After much hardship, Abbasid envoy Ahmad ibn Fadlan arrived in the lands of Volga Bulgars. 1191 Richard I of England marries Berengaria of Navarre who is crowned Queen consort of England the same day.

1264 The Battle of Lewes, between King Henry III of England and the rebel Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, begins.

   

1328 Antipope Nicholas V, a claimant to the papacy, is consecrated in Rome by the Bishop of Venice. 1364 Jagiellonian University, the oldest university in Poland, is founded in Krakw, Poland. 1551 National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru. 1588 French Wars of Religion: Henry III of France flees Paris after Henry of Guise enters the city and a spontaneous uprising occurs.

 

1689 King William's War: William III of England joins the League of Augsburg starting a war with France. 1743 Maria Theresa of Austria is crowned Queen of Bohemia after defeating her rival, Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor.

1780 American Revolutionary War: In the largest defeat of the Continental Army, Charleston, South Carolina is taken by British forces.

   

1797 First Coalition: Napoleon I of France conquers Venice. 1821 The first big battle of the Greek War of Independence against the Turks occurs in Valtetsi. 1862 U.S. federal troops occupy Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Raymond: two divisions of James B. McPherson's XVII Corps (ACW) turn the left wing of Confederate General John C. Pemberton's defensive line on Fourteen Mile Creek, opening up the interior of Mississippi to the Union Army during the Vicksburg Campaign.

1864 American Civil War: the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House: thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers die in "the Bloody Angle".

1865 American Civil War: the Battle of Palmito Ranch: the first day of the last major land action to take place during the Civil War, resulting in a Confederate victory.

1870 The Manitoba Act is given the Royal Assent, paving the way for Manitoba to become a province of Canada on July 15.

  

1873 Oscar II is crowned King of Sweden. 1881 In North Africa, Tunisia becomes a French protectorate. 1885 North-West Rebellion: the four-day Battle of Batoche, pitting rebel Mtis against the Canadian government, comes to an end with a decisive rebel defeat.

1916 James Connolly was sat on a chair and shot dead in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, after his role in the Easter Uprising

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1926 UK General Strike 1926: In the United Kingdom, a nine-day general strike by trade unions ends. 1932 Ten weeks after his abduction Charles Jr., the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.

1935 Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith (founders of Alcoholics Anonymous) meet for the first time in Akron, Ohio, at the home of Henrietta Siberling.

1937 George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

 

1941 Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin. 1942 World War II: Second Battle of Kharkov: in eastern Ukraine, Red Army forces under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launch a major offensive from the Izium bridgehead, only to be encircled and destroyed by the troops of Army Group South two weeks later.

   

1942 Holocaust: 1,500 Jews are sent to gas chambers in Auschwitz. 1945 Argentinian labour leader Jos Peter declares the Federacin Obrera de la Industria de la Carne dissolved. 1949 The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin. 1949 The western occupying powers approve the Basic Law for the new German state: the Federal Republic of Germany.

 

1952 Gaj Singh is crowned Maharaja of Jodhpur. 1955 Nineteen days after bus workers went on strike in Singapore, rioting breaks out and seriously impacts Singapore's bid for independence.

1958 A formal North American Aerospace Defense Command agreement is signed between the United States and Canada.

1962 Douglas MacArthur delivers his Duty, Honor, Country valedictory speech at the United States Military Academy.

 

1965 The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crashes on the Moon. 1968 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attack Australian troops defending Fire Support Base Coral, east of Lai Khe in South Vietnam on the night of 12/13 May, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides and beginning the Battle of Coral-Balmoral.

1975 Mayagez incident: the Cambodian navy seizes the American merchant ship SS Mayaguez in international waters.

1978 In Zaire, rebels occupy the city of Kolwezi, the mining center of the province of Shaba (now known as Katanga). The local government asks the U.S.A., France and Belgium to restore order.

1981 Francis Hughes starves to death in the Maze Prison in a Republican campaign for political prisoner status to be granted to Provisional IRA prisoners.

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1982 During a procession outside the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Ftima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan Fernandez Krohn before he can attack Pope John Paul II with abayonet. Krohn, an ultraconservative Spanish priest opposed to the Vatican II reforms, believed that the Pope had to be killed for being an "agent of Moscow".

2002 Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.

 

2003 The Riyadh compound bombings, carried out by Al Qaeda, kill 26 people. 2003 Fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers bring the Texas Legislature to a standstill by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.

 

2006 Mass unrest by the Primeiro Comando da Capital begins in So Paulo (Brazil), leaving at least 150 dead. 2006 Iranian Azeris interpret a cartoon published in an Iranian magazine as insulting, resulting in massive riots throughout the country.

2007 Riots in which over 50 people are killed and over 100 are injured take place in Karachi upon the arrival in town of the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

 

2008 An earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people. 2008 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of workplace and arrests nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.

2010 An Afriqiyah Airways Flight crashes and kills everyone but one person on board.

MAY 13
  
1373 Julian of Norwich has visions which are later transcribed in her Revelations of Divine Love. 1497 Pope Alexander VI excommunicates Girolamo Savonarola. 1515 Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk are officially married at Greenwich.

1568 Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots, are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.

  

1619 Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after being convicted of treason. 1648 Construction of the Red Fort at Delhi is completed. 1779 War of Bavarian Succession: Russian and French mediators at the Congress of Teschen negotiate an end to the war. In the agreement Austriareceives the part of its territory that was taken from it (the Innviertel).

1780 The Cumberland Compact is signed by leaders of the settlers in early Tennessee.

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1787 Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts (the "First Fleet") to establish a penal colony in Australia.

    

1804 Forces sent by Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli to retake Derne from the Americans attack the city. 1830 Ecuador gains its independence from Gran Colombia. 1846 Mexican-American War: The United States declares war on Mexico. 1848 First performance of Finland's national anthem. 1861 American Civil War: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.

  

1861 The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia. 1861 Pakistans (then a part of British India) first railway line opens, from Karachi to Kotri. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Resaca the battle begins with Union General Sherman fighting toward Atlanta, Georgia.

1865 American Civil War: Battle of Palmito Ranch in far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War ends with a Confederate victory.

      

1880 In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway. 1888 With the passage of the Lei urea ("Golden Law"), Brazil abolishes slavery. 1909 The first Giro d'Italia starts from Milan. Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna will be the winner. 1912 The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) is established in the United Kingdom. 1917 Three children report the first apparition of Our Lady of Ftima in Ftima, Portugal. 1923 Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Catholic Church, is beatified. 1939 The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The station later becomesWDRC-FM.

1940 World War II: Germany's conquest of France begins as the German army crosses the Meuse. Winston Churchill makes his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.

1940 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands flees her country to Great Britain after the Nazi invasion. Princess Juliana takes her children to Canada for their safety.

1941 World War II: Yugoslav royal colonel Dragoljub Mihailovi starts fighting with German occupation troops, beginning the Serbian resistance.

 

1943 World War II: German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allied forces. 1948 1948 Arab-Israeli War: the Kfar Etzion massacre is committed by Arab irregulars, the day before the declaration of independence of the state of Israel on May 14.

1950 The first round of the Formula One World Championship is held at Silverstone.

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1951 The 400th anniversary of the founding of the National University of San Marcos is commemorated by the opening of the first large-capacity stadium in Peru.

  

1952 The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India, holds its first sitting. 1954 The anti-National Service Riots, by Chinese Middle School students in Singapore, take place. 1958 During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by antiAmerican demonstrators.

 

1958 The trade mark Velcro is registered. 1958 May 1958 crisis: a group of French military officers lead a coup in Algiers demanding that a government of national unity be formed with Charles de Gaulle at its head in order to defend French control of Algeria.

1960 Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.

 

1963 The U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland is decided. 1967 Dr. Zakir Hussain becomes the third President of India. He is the first Muslim President of the Indian Union. He holds this position until August 24, 1969.

 

1969 Race riots, later known as the May 13 Incident, take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 1972 Faulty electrical wiring ignites a fire underneath the Playtown Cabaret in Osaka, Japan. Blocked exits and non-functional elevators lead to 118 fatalities, with many victims leaping to their deaths.

1980 An F3 tornado hits Kalamazoo County, Michigan. President Jimmy Carter declares it a federal disaster area.

1981 Mehmet Ali A ca attempts to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome. The Pope is rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic to undergo emergency surgery and survives.

1985 Police storm MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.

    

1989 Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike. 1992 Li Hongzhi gives the first public lecture on Falun Gong in Changchun, People's Republic of China. 1994 Johnny Carson makes his last television appearance on Late Show with David Letterman. 1996 Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kill 600 people. 1998 Race riots break out in Jakarta, Indonesia, where shops owned by Indonesians of Chinese descent are looted and women raped.

1998 India carries out two nuclear tests at Pokhran, following the three conducted on May 11. The United States and Japan impose economic sanctions on India.

2000 In Enschede, Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately 450 million in damage.

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2005 The Andijan Massacre occurs in Uzbekistan. 2005 The Binh Bridge opens to traffic in Hai Phong, Vietnam. 2006 2006 So Paulo violence: a major rebellion occurs in several prisons in Brazil. 2008 The Jaipur bombings in Rajasthan, India results in dozens of deaths.

MAY 14

1264 Battle of Lewes: Henry III of England is captured and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.

      

1483 Coronation of Charles VIII of France (Charles l'Affable). 1509 Battle of Agnadello: In northern Italy, French forces defeat the Venetians. 1607 Jamestown, Virginia is settled as an English colony. 1608 The Protestant Union is founded in Auhausen. 1610 Henry IV of France is assassinated bringing Louis XIII to the throne. 1643 Four-year-old Louis XIV becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Louis XIII. 1747 War of the Austrian Succession: A British fleet under Admiral George Anson defeats the French at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre.

1787 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States; George Washingtonpresides.

 

1796 Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination. 1804 The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Camp Dubois and begins its historic journey by traveling up the Missouri River.

1811 Paraguay: Pedro Juan Caballero, Fulgencio Yegros and Jos Gaspar Rodrguez de Francia start actions to depose the Spanish governor

  

1836 The Treaties of Velasco are signed in Velasco, Texas. 1863 American Civil War: The Battle of Jackson takes place. 1868 Boshin War: The Battle of Utsunomiya Castle ends former Tokugawa shogunate forces withdraw northward to Aizu by way of Nikk .

1870 The first game of rugby in New Zealand is played in Nelson between Nelson College and the Nelson Rugby Football Club.

  

1879 The first group of 463 Indian indentured laborers arrives in Fiji aboard the Leonidas. 1889 The children's charity National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is launched in London. 1913 New York Governor William Sulzer approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100 million donation from John D. Rockefeller.

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1925 Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway is published. 1929 Wilfred Rhodes takes his 4000th first-class wicket during a performance of 9 for 39 at Leyton; he is the only player in history to have reached that plateau.

1931 dalen shootings: five people are killed in dalen, Sweden, as soldiers open fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.

      

1935 The Philippines ratifies an independence agreement. 1939 Lina Medina becomes the youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five. 1940 World War II: Rotterdam is bombed by the German Luftwaffe. 1940 World War II: The Battle of the Netherlands ends with the Netherlands surrendering to Germany. 1940 The Yermolayev Yer-2, a long-range Soviet medium bomber, has its first flight. 1943 A Japanese submarine sinks AHS Centaur off the coast of Queensland. 1948 Israel is declared to be an independent state and a provisional government is established. Immediately after the declaration, Israel is attacked by the neighboring Arab states, triggering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1951 Trains run on the Talyllyn Railway in Wales for the first time since preservation, making it the first railway in the world to be operated by volunteers.

1955 Cold War: Eight communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defense treaty called the Warsaw Pact.

1961 American civil rights movement: The Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protesters are beaten by an angry mob.

   

1963 Kuwait joins the United Nations. 1970 The Red Army Faction is established in Germany. 1973 Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched. 1988 Carrollton bus collision: a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Kentucky, United States hits a converted school bus carrying a church youth group. The crash and ensuing fire kill 27.

 

2004 The Constitutional Court of South Korea overturns the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun. 2005 The former USS America, a decommissioned supercarrier of the United States Navy, is deliberately sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after four weeks of live-fire exercises. She is the largest ship ever to be disposed of as a target in a military exercise.

May 15

1252 Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1525 The battle of Frankenhausen ends the German Peasants' War.

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1536 Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest. She is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

  

1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, marries James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband. 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first European to see Cape Cod. 1618 Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).

    

1648 The Treaty of Westphalia signed. 1701 The War of the Spanish Succession begins. 1718 James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun. 1755 Laredo, Texas is established by the Spaniards. 1776 American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.

  

1791 Maximilien Robespierre proposes the Self-denying Ordinance. 1792 War of the First Coalition: France declares war on Kingdom of Sardinia. 1793 Diego Marn Aguilera flies a glider for "about 360 meters", at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted flights.

 

1796 First Coalition: Napoleon enters Milan in triumph. 1800 George III of the United Kingdom survives an assassination attempt by James Hadfield, who is later acquitted by reason of insanity.

 

1811 Paraguay declares independence from Spain. 1817 Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.

1829 The Aaronic Priesthood is restored to Joseph Smith Jr. and Oliver Cowdery, prior to the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  

1836 Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse. 1849 Troops of the Two Sicilies take Palermo and crush the republican government of Sicily 1850 The Bloody Island Massacre takes place in Lake County, California, in which a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County are slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.

 

1858 Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture. It is later renamed the United States Department of Agriculture.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends.

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1864 American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 Woman's suffrage: in New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

1904 The Russian minelayer Amur laid a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sank Japan's battleships Hatsuse, 15,000 tons, with 496 crew and "Yashima".

1905 Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres (0.4 km ), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.

1911 In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.

1919 The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00 a.m., almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job.

1919 Greek invasion of zmir. During the invasion, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks. Those responsible are punished by the Greek Commander Aristides Stergiades.

       

1928 Mickey Mouse premiered in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy 1929 A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 123. 1932 The May 15 Incident: in an attempted Coup d'tat, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is killed. 1934 K rlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia. 1935 The Moscow Metro is opened to public. 1936 Amy Johnson arrives back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town 1940 USS Sailfish (SS-192) recommissioned, originally the USS Squalus. 1940 World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.

 

1940 McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. 1942 World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.

  

1943 Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International). 1945 World War II: The final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia. 1948 Following the demise of the British Mandate of Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade Israel thus starting the 1948 ArabIsraeli War.

 

1951 The Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czes aw Mi osz, asks the French government for political asylum. 1957 At Malden Island in the Pacific, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. The device fails to detonate properly.

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1958 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3. 1960 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4. 1963 Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.

1966 After a policy dispute, Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam's ruling junta launches a military attack on the forces of General Ton That Dinh, forcing him to abandon his command.

1969 People's Park: California Governor Ronald Reagan has an impromptu student park owned by University of California at Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.

1970 President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.

1970 Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green are killed at Jackson State University by police during student protests.

1972 The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.

1972 In Laurel, Maryland, Arthur Bremer shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace while he is campaigning to be become President.

1974 Ma'alot massacre: In an Arab terrorist attack and hostage taking at an Israeli school, a total of 31 people are killed, including 22 schoolchildren.

 

1987 The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit. 1988 Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

1990 Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time.

 

1991 Edith Cresson becomes France's first female prime minister. 1997 The United States government acknowledges the existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other "Secret War" veterans.

2008 California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state's own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.

2010 Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.

May 16

218 Julia Maesa, aunt of the assassinated Caracalla, is banished to her home in Syria by the self-proclaimed emperor Macrinus and declares her 14-year old grandson Elagabalus, emperor of Rome.

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1204 Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire. 1527 The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes itself as a republic. 1532 Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England. 1568 Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England. 1770 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later becomes king of France. 1771 The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The "Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.

  

1811 Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom, defeat the French at the Battle of Albuera. 1822 Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli. 1843 The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

    

1866 The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel. 1868 President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate. 1874 A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people. 1877 May 16, 1877 political crisis in France. 1891 The International Electro-Technical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electrical current (the most common form today).

 

1914 The first ever Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final is played. Brooklyn Field Club defeats Brooklyn Celtic 2-1. 1918 The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.

1919 A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

    

1920 In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc. 1929 In Hollywood, California, the first Academy Awards are handed out. 1943 Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends. 1948 Chaim Weizmann is elected the first President of Israel. 1951 The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.

  

1960 Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. 1961 Park Chung-hee leads a coup d'tat to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea. 1966 The Communist Party of China issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

1969 Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.

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1974 Josip Broz Tito is re-elected president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This time he is elected for life.

1975 India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote is in favor of merging with India.

  

1975 Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 1983 Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement rebels against the Sudanese government. 1986 The Seville Statement on Violence is adopted by an international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain.

1988 A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1991 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

2003 In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.

2005 Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.

May 17
          
1521 Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, is executed for treason. 1536 George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford and four other men are executed for treason. 1590 Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland. 1642 Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve (16121676) founds the Ville Marie de Montral. 1673 Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River. 1775 American Revolutionary War: the Continental Congress bans trade with Canada. 1792 The New York Stock Exchange is formed. 1805 Muhammad Ali becomes W li of Egypt. 1809 Napoleon I of France 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 the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik is elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly.

  

1849 A large fire nearly burns St. Louis, Missouri to the ground. 1863 Rosala 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.

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1869 Imperial Japanese forces defeat the remnants of the Tokugawa shogunate in the Battle of Hakodate to end the Boshin War.

  

1875 Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby. 1900 Second Boer War: British troops relieve Mafeking. 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 Herbert Henry 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. 1940 World War II: the old city centre of the Dutch town of Middelburg is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, to force the surrender of the Dutch armies in Zeeland.

  

1943 The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC. 1943 World War II: the Dambuster Raids by No. 617 Squadron RAF on German dams. 1954 The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

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.

  

1970 Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II to sail the Atlantic Ocean. 1973 Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate. 1974 Police in Los Angeles, California, raid the Symbionese Liberation Army's headquarters, killing six members, including Camilla Hall.

1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings: Thirty-three civilians are killed when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) explodes car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland.

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 the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, starting the Internal conflict in Peru.

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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), 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 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, many disappearances, hundreds of injuries, and over 3,500 arrests.

 

1994 Malawi holds its first multi-party elections. 1997 Troops of Laurent Kabila march into Kinshasa. Zaire is officially renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  

2004 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage. 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 since1953.

2009 Dalia Grybauskait is elected the first female President of Lithuania.

May 18
   
332 Constantine the Great announced free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople. 1152 Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. 1268 The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Battle of Antioch. 1302 Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia.

  

1498 Vasco da Gama reaches the port of Calicut, India. 1593 Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations of heresy lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe. 1631 In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts.

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1652 Rhode Island passes the first law in North America making slavery illegal. 1756 The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France. 1763 Fire destroys a large part of Montreal, Quebec. 1783 First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown (later called Saint John), New Brunswick, Canada after leaving the United States.

  

1803 Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revokes the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France. 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate. 1811 Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Ro de la Plata in Uruguay led by Jose Artigas.

1812 John Bellingham is found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.

  

1843 The Disruption in Edinburgh of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland. 1848 Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt, Germany. 1860 Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

 

1863 American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg begins. 1896 The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional.

1896 Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people.

  

1900 The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga. 1910 The Earth passes through the tail of Comet Halley. 1917 World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription.

 

1926 Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears while visiting a Venice, California beach. 1927 The Bath School Disaster: forty-five people are killed by bombs planted by a disgruntled school-board member in Michigan.

1927 After being founded for 20 years, the Government of the Republic of China approves Tongji University to be among the first national universities of the Republic of China.

 

1933 New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1944 World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers evacuate Monte Cassino.

 

1944 Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union government. 1948 The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking.

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1953 Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier. 1955 Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and nonVietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam toSouth Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ends.

    

1956 First ascent of Lhotse 8,516 meters, by a Swiss team. 1958 An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h). 1959 Launch of the National Liberation Committee of Cte d'Ivoire in Conakry, Guinea. 1969 Apollo program: Apollo 10 is launched. 1974 Nuclear test: under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1974 Completion of the Warsaw radio mast, the tallest construction ever built at the time. It collapsed on August 8, 1991.

1980 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens: Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1980 Gwangju Massacre: students in Gwangju, South Korea begin demonstrations calling for democratic reforms.

1983 In Ireland, the government launches a crackdown, with the leading Dublin pirate Radio Nova being put off the air.

 

1990 In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3km/h (320.2 mph). 1991 Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is not recognized by the international community.

1993 EU - riots in Nrrebro, Copenhagen caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in the Maastricht Treaty referendum. Police opened fire against civilians for the first time since World War II and injured 11 demonstrators. In total 113 bullets are fired.

2005 A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons: Nix and Hydra.

2006 The post Loktantra Andolan government passes a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country.

2009 Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.

May 19

1499 Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.

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1535 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).

  

1536 Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest. 1568 Queen Elizabeth I of England orders the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots. 1643 Thirty Years' War: French forces under the duc d'Enghien decisively defeat Spanish forces at the Battle of Rocroi, marking the symbolic end ofSpain as a dominant land power.

1649 An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years.

1749 King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River.

1780 New England's Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.

 

1802 Napoleon Bonaparte founds the Legion of Honour. 1828 U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828 into law, protecting wool manufacturers in the United States.

 

1845 Captain Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated Arctic expedition depart from Greenhithe, England. 1848 Mexican-American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.

  

1864 American Civil War: the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House ends. 1897 Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol. 1911 Parks Canada, the world's first national park service, is established as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior.

1919 Mustafa Kemal Atatrk lands at Samsun on the Anatolian Black Sea coast, initiating what is later termed the Turkish War of Independence.

  

1921 The U.S. Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration. 1922 The Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union is established. 1934 Zveno and the Bulgarian Army engineer a coup d'tat and install Kimon Georgiev as the new Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

1943 World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings ("D-Day"). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1950 A barge containing munitions destined for Pakistan explodes in the harbor at South Amboy, New Jersey, devastating the city.

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1959 The North Vietnamese Army establishes Group 559, whose responsibility is to determine how to maintain supply lines to South Vietnam; the resulting route is the Ho Chi Minh trail.

1961 Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

1962 A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday".

   

1971 Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union. 1986 The Firearm Owners Protection Act is signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. 1991 Croatians vote for independence in a referendum. 1997 The Sierra Gorda Biosphere, the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, is established as a result of grassroots efforts.

2007 President of Romania Traian B sescu survives an impeachment referendum and returns to office from suspension.

2010 The Royal Thai Armed Forces concludes its crackdown on protests by forcing the surrender of United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship leaders.

May 20
  
325 The First Council of Nicea the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church is held. 526 An earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia. 685 The Battle of Dunnichen or Nechtansmere is fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who are decisively defeated.

1217 The Second Battle of Lincoln is fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

 

1293 King Sancho IV of Castile creates the Study of General Schools of Alcal. 1497 John Cabot sets sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).

   

1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India. 1521 Battle of Pampeluna: Ignatius Loyola is seriously wounded. 1570 Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas. 1609 Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

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1631 The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War.

 

1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence signed in Charlotte, North Carolina 1802 By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution

1813 Napoleon Bonaparte leads his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ends the next day with a French victory.

 

1840 York Minster is badly damaged by fire 1861 American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state. Meanwhile, the State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.

 

1862 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church in the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fight in this Confederate victory.

 

1873 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. 1875 Signing of the Metre Convention by 17 nations leading to the establishment of the International System of Units.

   

1882 The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy is formed. 1883 Krakatoa begins to erupt. The volcano's final and most notable explosion occurs on August 26. 1891 History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope. 1896 The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier falls on the crowd below resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.

1902 Cuba gains independence from the United States. Toms Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.

 

1908 Budi Utomo organization is founded in Dutch East Indies, beginning the Indonesian National Awakening. 1916 The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage).

1920 Montreal, Quebec radio station XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.

1927 Treaty of Jedda: the United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merge to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1927 At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

1932 Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

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1940 Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz. 1941 World War II: Battle of Crete German paratroops invade Crete. 1949 In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established.

1956 In Operation Redwing (shot Cherokee), the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean;

1965 PIA Flight 705, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 720 040 B, crashes while descending to land at Cairo International Airport, killing 119 of the 125 passengers and crew.

 

1969 The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends. 1980 In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.

1983 First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

 

1985 Radio Mart, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba. 1989 The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

 

1990 The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania. 1996 Gay rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

2002 The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

May 21

293 Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appoint Galerius as Caesar to Diocletian, beginning the period of four rulers known as the Tetrarchy.

 

878 Syracuse, Italy is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily. 879 Pope John VIII gives blessings to duke Branimir and to Croatian people, considered to be international recognition of the Croatian state.

   

996 Sixteen-year-old Otto III is crowned Holy Roman Emperor. 1502 The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese explorer Joo da Nova. 1554 A royal Charter is granted to Derby School in Derby, England. 1674 The nobility elect John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

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1725 The Order of St. Alexander Nevsky is instituted in Russia by Empress Catherine I. It would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky.

 

1758 Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War. 1809 The first day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling between the Austrian army led by Archduke Charles and the French army led by Napoleon I of Francesees the French attack across the Danube held.

  

1851 Slavery is abolished in Colombia, South America. 1856 Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces. 1863 American Civil War: The Union Army succeeds in closing off the last escape route from Port Hudson, Louisiana, in preparation for the coming siege.

 

1863 Organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. 1864 Russia declares an end to the Russian-Circassian War and many Circassians are forced into exile. The day is designated the Circassian Day of Mourning.

1871 French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting. By the close of "Bloody Week" some 20,000 communards have been killed and 38,000 arrested.

 

1871 Opening of the first rack railway in Europe, the Rigi-Bahnen on Mount Rigi. 1879 War of the Pacific: Two Chilean ships blocking the harbor of Iquique (then belonging to Peru) battle two Peruvian vessels in the Battle of Iquique.

 

1881 The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton. 1894 The Manchester Ship Canal in England is officially opened by Queen Victoria, who knights its designer Sir Edward Leader Williams.

 

1904 The Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is founded in Paris. 1911 Mexican President Porfirio Daz and the revolutionary Francisco Madero sign the Treaty of Ciudad Jurez to put an end to the fighting between the forces of both men, and thus concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution.

1917 The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is established through Royal Charter to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations military forces.

 

1917 The Great Atlanta fire of 1917. 1924 University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing".

1927 Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

1932 Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

1934 Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens.

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1936 Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notoriousscandals.

1937 A Soviet station becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean.

 

1939 The Canadian National War Memorial is unveiled by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa. 1946 Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1951 The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School.

1961 American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out.

  

1966 The Ulster Volunteer Force declares war on the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. 1969 Civil unrest in Rosario, Argentina, known as Rosariazo, following the death of a 15-year-old student. 1972 Michelangelo's Piet in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth.

1979 White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

1981 Irish Republican hunger strikers Raymond McCreesh and Patsy OHara die on hunger strike in Maze prison.

1981 The Italian government releases the membership list of Propaganda Due, an illegal pseudo-Masonic lodge that was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries.

   

1982 Falklands War: British amphibious assault during Operation Sutton lead to the Battle of San Carlos. 1990 Democratic Republic of Yemen and North Yemen agree to merge into the Republic of Yemen. 1991 Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras. 1991 Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, flees Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end.

1994 The Democratic Republic of Yemen unsuccessful attempts to secede from Republic of Yemen; a war breaks out.

    

1996 The MV Bukoba sinks in Tanzanian waters on Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000. 1996 The Trappist Martyrs of Atlas are executed. 1998 In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker. 2001 French Taubira law officially recognizes the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. 2003 An earthquake hits northern Algeria killing more than 2,000 people.

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2005 The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure. 2006 The Republic of Montenegro holds a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. The Montenegrin people choose independence with a majority of 55%.

May 22
    
334 BC The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. 853 A Byzantine fleet sacks and destroys undefended Damietta in Egypt 1176 The Hashshashin (Assassins) attempt to murder Saladin near Aleppo. 1377 Pope Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English theologian John Wycliffe. 1455 Wars of the Roses: at the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.

   

1762 Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Hamburg. 1807 A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason. 1807 Most of the English town of Chudleigh is destroyed by fire 1809 On the second and last day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling (near Vienna), Napoleon is repelled by an enemy army for the first time.

1816 A mob in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, riots over high unemployment and rising grain costs; the rioting spreads to Ely the next day.

1819 The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, United States, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The ship arrived at Liverpool, England on June 20.

  

1826 HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage. 1840 The transporting of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished. 1843 Thousands of people and their cattle head west via wagon train from Independence, Missouri to what would later become the Oregon Territory. It is part of the Great Migration. They follow what is now known as the Oregon Trail.

1844 Persian Prophet The Bb announces his revelation, founding Bbism. He announces to the world the coming of "He whom God shall make manifest". He is considered the forerunner of Bah'u'llh, the founder of the Bah' Faith.

 

1848 Slavery is abolished in Martinique. 1856 Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attackingSoutherners who sympathized with the proslavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas").

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1863 American Civil War: Siege of Port Hudson Union forces begin to lay siege to the Confederatecontrolled Port Hudson, Louisiana.

 

1871 The U.S. Army issued an order for abandonment of Fort Kearny in Nebraska. 1872 Reconstruction: U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

   

1897 The Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames is officially opened 1903 Launch of the White Star Liner, SS Ionic. 1906 The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine". 1915 Lassen Peak erupts with a powerful force, and is the only mountain other than Mount St. Helens to erupt in the continental US during the 20th century.

1915 Three trains collide in the Quintinshill rail crash near Gretna Green, Scotland, killing 227 people and injuring 246; the accident is found to be the result of non-standard operating practices during a shift change at a busy junction.

1936 Aer Lingus (Aer Loingeas) is founded by the Irish government as the national airline of the Republic of Ireland.

  

1939 World War II: Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel. 1942 Mexico enters World War II on the side of the Allies. 1942 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee disbands, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, is formed.

1942 World War II: Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlists in the United States Marine Corps as a flight instructor.

1947 Cold War: in an effort to fight the spread of Communism, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs an act into law that will later be called the Truman Doctrine. The act grants$400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement.

1958 Sri Lankan riots of 1958: This riot is a watershed event in the race relationship of the various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. The total number of deaths is estimated to be 300, mostly Sri Lankan Tamils.

1960 An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hits southern Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.

  

1962 Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashes after bombs explode on board. 1963 Assassination attempt of Greek left-wing politician Gregoris Lambrakis, who will die five days afterwards. 1964 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great Society social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice" in America.

1967 The L'Innovation department store in the centre of Brussels, Belgium, burns down. It is the most devastating fire in Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured.

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1968 The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

 

1969 Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface. 1972 Ceylon adopts a new constitution, thus becoming a Republic, changes its name to Sri Lanka, and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.

      

1980 Namco releases the highly influential arcade game Pac-Man. 1987 Hashimpura massacre in Meerut city of India. 1990 North and South Yemen are unified to create the Republic of Yemen. 1990 Microsoft releases the Windows 3.0 operating system. 1992 After 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show for the last time. 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia join the United Nations. 1997 Kelly Flinn, US Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepts a general discharge in order to avoid a court martial.

1998 Lewinsky scandal: a federal judge rules that United States Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving PresidentBill Clinton.

 

2002 In Washington, D.C., the remains of the missing Chandra Levy are found in Rock Creek Park. 2002 American civil rights movement: a jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

 

2003 In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Srenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years. 2004 The U.S. town of Hallam, Nebraska, is wiped out by a powerful F4 tornado (part of the May 2004 tornado outbreak sequence) that broke a width record at an astounding 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide, which kills one resident.

2008 The Late-May 2008 tornado outbreak sequence unleashes 235 tornadoes, including an EF4 and an EF5 tornado, between May 22 and May 31, 2008. The tornadoes struck 19states and one Canadian province.

2011 An EF5 Tornado strikes the US city of Joplin, Missouri killing at least 158 people, the single deadliest US tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950.

May 23

1430 Siege of Compigne: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compigne.

  

1498 Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy, on the orders of Pope Alexander VI. 1533 The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void. 1568 The Netherlands declare their independence from Spain.

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1568 Dutch rebels led by Louis of Nassau, brother of William I of Orange, defeat Jean de Ligne, Duke of Aremberg and his loyalist troops in the Battle of Heiligerlee, opening the Eighty Years' War.

   

1609 Official ratification of the Second Charter of Virginia takes place. 1618 The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitates the Thirty Years' War. 1701 After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London. 1706 Battle of Ramillies: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, defeats a French army under Marshal Villeroi.

  

1788 South Carolina ratifies the Constitution as the 8th American state. 1805 Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Cathedral of Milan. 1813 South American independence leader Simn Bolvar enters Mrida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El Libertador ("The Liberator").

 

1829 Accordion patent granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna. 1844 Declaration of the Bb: a merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement that would later be brutally crushed by the Persian government. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Bah' Faith, and Bah's celebrate the day as a holy day.

1846 Mexican-American War: President Mariano Paredes of Mexico unofficially declares war on the United States.

1873 The Canadian Parliament establishes the North West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

1900 American Civil War: Sergeant William Harvey Carney becomes the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in the Assault on the Battery Wagner in 1863.

    

1907 The unicameral Parliament of Finland gathers for its first plenary session. 1911 The New York Public Library is dedicated. 1915 World War I: Italy joins the Allies after they declare war on Austria-Hungary. 1934 American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana. 1934 The Auto-Lite Strike culminates in the "Battle of Toledo", a five-day mele between 1,300 troops of the Ohio National Guard and 6,000 picketers.

1939 The U.S. Navy submarine USS Squalus sinks off the coast of New Hampshire during a test dive, causing the death of 24 sailors and two civilian technicians. The remaining 32 sailors and one civilian naval architect are rescued the following day.

 

1945 World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, commits suicide while in Allied custody. 1945 World War II: The Flensburg government under Reichsprsident Karl Dnitz is dissolved when its members are captured and arrested by British forces at Flensburg in NorthernGermany.

1948 Thomas C. Wasson, US Consul-General assassinated in Jerusalem.

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1949 The Federal Republic of Germany is established and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is proclaimed.

1951 Tibetans sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with the People's Republic of China.

 

1958 Explorer 1 ceases transmission. 1967 Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran and blockades the port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building are imploded.

   

1995 The first version of the Java programming language is released. 1998 The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with 75% voting yes. 2002 The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland. 2004 Part of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport's Terminal 2E collapses, killing four people and injuring three others.

 

2006 Alaskan stratovolcano Mount Cleveland erupts. 2008 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) awards Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca (Pulau Batu Puteh) to Singapore, ending a 29-year territorial dispute between the two countries.

May 24
  
1218 The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1276 Magnus Laduls is crowned King of Sweden in Uppsala Cathedral. 1487 The ten-year-old Lambert Simnel is crowned in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland with the name of Edward VI in a bid to threaten King Henry VII's reign.

   

1595 Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library. 1621 The Protestant Union is formally dissolved. 1626 Peter Minuit buys Manhattan. 1689 The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics are intentionally excluded.

1738 John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day and a church service is generally held on the preceding Sunday.

  

1798 The Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins. 1822 Battle of Pichincha: Antonio Jos de Sucre secures the independence of the Presidency of Quito. 1830 Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale is published.

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1830 The first revenue trains in the United States begin service on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Baltimore, Maryland and Ellicott's Mills, Maryland.

 

1832 The First Kingdom of Greece is declared in the London Conference. 1844 Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland to inaugurate the first telegraph line.

         

1846 Mexican-American War: General Zachary Taylor captures Monterrey. 1856 John Brown and his men kill five slavery supporters at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. 1861 American Civil War: Union troops occupy Alexandria, Virginia. 1883 The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction. 1895 Henry Irving becomes the first person from the theatre to be knighted. 1900 Second Boer War: The United Kingdom annexes the Orange Free State. 1901 Seventy-eight miners die in the Caerphilly pit disaster in South Wales. 1915 World War I: Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. 1921 The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti opens. 1930 Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

1935 The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 at Crosley Field.

 

1940 Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight. 1941 World War II: In the Battle of the Atlantic, the German Battleship Bismarck sinks the then pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, killing all but three crewmen.

 

1943 Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp. 1948 ArabIsraeli War: Egypt captures the Israeli kibbutz of Yad Mordechai, but the five-day effort gives Israeli forces time to prepare enough to stop the Egyptian advance a week later.

1956 Conclusion of the Sixth Buddhist Council on Vesak Day, marking the 2,500 year anniversary after the Lord Buddha's Parinibb na.

 

1956 The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland 1958 United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.

1960 Following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest ever recorded earthquake, Cordn Caulle begins to erupt.

1961 American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.

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1961 Cyprus joins the Council of Europe. 1962 Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

     

1967 Egypt imposes a blockade and siege of the Red Sea coast of Israel. 1968 FLQ separatists bomb the U.S. consulate in Quebec City. 1970 The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union. 1973 Earl Jellicoe resigns as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. 1976 The London to Washington, D.C. Concorde service begins. 1976 The Judgement of Paris takes place in France, launching California as a worldwide force in the production of quality wine.

1980 The International Court of Justice calls for the release of United States embassy hostages in Tehran, Iran. The hostages would not be freed until the following January.

1981 Ecuadorian president Jaime Rolds Aguilera, his wife and his presidential comitee died in an aircraft accident while travelling from Quito to Zapotillo minutes after the president famous speech regarding the 24 de mayo anniversary of the Battle of Pichincha.

1982 Liberation of Khorramshahr: Iranians recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the IranIraq War.

1988 Section 28 of the United Kingdom's Local Government Act 1988, a controversial amendment stating that a local authority cannot intentionally promote homosexuality, is enacted.

1988 The fourth game of the 1988 Stanley Cup Finals between the Edmonton Oilers and the Boston Bruins had to end in a tie because of a power failure. The Oilers went on to win the Stanley Cup with a 6-3 victory in game 5.

1989 Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, is awarded 600,000 in damages (later reduced to 60,000 on appeal) after winning a libel action against Private Eye.

1990 A car carrying American Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney explodes in Oakland, California, critically injuring both.

   

1991 Eritrea gains its independence from Ethiopia. 1991 Israel conducts Operation Solomon, evacuating Ethiopian Jews to Israel. 1992 The last Thai dictator, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, resigns following pro-democracy protests. 1994 Four men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

 

2000 Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation. 2001 Mountain climbing: 15-year-old Sherpa Temba Tsheri becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.

2001 The Versailles wedding hall disaster in Jerusalem, Israel, kills 23 and injures over 200

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2002 Russia and the United States sign the Moscow Treaty. 2004 Communications in North Korea: North Korea bans mobile phones.

May 25
    
567 BC Servius Tullius, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. 240 BC First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors. 1420 Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ. 1521 The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.

1659 Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of therepublican government called the Commonwealth of England.

1738 A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.

 

1798 United Irishmen Rebellion: The Carnew massacre, Dunlavin massacre and Carlow massacre takes place. 1809 Chuquisaca Revolution: a group of patriots in Chuquisaca (modern day Sucre) revolt against the Spanish Empire, starting the South American Wars of Independence.

1810 May Revolution: citizens of Buenos Aires expel Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the May week, starting the Argentine War of Independence.

     

1819 The Argentine Constitution of 1819 is promulgated. 1833 The Chilean Constitution of 1833 is promulgated. 1837 The Rebels of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom. 1865 In Mobile, Alabama, 300 are killed when an ordnance depot explodes. 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. 1895 Playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

   

1895 The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Ching-sung as its president. 1914 The United Kingdom's House of Commons passes the Home Rule Act for devolution in Ireland. 1925 Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. 1926 Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the Paris-based government-inexile of Ukrainian People's Republic.

1935 Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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1936 The Remington Rand strike, led by the American Federation of Labor, begins. 1938 Spanish Civil War: The bombing of Alicante takes place, with 313 deaths. 1946 The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their Emir. 1951 Future Hall of Famer Willie Mays was called up by the New York Giants from their farm team Minneapolis Millers. We went 0-5 in his first major league game.

1953 Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conduct their first and only nuclear artillery test.

1953 The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.

1955 In the United States, a night time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It is the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S.

1955 First ascent of Kangchenjunga (8,586 m.), the third highest mountain in the world, by a British expedition led by Joe Brown and George Band.

1961 Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade.

    

1962 The Old Bay Line, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, goes out of business. 1963 In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity is established. 1966 Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches. 1966 The first prominent dzbo during the Cultural Revolution in China is posted at Peking University. 1967 Celtic F.C. from Glasgow, Scotland becomes the first ever Northern European team to win the European Cup; with previous winners being from Spain, Italy and Portugal.

1973 HNS Velos (D-16), while participating in a NATO exercise and in order to protest against the dictatorship in Greece, anchored at Fiumicino, Italy, refusing to return to Greece.

1977 Star Wars (retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday.

1979 American Airlines Flight 191: In Chicago, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport killing 271 on board and two people on the ground.

1979 Six-year-old Etan Patz disappears from the street just two blocks away from his New York City home, prompting an international search for the child, and causing U.S. President Ronald Reagan to designate May 25th as National Missing Children's Day (in 1983).

1981 In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

 

1982 HMS Coventry is sunk during the Falklands War. 1985 Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.

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1997 A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koromah. 1999 The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People's Republic of China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.

2000 Liberation Day of Lebanon. Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion in 1978.

2001 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2002 China Airlines Flight 611: A Boeing 747-200 breaks apart in mid-air and plunges into the Taiwan Strait killing 225 people.

 

2002 A train crash in Tenga, Mozambique kills 197 people. 2009 North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device. Following the nuclear test, Pyongyang also conducted several missile tests building tensions in the international community.

2011 Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty five year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

May 26

17 Germanicus returns to Rome as a conquering hero; he celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Cherusci, Chatti and other German tribes west of the Elbe.

451 Battle of Avarayr between Armenian rebels and the Sassanid Empire takes place. The Empire defeats the Armenians militarily but guarantees them freedom to openly practice Christianity.

1135 Alfonso VII of Len and Castile is crowned in the Cathedral of Leon as Imperator totius Hispaniae, "Emperor of all of Spain".

 

1293 An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, killing about 30,000. 1328 William of Ockham, Franciscan Minister-General Michael of Cesena and two other Franciscan leaders secretly leave Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII.

1538 Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years.

1637 Pequot War: A combined Protestant and Mohegan force under English Captain John Mason attacks a Pequot village in Connecticut, massacringapproximately 500 Native Americans.

1647 Alse Young, hanged in Hartford, Connecticut, becomes the first person executed as a witch in the British American colonies.

1736 Battle of Ackia: British and Chickasaw soldiers repel a French and Choctaw attack on the Chickasaw village of Ackia, near present-day Tupelo,Mississippi. The French, under Louisiana governor Jean Baptiste Le

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Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had sought to link Louisiana with Acadia and the other northern colonies of New France.

1770 The Orlov Revolt, an attempt to revolt against the Ottoman Empire before the Greek War of Independence, ends in disaster for the Greeks.

 

1783 A Great Jubilee Day held at Trumbull, Connecticut celebrated end of fighting in American Revolution. 1805 Napolon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano, the gothic cathedral in Milan.

  

1822 116 people die in the Grue Church fire, the biggest fire disaster in Norway's history. 1828 Feral child Kaspar Hauser is discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg. 1830 The Indian Removal Act is passed by the U.S. Congress; it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.

  

1857 Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners. 1864 Montana is organized as a United States territory. 1865 American Civil War: Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate TransMississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.

1868 The impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson ends with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote.

      

1869 Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 1879 Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state. 1896 Nicholas II becomes Tsar of Russia. 1896 Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 1897 Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published. 1906 Vauxhall Bridge is opened in London. 1908 At Masjed Soleyman ( ) in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle

East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by theAnglo-Persian Oil Company.

1917 Several powerful tornadoes rip through Illinois, including the city of Mattoon, killing 101 people and injuring 689.

 

1918 The Democratic Republic of Georgia is established. 1936 In the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, Tommy Henderson begins speaking on the Appropriation Bill. By the time he sits down in the early hours of the following morning, he had spoken for 10 hours.

 

1938 In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session. 1940 World War II: Battle of Dunkirk In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France.

1942 World War II: The Battle of Bir Hakeim takes place.

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1948 The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

 

1966 British Guiana gains independence, becoming Guyana. 1969 Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.

    

1970 The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2. 1972 Willandra National Park is established in Australia. 1972 The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1977 George Willig climbs the South Tower of New York City's World Trade Center. 1981 Prime Minister of Italy Arnaldo Forlani and his coalition cabinet resign following a scandal over membership of the pseudo-masonic lodge P2 (Propaganda Due).

1983 A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 104 people and injures thousands. Many people go missing and thousands of buildings are destroyed.

   

1986 The European Community adopts the European flag. 1991 Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes the first elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era. 1991 Lauda Air Flight 004 crashes in rural Thailand, killing 223. 1998 The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.

2004 The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

2008 Severe flooding begins in eastern and southern China that will ultimately cause 148 deaths and force the evacuation of 1.3 million.

2011 Ratko Mladi , Serbian war criminal, is arrested.

May 27
     
927 Battle of the Bosnian Highlands: the Croatian army, led by King Tomislav, defeats the Bulgarian Army. 1120 Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death. 1153 Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland. 1703 Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg. 1798 The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland. 1799 War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeats the French at Winterthur, Switzerland, securing control of the northeastern Swiss Plateau because of the town's location at the junction of seven cross-roads.

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1812 Bolivian War of Independence: In Bolivia, the Battle of La Coronilla, in which the women from Cochabamba fight against the Spanish army.

     

1813 War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George. 1849 The Great Hall of Euston station in London is opened. 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian Unification. 1863 American Civil War: First Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson. 1883 Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia. 1896 The F4-strength St. Louis-East St. Louis Tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri and East Saint Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing $2.9 billion in damage (1997 USD).

   

1905 Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins. 1907 Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco, California. 1919 The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight. 1927 The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.

1930 The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.

1933 New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1933 The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

 

1933 The Century of Progress World's Fair opens in Chicago, Illinois. 1935 New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).

1937 In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1940 World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops. Two survive.

   

1941 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency". 1941 World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men. 1942 World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is assassinated in Prague. 1957 Toronto's CHUM-AM, (1050 kHz) becomes Canada's first radio station to broadcast only top 40 Rock n' Roll music format.

1958 The F-4 Phantom II makes its first flight.

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1960 In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.

 

1962 The Centralia, Pennsylvania mine fire starts. 1965 Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.

1967 Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.

1967 The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.

1968 The meeting of the Union Nationale des tudiants de France (National Union of the Students of France) takes place. 30,000 to 50,000 people gather in the Stade Sebastien Charlety.

1971 The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.

1975 The Dibble's Bridge coach crash near Grassington, North Yorkshire, England kills 32 the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.

1980 The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.

1995 In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

1996 First Chechnya War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.

1997 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office.

1998 Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.

1999 The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milo evi and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanitycommitted in Kosovo.

2001 Members of Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf seize twenty hostages from an upscale island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002.

2005 Australian Schapelle Corby is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Kerobokan Prison for drug smuggling by a court in Indonesia.

2006 The May 2006 Java earthquake strikes at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta killing over 6,600 people.

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May 28

585 BC A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

1503 James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace betweenScotland and England signed on that occasion results in a peace that lasts ten years.

1533 The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid.

1588 The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port).

 

1644 Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby. 1754 French and Indian War: in the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a Frenchreconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1798 The United States Congress empowers president John Adams to enlist 10,000 men for service in case of a declaration of war or invasion of the country's domain. It also authorizes Adams to instruct commanders of shipsof-war to seize armed French vessels preying upon or attacking American merchantmen about the coast.

 

1830 President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which relocates Native Americans. 1863 American Civil War: The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African American regiment, leaves Boston, Massachusetts, to fight for theUnion.

 

1892 In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club. 1905 Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima ends with the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo Heihachiro and the Imperial Japanese Navy.

 

1918 The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Armenia declare their independence. 1926 28th May 1926 coup d'tat: Ditadura Nacional is established in Portugal to suppress the unrest of the First Republic.

 

1930 The Chrysler Building in New York City officially opens. 1934 Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne; they will be the first quintuplets to survive infancy.

 

1936 Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication. 1937 The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.

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1940 World War II: Belgium surrenders to Germany to end the Battle of Belgium. 1940 World War II: Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces recapture Narvik in Norway. This is the first allied infantry victory of the War.

1942 World War II: in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people.

  

1951 British radio comedy programme The Goon Show was broadcast on BBC for the first time. 1952 The women of Greece are given the right to vote. 1958 Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro's 26 July movement, heavily reinforced by Frank Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero.

1961 Peter Benenson's article The Forgotten Prisoners is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rightsorganization Amnesty International.

  

1964 The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed. 1974 Northern Ireland's power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement collapses following a general strike by loyalists. 1975 Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, creating the Economic Community of West African States.

 

1977 In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 people inside. 1979 Constantine Karamanlis signs the full treaty of the accession of Greece with the European Economic Community.

 

1982 Falklands War: British forces defeat the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green. 1987 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained and will not be released until August 3, 1988.

1991 The capital city of Addis Ababa, falls to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War.

 

1993 Eritrea and Monaco join the United Nations. 1995 The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least 2,000 people, half of the total population.

1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and the Governor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.

1998 Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of nuclear tests by India with five of its own, prompting the United States, Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions.

1999 In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display.

 

2002 NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance. 2002 The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars.

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2003 Peter Hollingworth becomes the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct.

2004 The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, as prime minister of Iraq's interim government.

2008 The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally declares Nepal a republic, ending the 240year reign of the Shah dynasty.

2010 In West Bengal, India, a train derailment and subsequent collision kills 141 passengers.

May 29

363 Roman Emperor Julian defeats the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but is unable to take the city.

1167 Battle of Monte Porzio A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel

   

1176 Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeats Emperor Frederick I. 1328 Philip VI is crowned King of France. 1414 Council of Constance. 1453 Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.

    

1660 English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain. 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives. 1727 Peter II becomes Tsar of Russia. 1733 The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld at Quebec City. 1780 American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals allegedly after the continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.

1790 Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.

1798 United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.

  

1848 Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state. 1852 Jenny Lind left New York after her wildly successful two-year American tour. 1861 The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce was founded, in Hong Kong.

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1864 Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico arrives in Mexico for the first time. 1867 The Austro-Hungarian agreement known as Ausgleich ("the Compromise") is born through Act 12, which establishes the Austro-Hungarian Empire; on June 8 Emperor Franz Joseph is crowned King of Hungary.

 

1868 The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade. 1886 Chemist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, the ad appearing in the Atlanta Journal.

 

1900 N'Djamena is founded as Fort-Lamy by French commander mile Gentil 1903 May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.

   

1913 Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, provoking a riot. 1914 Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives. 1918 Armenia defeats the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarapat. 1919 Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Cear, Brazil.

  

1919 The Republic of Prekmurje founded 1924 AEK Athens FC is established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks. 1931 Born October 19, 1899 in Sardinia, Michele "Mike" Schirru, Anarchist against Fascism, U.S. Citizen is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. The U.S. Government did nothing to help Schirru.

1932 World War I Veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C. in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.

1939 Albanian fascist leader Tefik Mborja is appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.

 

1940 The first flight of the F4U Corsair. 1942 Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra record Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", the best-selling Christmas single in history, for Decca Records in Los Angeles.

   

1945 First combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber. 1948 Creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization 1950 The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia . 1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday.

 

1954 First of the annual Bilderberg conferences. 1964 The Arab League meets in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

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1969 General strike in Crdoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest. 1973 Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California. 1982 Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral. 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster: At the European Cup final in Brussels, Belgium, 39 association football fans die and hundreds are injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses after Liverpool F.C. fans breach a fence separating them from Juventus F.C. fans.

 

1985 Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months. 1988 U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

  

1989 Signing of an agreement Egypt - U.S. manufacturing parts of the fighter F-16 in Egypt. 1990 The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin president of the Russian SFSR. 1999 Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.

  

1999 Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station. 2001 U.S. Supreme Court rules that disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments. 2004 The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

May 30

70 Siege of Jerusalem: Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. The Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all trees within fifteen kilometers.

1416 The Council of Constance, called by the Emperor Sigismund, a supporter of Antipope John XXIII, burns Jerome of Prague following a trial for heresy.

1431 Hundred Years' War: in Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an Englishdominated tribunal. Because of this the Catholic Church remember this day as the celebration of Saint Joan of Arc.

1434 Hussite Wars (Bohemian Wars): Battle of Lipany effectively ending the war, Utraquist forces led by Divi Bo ek of Miletnek defeat and almost annihilate Taborite forces led by Prokop the Great.

     

1536 King Henry VIII of England marries Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to his first two wives. 1539 In Florida, Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold. 1574 Henry III becomes King of France. 1588 The last ship of the Spanish Armada sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. 1631 Publication of La Gazette, first French newspaper. 1635 Thirty Years' War: the Peace of Prague (1635) is signed.

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1642 From this date all honors granted by Charles I are retrospectively annulled by Parliament. 1806 Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy. 1814 Napoleonic Wars: War of the Sixth Coalition the Treaty of Paris (1814) is signed returning French borders to their 1792 extent. Napoleon Bonaparte is exiled to Elba.

1815 The East Indiaman ship Arniston is wrecked during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, present-day South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives.

  

1832 End of the Hambach Festival in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. 1832 The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario is opened. 1834 Joaquim Antnio de Aguiar issue a law extinguishing "all convents, monasteries, colleges, hospices and any other houses of the regular religious orders", earning him the nickname of "The Friar-Killer".

1842 John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill, London with Prince Albert.

  

1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas. 1859 Westminster's Big Ben rang for the first time in London. 1868 Decoration Day (the predecessor of the modern "Memorial Day") is observed in the United States for the first time (By "Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic"John A. Logan's proclamation on May 5).

  

1871 The Paris Commune falls. 1876 Ottoman sultan Abd-ul-Aziz is deposed and succeeded by his nephew Murat V. 1879 New York, New York's Gilmores Garden is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.

1883 In New York City, a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge is going to collapse causes a stampede that crushes twelve people.

 

1899 Female Old West outlaw Pearl Hart robs a stage coach 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona. 1911 At the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the first Indianapolis 500 ends with Ray Harroun in his Marmon Wasp becoming the first winner of the 500-mile auto race.

1913 First Balkan War: the Treaty of London, 1913 is signed ending the war. Albania becomes an independent nation.

1914 The new and then largest Cunard ocean liner RMS Aquitania, 45,647 tons, sets sails on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.

   

1917 Alexander I becomes king of Greece. 1922 In Washington, D.C. the Lincoln Memorial is dedicated. 1925 May 30 Movement: Shanghai Municipal Police Force shot 13 protesting workers to death. 1941 World War II: Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas climb on the Athenian Acropolis, tear down the Nazi swastika.

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1942 World War II: 1000 British bombers launch a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany. 1948 A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.

1958 Memorial Day: the remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1959 The Auckland Harbour Bridge, crossing the Waitemata Harbour in Auckland, New Zealand, is officially opened by Governor-General Lord Cobham.

 

1961 Long time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 1963 A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination during the Buddhist crisis is held outside South Vietnam's National Assembly, the first open demonstration during the eight-year rule of Ngo Dinh Diem.

1966 Former Congolese Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and several other politicians are publicly executed in Kinshasa on the orders of President Joseph Mobutu.

  

1966 Launch of Surveyor 1 the first US spacecraft to achieve landing on an extraterrestrial body. 1967 The Nigerian Eastern Region declares independence as the Republic of Biafra, sparking a civil war. 1968 Charles de Gaulle reappears publicly after his flight to Baden-Baden, Germany, and dissolves the French National Assembly by a radio appeal. Immediately after, less than one million of his supporters march on the Champs-lyses in Paris. This is the turning point of May 1968 in France.

1971 Mariner program: Mariner 9 is launched to map 70% of the surface, and to study temporal changes in the atmosphere and surface, of Mars.

 

1972 The Angry Brigade goes on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout the United Kingdom. 1972 In Tel Aviv, Israel members of the Japanese Red Army carry out the Lod Airport Massacre, killing 24 people and injuring 78 others.

1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: the 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

 

1998 A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits northern Afghanistan, killing up to 5,000. 1998 Nuclear Testing: Pakistan conducts an underground test in the Kharan Desert. It is reported to be a plutonium device with yield of 20kt.

2003 Depayin massacre: at least 70 people associated with the National League for Democracy are killed by government-sponsored mob in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene, but is arrested soon afterwards.

May 31

1279 BC Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

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526 A devastating earthquake strikes Antioch, Turkey, killing 250,000. 1223 Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River Mongol armies of Genghis Khan led by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans.

1578 Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London.

        

1578 King Henry III lays the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris. 1669 Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary. 1678 The Godiva procession through Coventry begins. 1775 American Revolution: The Mecklenburg Resolutions are allegedly adopted in the Province of North Carolina. 1790 Alferez Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 1790 The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790. 1790 French Revolution: the Revolutionary Tribunal is suppressed. 1805 French and Spanish forces begin the assault against British forces occupying Diamond Rock 1813 In Australia, Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, reached Mount Blaxland, effectively marking the end of a route across the Blue Mountains.

  

1854 The civil death procedure is abolished in France. 1859 The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time. 1862 American Civil War Peninsula Campaign: Battle of Seven Pines or (Battle of Fair Oaks) Confederate forces under Joseph E. Johnston & G. W. Smith engage Union forces under George B. McClellan outside Richmond, Virginia.

1864 American Civil War Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor The Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee engages the Army of the Potomac under Ulysses S. Grant& George G. Meade.

1866 In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O'Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the United Kingdom. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian's 19 dead and about 17 wounded.

 

1884 Arrival at Plymouth of Tawhiao, King of Maoris, to claim protection of Queen Victoria 1889 Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

    

1902 Second Boer War: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the war and ensures British control of South Africa. 1909 The National Negro Committee, forerunner to the NAACP, convenes for the first time. 1910 Creation of the Union of South Africa. 1911 The hull of the ocean liner RMS Titanic is launched. 1911 President of Mexico Porfirio Daz flees the country during the Mexican Revolution.

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1916 World War I: Battle of Jutland The British Grand Fleet under the command of Sir John Jellicoe & Sir David Beatty engage the Kaiserliche Marine under the command ofReinhard Scheer & Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.

1921 Tulsa Race Riot: A civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, the official death toll is 39, but recent investigations suggest the actual toll may be much higher.

1924 The Soviet Union signs an agreement with the Peking government, referring to Outer Mongolia as an "integral part of the Republic of China", whose "sovereignty" therein theSoviet Union promises to respect.

    

1927 The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles. 1929 The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, "The Karnival Kid", is released. 1935 A 7.7 Mw earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead. 1941 A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland, claims 38 lives. 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War: The United Kingdom completes the re-occupation of Iraq and returns 'Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.

  

1942 World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia. 1961 The Union of South Africa becomes the Republic of South Africa. 1961 In Moscow City Court, the RokotovFaibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.

  

1962 The West Indies Federation dissolves. 1962 Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel. 1970 The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.

1971 In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.

1973 The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

 

1977 The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System completed. 1981 Burning of Jaffna library, Sri Lanka, It is one of the violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the twentieth century.

1985 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.

1991 Bicesse Accords in Angola lay out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the United Nations' UNAVEM II mission.

2005 Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.

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2009 Anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shoots and kills physician George Tiller during church services in Wichita, Kansas.

2010 In international waters, armed Shayetet 13 commandos, intending to force the flotilla to anchor at the Ashdod port, boarded ships trying to break the ongoing blockade of theGaza Strip, resulting in 9 civilian deaths when teams of IHH activists on the MV Mavi Marmara attacked them with knives and metal rods and abducted one of the soldiers.

JUNE
JUNE 1
   
193 Roman Emperor Didius Julianus is assassinated. 987 Hugh Capet is elected King of France. 1204 King Philip Augustus of France conquers Rouen. 1215 Beijing, then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Beijing.

      

1252 Alfonso X is elected King of Castile and Len. 1298 Residents of Riga and Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle of Turaida. 1495 Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky. 1533 Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England. 1648 The Roundheads defeat the Cavaliers at the Battle of Maidstone in the Second English Civil War. 1660 Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1670 In Dover, England, Charles II of Great Britain and Louis XIV of France sign the secret treaty of Dover, which will force England into the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

 

1679 The Scottish Covenanters defeat John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of Drumclog. 1779 Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is courtmartialed for malfeasance.

1792 Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.

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1794 The battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first naval engagement between Britain and France during the French Revolutionary Wars.

  

1796 Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the United States. 1812 War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom. 1813 James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, gives his final order: "Don't give up the ship!"

    

1815 Napoleon swears fidelity to the Constitution of France. 1831 James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole. 1855 American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua. 1857 Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal is published. 1861 American Civil War, Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861), first land battle of American Civil War after Battle of Fort Sumter, first Confederate combat casualty.

1862 American Civil War, Peninsula Campaign: Battle of Seven Pines (or the Battle of Fair Oaks) ends inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.

1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.

 

1879 Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War. 1890 The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.

  

1910 Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition leaves England. 1916 Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court. 1918 World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.

     

1921 Tulsa Race Riot: civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1922 The Royal Ulster Constabulary is founded. 1929 The 1st Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires. 1941 World War II: Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany. 1941 The Farhud, a pogrom of Iraqi Jews, takes place in Baghdad. 1943 British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation the downing was an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

  

1946 Ion Antonescu, "Conducator" (leader) of Romania during World War II, is executed. 1958 Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months. 1960 New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30pm from Auckland.

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1962 The Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting concludes, among other things, that the British public did not want commercial radio broadcasting.

       

1963 Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day). 1974 Flixborough disaster: an explosion at a chemical plant kills 28 people. 1974 The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine. 1978 The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed. 1979 The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power. 1980 Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting. 1990 George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production. 1993 Dobrinja mortar attack: 13 are killed and 133 wounded when Serb mortar shells are fired at a soccer game in Dobrinja, west of Sarajevo.

1999 American Airlines Flight 1420 slides and crashes while landing at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 people on a flight from Dallas to Little Rock.

2001 Nepalese royal massacre : Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills several members of his family including his father and mother, King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya.

  

2001 Dolphinarium massacre: A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a disco in Tel Aviv. 2003 The People's Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam. 2009 Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.

2009 General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.

JUNE 2
 
455 Sack of Rome: Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks 1098 First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city. The second siege would later start on June 7.

 

1615 First Rcollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France. 1676 Franco-Dutch War: France ensured the supremacy of its naval fleet for the remainder of the war with its victory in the Battle of Palermo.

1692 Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Found guilty, she is hanged on June 10.

1763 Pontiac's Rebellion: At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan, Chippewas capture Fort Michilimackinac by diverting the garrison's attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

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1774 Intolerable Acts: The Quartering Act is enacted, allowing a governor in colonial America to house British soldiers in uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings if suitable quarters are not provided.

1793 French Revolution: Franois Hanriot, leader of the Parisian National Guard, arrests 22 Girondists selected by Jean-Paul Marat, setting the stage for the Reign of Terror.

1805 Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptures Diamond Rock, an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France, from the British.

     

1835 P. T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the United States. 1848 The Slavic congress in Prague begins. 1855 The Portland Rum Riot occurs in Portland, Maine. 1866 Fenian raids: Fenians are victorious in both the Battle of Ridgeway and the Battle of Fort Erie. 1876 Hristo Botev, a national revolutionary of Bulgaria, is killed in Stara Planina 1886 U.S. President Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom in the White House, becoming the only president to wed in the executive mansion.

  

1896 Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his newest invention: the radio. 1909 Alfred Deakin becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the third time. 1910 Charles Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce Limited, becomes the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane.

 

1919 Anarchists simultaneously set off bombs in eight separate U.S. cities. 1924 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.

 

1941 World War II: German paratoopers murder Greek civilians in the village of Kondomari. 1946 Birth of the Italian Republic: In a referendum, Italians vote to turn Italy from a monarchy into a Republic. After the referendum the king of Italy Umberto II di Savoia is exiled.

1953 The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, who is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Her Other Realms and Territories & Head of the Commonwealth, the first major international event to be televised.

1955 The USSR and Yugoslavia sign the Belgrade declaration and thus normalize relations between both countries, discontinued since 1948.

1962 During the 1962 FIFA World Cup, police had to intervene multiple times in fights between Chilean and Italian players in one of the most violent games in football history.

1966 Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft land on another world.

1967 Luis Monge is executed in Colorado's gas chamber, in the last pre-Furman execution in the United States.

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1967 Protests in West Berlin against the arrival of the Shah of Iran turn into riots, during which Benno Ohnesorg is killed by a police officer. His death results in the founding of theterrorist group Movement 2 June.

1979 Pope John Paul II first official visit to his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist country.

1983 After an emergency landing because of an in-flight fire, twenty-three passengers aboard Air Canada Flight 797 are killed when a flashover occurs as the plane's doors open. Because of this incident, numerous new safety regulations are put in place.

1990 The Lower Ohio Valley tornado outbreak spawns 66 confirmed tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, killing 12. Petersburg, Indiana, is the hardest-hit town in the outbreak, with 6 deaths.

1995 United States Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady's F-16 is shot down over Bosnia while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone.

1997 In Denver, Colorado, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building inOklahoma City, Oklahoma.

 

1999 The Bhutan Broadcasting Service brings television transmissions to the Kingdom for the first time. 2003 Europe launches its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe launches from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

 

2004 Ken Jennings begins his 74-game winning streak on the syndicated game show Jeopardy! 2010 Derrick Bird goes on a killing spree in Cumbria, killing 13 and injuring 11, see Cumbria shootings.

JUNE 3

350 Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, proclaims himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome at the head of a group of gladiators.

    

1140 French scholar Peter Abelard is found guilty of heresy. 1326 Treaty of Novgorod delineates borders between Russia and Norway in Finnmark. 1539 Hernando de Soto claims Florida for Spain. 1608 Samuel de Champlain completes his third voyage to New France at Tadoussac, Quebec. 1620 Construction of the oldest stone church in French North America, Notre-Dame-des-Anges, begins in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

  

1621 The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands. 1658 Pope Alexander VII appoints Franois de Laval vicar apostolic in New France. 1665 James Stuart, Duke of York (later to become King James II of England) defeats the Dutch fleet off the coast of Lowestoft.

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1839 In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hs destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War.

1861 American Civil War: Battle of Philippi (also called the Philippi Races) Union forces rout Confederate troops in Barbour County, Virginia, now West Virginia, in first land battle of the War.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Cold Harbor Union forces attack Confederate troops in Hanover County, Virginia.

 

1866 The Fenians are driven out of Fort Erie, Ontario, into the United States. 1885 In the last military engagement fought on Canadian soil, Cree leader Big Bear escapes the North West Mounted Police.

  

1888 The poem "Casey at the Bat", by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner. 1889 The transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway is completed. 1889 The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.

1916 The National Defense Act is signed into law, increasing the size of the United States National Guard by 450,000 men.

1932 Lou Gehrig and teammate Tony Lazzeri hit four home runs in one game, and hit for the natural cycle, respectively. These two feats are both less common than a perfect game, which has occurred twenty one times in one hundred and twenty years.

1935 One thousand unemployed Canadian workers board freight cars in Vancouver, British Columbia, beginning a protest trek to Ottawa, Ontario.

   

1937 The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson. 1940 World War II: The Luftwaffe bombs Paris. 1940 World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk ends with a German victory and with Allied forces in full retreat. 1941 World War II: The Wehrmacht razes the Greek village of Kandanos to the ground, killing 180 of its inhabitants.

 

1942 World War II: Japan begins the Aleutian Islands Campaign by bombing Unalaska Island. 1943 In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots.

1950 First successful ascent of an Eight-thousander; Annapurna is summited by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal

1962 An Air France Boeing 707 charter, Chateau de Sully crashes after an aborted takeoff from Paris-Orly Airport, killing 130.

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1963 The Buddhist crisis: Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam attack protesting Buddhists in Hu , South Vietnam, with liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades, causing 67 people to be hospitalised for blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments.

 

1963 A Northwest Airlines DC-7 crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of British Columbia, killing 101. 1965 Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Crew-member Ed White performs the first American spacewalk.

1968 Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.

1969 Melbourne-Evans collision: Off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half.

1973 A Soviet supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 crashes near Goussainville, France, killing 14, the first crash of a supersonic passenger aircraft.

1979 A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels of oil to be spilled into the waters, the second-worst accidental oil spill ever recorded.

1980 The 1980 Grand Island tornado outbreak. Seven tornadoes hit Grand Island, Nebraska takes five lives, 357 single-family homes, 33 mobile homes, 85 apartments, 49 businesses and $300 million in damages all told, according to National Weather Service and American Red Cross statistics on the deadly storm.

1982 The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, is shot on a London street. He survives but is permanently paralysed.

1984 Operation Blue Star, a military offensive, is launched by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, inAmritsar. The operation continues until June 6 with casualties, most of them civilians, in excess of 5,000.

1989 The government of China sends troops to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square after seven weeks of occupation.

 

1991 Mount Unzen erupts in Ky sh , Japan, killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists. 1992 Aboriginal Land Rights are granted in Australia in Mabo v Queensland (1988), a case brought by Eddie Mabo.

 

1998 Eschede train disaster: an ICE high speed train derails in Lower Saxony, Germany, causing 101 deaths. 2006 The union of Serbia and Montenegro comes to an end with Montenegro's formal declaration of independence.

JUNE 4

1039 Henry III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.

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1411 King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-surSoulzon as they had been doing for centuries.

 

1615 Siege of Osaka: Forces under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan. 1760 Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada taken from the Acadians.

   

1783 The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfire (hot air balloon). 1792 Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1794 British troops capture Port-au-Prince in Haiti. 1802 Grieving over the death of his wife, Marie Clotilde of France, King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.

 

1812 Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory. 1825 French American Revolutionary War General Lafayette speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.

1859 Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.

1862 American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.

1876 An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leavingNew York City.

 

1878 Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title. 1896 Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.

 

1912 Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage. 1913 Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness and dies a few days later.

1916 World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.

1917 The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserandreceives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.

1919 Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.

1920 Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.

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1928 President of the Republic of China Zhang Zuolin is assassinated by Japanese agents. 1939 Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.

1940 World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends British forces complete evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchilldelivers his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.

1942 World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese navy.

 

1943 A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramn Castillo. 1944 World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505 the first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at seasince the 19th century.

 

1944 World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis capital to fall. 1957 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous Power of Nonviolence speech at the University of California, Berkeley.

1961 In the Vienna summit, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.

1965 Duane Earl Pope robbed the Farmers' State Bank of Big Springs, Nebraska, killing three people execution style and severely wounding a fourth. The crime landed Pope on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.

1967 Stockport Air Disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.

  

1970 Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1973 A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain. 1974 During Ten Cent Beer Night, inebriated Cleveland Indians fans start a riot, causing the game to be forfeited to the Texas Rangers.

1975 Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.

1979 Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.

1986 Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

1988 Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.

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1989 Ali Khamenei is elected the new Supreme Leader of Islamic republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

 

1989 The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army. 1989 Solidarity's victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of the socalled Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations.

1989 Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.

   

1996 The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 20 seconds. It was a Cluster mission. 1998 Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. 2001 Gyanendra, the last King of Nepal, ascends to the throne after the massacre in the Royal Palace. 2010 Falcon 9 Flight 1 was the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.

JUNE 5
        
70 Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem. 1257 Krakw, Poland receives city rights. 1798 The Battle of New Ross: The attempt to spread United Irish Rebellion into Munster is defeated. 1817 The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, is launched. 1829 HMS Pickle captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba. 1832 The June Rebellion breaks out in Paris in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy of Louis-Philippe. 1837 Houston, Texas is incorporated by the Republic of Texas. 1849 Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution. 1851 Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionistnewspaper.

1862 As the Treaty of Saigon is signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Truong Dinh decides to defy Emperor Tu Duc of Vietnam and fight on against the Europeans.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Piedmont: Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

  

1883 The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris. 1888 The Rio de la Plata Earthquake takes place. 1900 Second Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria.

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1915 Denmark amends its constitution to allow women's suffrage. 1916 Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. 1917 World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as "Army registration day". 1933 The U.S. Congress abrogates the United States' use of the gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment ingold.

  

1941 Four thousand Chongqing residents are asphyxiated in a bomb shelter during the Bombing of Chongqing. 1942 World War II: United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. 1944 World War II: More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

  

1945 The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power. 1946 A fire in the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, Illinois kills 61 people. 1947 Marshall Plan: In a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.

 

1949 Thailand elects Orapin Chaiyakan, the first Thai female member of Thailand's Parliament. 1956 Elvis Presley introduces his new single, "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.

  

1959 The first government of the State of Singapore is sworn in. 1963 British Secretary of State for War John Profumo resigns in a sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair. 1963 Movement of 15 Khordad: Protest against arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In several cities, masses of angry demonstrators are confronted by tanks and paratroopers.

 

1964 DSV Alvin is commissioned. 1967 Six-Day War begins: The Israeli air force launches simultaneous pre-emptive attacks on the air forces of Egypt and Syria.

1968 U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies the next day.

  

1969 The International communist conference begins in Moscow. 1975 The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War. 1975 The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum, on remaining in the European Economic Community (EEC).

  

1976 Collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho, United States. 1977 A coup takes place in Seychelles. 1977 The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.

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1981 The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five people in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumoniaseen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.

1984 Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders an attack on the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion.

1989 The Unknown Rebel halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

1993 Portions of the Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, fall into the sea following a landslide.

 

1995 The Bose-Einstein condensate is first created. 1998 A strike begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan, that quickly spreads to five other assembly plants (the strike lasted seven weeks).

2001 Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the upper-Texas coastline as a strong tropical storm and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston. The storm caused $5.5 billion in damages, making Allison the costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.

2003 A severe heat wave across Pakistan and India reaches its peak, as temperatures exceed 50C (122F) in the region.

2006 Serbia declares independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.

JUNE 6

1513 Italian Wars: Battle of Novara. Swiss troops defeat the French under Louis de la Tremoille, forcing the French to abandon Milan. Duke Massimiliano Sforza is restored.

 

1523 Gustav Vasa is elected King of Sweden, marking the end of the Kalmar Union. 1644 The Qing Dynasty Manchu forces led by the Shunzhi Emperor capture Beijing during the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. The Manchus would rule China until 1912 when the Republic of China is established.

     

1654 Charles X succeeds his abdicated cousin Queen Christina to the Swedish throne. 1674 Shivaji, founder of the Maratha empire is crowned. 1683 The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world's first university museum. 1752 A devastating fire destroys one-third of Moscow, including 18,000 homes. 1808 Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte is crowned King of Spain. 1809 Sweden promulgates a new Constitution, which restores political power to the Riksdag of the Estates after 20 years of Enlightened absolutism.

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1813 War of 1812: Battle of Stoney Creek A British force of 700 under John Vincent defeats an American force two times its size under William Winderand John Chandler.

      

1832 The June Rebellion of Paris is put down by the National Guard. 1833 U.S. President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride on a train. 1844 The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London. 1857 Sophia of Nassau marries the future King Oscar II of Sweden-Norway. 1859 Australia: Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales (Queensland Day). 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Memphis Union forces capture Memphis, Tennessee, from the Confederates. 1882 More than 100,000 inhabitants of Bombay are killed as a cyclone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into the harbour.

1882 The Shewan forces of Menelik II of Ethiopia defeat the Gojjame army in the Battle of Embabo. The Shewans capture Negus Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam, and their victory leads to a Shewan hegemony over the territories south of the Abay River.

  

1889 The Great Seattle fire destroys the entirety of downtown Seattle, Washington. 1892 Chicago 'L' begins operation 1894 Governor Davis H. Waite orders the Colorado state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike.

  

1909 French troops capture Abch (in modern-day Chad) and install a puppet sultan in the Ouaddai Empire. 1912 The eruption of Novarupta in Alaska begins. It is the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. 1918 World War I: Battle of Belleau Wood The U.S. Marine Corps suffers its worst single day's casualties while attempting to recapture the wood at Chateau-Thierry.

  

1919 The Republic of Prekmurje ends. 1921 The Southwark Bridge in London, is opened for traffic by King George V and Queen Mary. 1932 The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States, at a rate of 1 cent per US gallon (1/4 /L) sold.

 

1933 The first drive-in theater opens, in Camden, New Jersey, United States. 1934 New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

1939 Judge Joseph Force Crater, known as the "Missingest Man in New York", is declared legally dead. 1942 World War II: Battle of Midway. U.S. Navy dive bombers sink the Japanese cruiser Mikuma and four Japanese carriers.

1944 World War II: Battle of Normandy begins. D-Day, code named Operation Overlord, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy inFrance. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.

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1946 The National Basketball Association is created, with eleven original teams. 1964 Under a temporary order, the rocket launches at Cuxhaven, Germany, are terminated, though they never resume.

 

1971 Soyuz program: Soyuz 11 launches. 1971 A midair collision between a Hughes Airwest Douglas DC-9 jetliner and a United States Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II jet fighter near Duarte, Californiaclaims 50 lives.

  

1971 Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Khanh between Australian and Vietnamese communist forces begins. 1974 A new Instrument of Government is promulgated making Sweden a parliamentary monarchy. 1981 Bihar train disaster A passenger train travelling between Mansi and Saharsa, India, jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing the Bagmati river. The government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing; however, it is generally believed that the actual figure is closer to 1,000 killed.

1982 1982 Lebanon War begins: Forces under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invade southern Lebanon in their "Operation Peace for the Galilee", eventually reaching as far north as the capital Beirut.

 

1984 Tetris, one of the best-selling video games of all-time, is released. 1985 The grave of "Wolfgang Gerhard" is exhumed in Embu, Brazil; the remains found are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's "Angel of Death". Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February 1979..

 

1993 Mongolia holds its first direct presidential elections. 2002 Eastern Mediterranean Event. A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 meters diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The resulting explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

2004 Tamil is established as a Classical language by the President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in a joint sitting of the two houses of the Indian Parliament.

2005 The United States Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning cannabis, including medical marijuana, in Gonzales v. Raich.

JUNE 7
   
1099 The First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins. 1420 Troops of the Republic of Venice capture Udine, ending the independence of the Patriarchal State of Friuli. 1494 Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries. 1628 The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document, is granted the Royal Assent by Charles I and becomes law.

1654 Louis XIV is crowned King of France.

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1692 Port Royal, Jamaica, is hit by a catastrophic earthquake; in just three minutes, 1,600 people are killed and 3,000 are seriously injured.

1776 Richard Henry Lee presents the "Lee Resolution" to the Continental Congress. The motion is seconded by John Adams and leads to the United States Declaration of Independence.

     

1800 David Thompson reaches the mouth of the Saskatchewan River in Manitoba. 1810 The newspaper Gazeta de Buenos Ayres is first published in Argentina. 1832 Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada. 1862 The United States and the United Kingdom agree to suppress the slave trade. 1863 During the French intervention in Mexico, Mexico City is captured by French troops. 1866 1,800 Fenian raiders are repelled back to the United States after they loot and plunder around SaintArmand and Frelighsburg, Quebec.

1880 War of the Pacific: The Battle of Arica, assault and capture of Morro de Arica (Arica Cape), that ended the Campaa del Desierto (Desert Campaign).

 

1892 Benjamin Harrison becomes the first President of the United States to attend a baseball game. 1892 Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train; he would lose the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.

 

1893 Mohandas Gandhi's first act of civil disobedience. 1899 American Temperance crusader Carrie Nation begins her campaign of vandalizing alcohol-serving establishments by destroying the inventory in a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas.

1905 Norway's parliament dissolves its union with Sweden, a vote that is confirmed by a national plebiscite on August 13 of that year.

  

1906 Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania is launched at the John Brown Shipyard, Glasgow (Clydebank), Scotland. 1909 Mary Pickford makes her screen debut at the age of 16. 1917 World War I: Battle of Messines Allied ammonal mines underneath German trenches at Messines Ridge are detonated, killing 10,000 German troops.

  

1919 Sette giugno: Riot in Malta; four are killed. 1929 The Lateran Treaty is ratified, bringing Vatican City into existence. 1936 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, a trade union, is founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Philip Murray is elected its first president.

 

1938 The Douglas DC-4E makes its first test flight. 1940 King Haakon VII of Norway, Crown Prince Olav and the Norwegian government leave Troms and go into exile in London.

1942 World War II: The Battle of Midway ends.

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1942 World War II: Japanese soldiers occupy the American islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.

1944 World War II: The steamer Danae carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretan partisans is sunk without survivors off the shore of Santorini.

1944 World War II: Battle of Normandy At Abbey Ardennes members of the SS Division Hitlerjugend massacre 23 Canadian prisoners of war.

 

1945 King Haakon VII of Norway returns with his family to Oslo after five years in exile. 1948 Edvard Bene resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a constitution making his nation a Communist state.

1955 Lux Radio Theater signs off the air permanently. The show launched in New York in 1934, and featured radio adaptations of Broadway shows and popular films.

1965 The Supreme Court of the United States hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples.

 

1967 Israeli forces enter Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. 1971 The United States Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment.

1971 The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service raids the home of Ken Ballew for illegal possession of hand grenades, which all turn out to be inert or dummies.

   

1975 Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public. 1975 The inaugural Cricket World Cup begins in England. 1977 500 million people watch on television as the high day of Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II begins. 1981 The Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor during Operation Opera. The facility could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

1982 Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.

1989 Surinam Airways Flight 764 crashes on approach to Paramaribo-Zanderij International Airport in Suriname due to pilot error, killing 176 of 187 aboard.

  

1991 Mount Pinatubo explodes generating an ash column 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) high. 1995 The long range Boeing 777 enters service with United Airlines. 1998 James Byrd, Jr. of Texas is killed when white supremacists drag him behind a pickup truck along an asphalt pavement.

 

2000 The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon. 2006 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is killed in an airstrike by the United States Air Force.

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JUNE 8
 
68 The Roman Senate proclaims Galba as emperor. 218 Battle of Antioch: Elagabalus defeats with support of the Syrian legions the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.

793 Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.

 

1191 Richard I arrives in Acre (Israel) thus beginning his crusade. 1405 Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.

 

1690 Siddi general Yadi Sakat, razes the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Trois-Rivires American attackers are driven back at TroisRivires, Quebec.

1783 The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.

1789 James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives; by 1791, ten of them are ratified by the state legislatures and become the Bill of Rights; another is eventually ratified in 1992 to become the 27th Amendment.

1794 Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.

1856 A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.

 

1861 American Civil War: Tennessee secedes from the Union. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Cross Keys Confederate forces under General Stonewall Jackson save the Army of Northern Virginia from a Union assault on the James Peninsula led by General George B. McClellan.

1887 Herman Hollerith applies for US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' his punched card calculator.

1906 Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.

 

1912 Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures. 1928 Second Northern Expedition: The National Revolutionary Army captures Peking, whose name is changed to Beiping ("Northern peace").

1941 World War II: Allies invade Syria and Lebanon.

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1942 World War II: Japanese imperial submarines I-21 and I-24 shell the Australian cities of Sydney and Newcastle.

 

1948 Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater. 1949 Celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Partymembers.

   

1949 George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published. 1950 Sir Thomas Blamey becomes the only Australian-born Field Marshal in Australian history. 1953 Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A tornado hits Flint, Michigan, and kills 115. 1953 The United States Supreme Court rules that Washington, D.C. restaurants could not refuse to serve black patrons.

 

1959 The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail. 1966 An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2 destroying both planes during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker andUnited States Air Force test pilot Carl Cross are both killed.

1966 Topeka, Kansas is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita Scale: the first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.

  

1967 Six-Day War: The USS Liberty incident occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171. 1968 Robert F. Kennedy's funeral takes place at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City. 1972 Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9year-old Phan Th Kim Phc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

1982 Bluff Cove Air Attacks during the Falklands War: 56 British servicemen are killed by Argentine air attack on two landing ships : RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram.

 

1984 Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales. 1987 New Zealand's Labour government establishes a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987

   

1992 The first World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1995 Downed U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines in Bosnia. 2004 The first Venus Transit in modern history takes place, the previous one being in 1882. 2007 Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years resulting in the death of nine people and the grounding of trade ship, theMV Pasha Bulker.

2008 The Akihabara massacre takes place in the Akihabara shopping quarter in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Tomohiro Kat drives a two-ton truck into a crowd before leaving the truck and attacking people with a knife.

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JUNE 9
     
411 BC Coup in Athens succeeds, forming a short-lived oligarchy 53 Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia 62 Claudia Octavia is executed. 68 Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer's Iliad. 721 Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse. 1310 Duccio's Maest Altarpiece, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, is unveiled and installed in the Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.

 

1534 Jacques Cartier is the first European to discover the Saint Lawrence River. 1650 The Harvard Corporation, the more powerful of the two administrative boards of Harvard, is established. It is the first legal corporation in theAmericas.

1667 The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet begins. It lasts for five days and results in a decisive victory by the Dutch over the English in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

    

1732 James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U.S. state of Georgia. 1772 The British schooner Gaspe is burned off the coast of Rhode Island. 1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Arklow and Battle of Saintfield. 1815 End of the Congress of Vienna: the new European political situation is set. 1856 Five hundred Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.

1862 American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson concludes his successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign with a victory in the Battle of Port Republic; his tactics during the campaign are now studied by militaries around the world.

  

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Brandy Station, Virginia. 1873 Alexandra Palace in London burns down after being open for only 16 days. 1885 A peace treaty is signed to end the Sino-French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam most of present-day Vietnam - to France.

1900 Birsa Munda, an important figure in the Indian independence movement, dies in British prison under mysterious circumstances.

1915 William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States' handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

 

1923 Bulgaria's military takes over the government in a coup. 1924 In the second attempt to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine disappear, possibly having first made it to the top.

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1928 Charles Kingsford Smith completes the first trans-Pacific flight in a Fokker Trimotor monoplane, the Southern Cross.

1930 Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle is killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by Leo Vincent Brothers, allegedly over a 100,000 USD gambling debt owed toAl Capone.

 

1934 Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen. 1944 World War II: 99 civilians are hung from lampposts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for maquisards attacks.

1944 World War II: the Soviet Union invades East Karelia and the previously Finnish part of Karelia, occupied by Finland since 1941.

1946 King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascends to the throne of Thailand. He is currently the world's longest reigning monarch.

1953 Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: a tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado hits in Worcester, Massachusetts killing 94.

1954 McCarthyism: Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated theArmy giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

1958 Queen Elizabeth II officially opens London Gatwick Airport, (LGW) in Crawley, West Sussex, United Kingdom.

 

1959 The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles. 1965 Civilian Prime Minister of South Vietnam Phan Huy Quat resigned after being unable to work with a junta led by Nguyen Cao Ky.

 

1967 Six-Day War: Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria 1968 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

  

1973 Secretariat wins the Triple Crown. 1974 Portugal and the Soviet Union establish diplomatic relations. 1978 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opens its priesthood to "all worthy men", ending a 148year-old policy excluding black men.

    

1979 The Ghost Train Fire at Luna Park Sydney (New South Wales, Australia) kills seven. 1985 Thomas Sutherland is kidnapped in Lebanon (he will not be released until 1991). 1986 The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. 1999 Kosovo War: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty. 2008 In the town of Lake Delton, Wisconsin, Lake Delton drains as a result of heavy flooding breaking the dam holding the lake back.

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JUNE 10
 
1190 Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem. 1539 Council of Trent: Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.

  

1619 Thirty Years' War: Battle of Zblat, a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt. 1624 Signing of the Treaty of Compigne between France and the Netherlands. 1692 Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries".

 

1719 Jacobite Rising: Battle of Glen Shiel. 1786 A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.

 

1793 The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo. 1793 French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.

1805 First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.

   

1829 The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place. 1838 Myall Creek Massacre in Australia: 28 Aboriginal Australians are murdered. 1854 The first class of the United States Naval Academy students graduate. 1861 American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel. Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Brice's Crossroads. Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis inMississippi.

1871 Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 U.S. Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.

1878 League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stephano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in Balkanswere being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.

1886 Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and destroying the famous Pink and White Terraces.

 

1898 Spanish-American War: U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba. 1918 The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent Istvn sinks after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat.

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1924 Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome. 1925 Inaugural service for the United Church of Canada, a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, held in the Toronto Arena.

1935 Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.

 

1935 Chaco War ends: a truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932. 1940 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.

   

1940 World War II: Norway surrenders to German forces. 1942 World War II: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich. 1944 World War II: 642 men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France. 1944 World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia Prefecture, Greece 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.

1944 In baseball, 15-year old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a majorleague game.

  

1945 Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei. 1947 Saab produces its first automobile. 1957 John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the Canadian federal election, 1957, ending 22 years of Liberal Party rule.

   

1965 Vietnam War: The Battle of Dong Xoai begins. 1967 The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire. 1967 Argentina becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. 1977 James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee, but is recaptured on June 13.

 

1977 Apple ships its first Apple II personal computer. 1980 The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.

  

1991 The kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard 1996 Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Fin. 1997 Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.

1999 Kosovo War: NATO suspends its air strikes after Slobodan Milo evi agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.

2001 Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint, Saint Rafqa.

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2002 The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.

2003 The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission.

JUNE 11
 
1184 BC Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes. 173 Marcomannic Wars: The Roman army in Moravia is encircled by the Quadi, who have broken the peace treaty (171). In a violent thunderstormemperor Marcus Aurelius defeats and subdues them in the so-called "miracle of the rain".

631 Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Emperor of China, sends envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to seek the release of enslavedChinese prisoners captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier; this embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China.

1345 The megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, is lynched by political prisoners.

  

1429 Hundred Years' War: start of the Battle of Jargeau. 1509 Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon. 1594 Philip II recognizes the rights and privileges of the local nobles and chieftains in the Philippines, which paved way to the stabilization of the rule of the Principala (an elite ruling class of native nobility in Spanish Philippines).

 

1770 Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef. 1776 The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to theCommittee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.

    

1788 Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov reaches Alaska. 1805 A fire consumes large portions of Detroit in the Michigan Territory. 1825 The first cornerstone is laid for Fort Hamilton in New York City. 1837 The Broad Street Riot occurs in Boston, fueled by ethnic tensions between Yankees and Irish. 1892 The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia.

 

1898 Spanish-American War: U.S. war ships set sail for Cuba. 1898 The Hundred Days' Reform is started by Guangxu Emperor with a plan to change social, political and educational institutions in China, but is suspended by Empress Dowager Cixi after 104 days. The failed reform though led to the abolition of Imperial Examination in 1905.

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1901 New Zealand annexes the Cook Islands. 1903 Group of Serbian officers stormed royal palace and assassinated King Alexander Obrenovi and his wife queen Draga.

1907 George Dennett, aided by Gilbert Jessop, dismisses Northamptonshire for 12 runs, the lowest total in firstclass cricket.

1917 King Alexander assumes the throne of Greece after his father Constantine I abdicates under pressure by allied armies occupying Athens.

 

1919 Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse to win the Triple Crown. 1920 During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Republican Party leaders gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel to come to a consensus on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election, leading the Associated Press to first coin the political phrase "smoke-filled room".

1935 Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.

   

1936 The International Surrealist Exhibition opens in London, England. 1937 Great Purge: The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin executes eight army leaders. 1938 Second Sino-Japanese War: The Battle of Wuhan starts. 1938 Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Nationalist government creates the 1938 Yellow River flood to halt Japanese forces. 500,000 to 900,000 civilians are killed.

 

1942 World War II: The United States agrees to send Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union. 1944 USS Missouri (BB-63) the last battleship built by the United States Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned.

1955 Eighty-three are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest ever accident in motorsports.

1956 Start of Gal Oya riots, the first reported ethnic riots that target minority Sri Lankan Tamils in the Eastern Province. The total number of deaths is reportedly 150.

1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin allegedly become the only prisoners to escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island.

1963 American Civil Rights Movement: Alabama Governor George Wallace stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school. Later in the day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they are able to register.

1963 Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.

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1964 World War II veteran Walter Seifert runs amok in an elementary school in Cologne, Germany, killing at least eight children and two teachers and seriously injuring several more with a home-made flamethrower and a lance.

1970 After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so.

 

1972 The Eltham Well Hall rail crash, caused by an intoxicated train driver, kills six people and injures 126. 1978 Altaf Hussain founds the students' political movement All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation (APMSO) in Karachi University.

     

1981 A Richter Scale 6.9 magnitude earthquake at Golbaf, Iran, kills at least 2,000. 1998 Compaq Computer pays $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition. 2001 Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. 2002 Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress. 2004 Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn moon Phoebe. 2008 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes an historic official apology to Canada's First Nations in regard to a residential school abuse in which children are isolated from their homes, families and cultures for a century.

JUNE 12
  
1381 Peasants' Revolt: in England, rebels arrive at Blackheath. 1418 An insurrection delivers Paris to the Burgundians. 1429 Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.

  

1560 Battle of Okehazama: Oda Nobunaga defeats Imagawa Yoshimoto. 1653 First Anglo-Dutch War: the Battle of the Gabbard begins and lasts until June 13. 1665 England installs a municipal government in New York City (the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam).

1758 French and Indian War: Siege of Louisbourg James Wolfe's attack at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia commences.

1775 American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.

 

1776 The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted. 1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Ballynahinch.

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1860 The State Bank of the Russian Empire is established. 1864 American Civil War, Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor Ulysses S. Grant gives the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulls his Union troops from their positions at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moves south.

 

1889 78 are killed in the Armagh rail disaster near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland. 1898 Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.

1899 New Richmond Tornado: the eighth deadliest tornado in U.S. history kills 117 people and injures around 200.

1922 At Windsor Castle, King George V receives the colours of the six Irish regiments that are to be disbanded the Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the South Irish Horse, the Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

1939 Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in threestrip Technicolor.

 

1939 The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York. 1940 World War II: 13,000 British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valeryen-Caux.

 

1942 Holocaust: Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday. 1943 Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Berezhany, western Ukraine. 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.

1954 Pope Pius XII canonises Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him the youngest non-martyr saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

1963 Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith.

1964 Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.

1967 The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1967 Venera program: Venera 4 is launched (it will become the first space probe to enter another planet's atmosphere and successfully return data).

1978 David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York City, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings.

1979 Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.

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1987 The Central African Republic's former Emperor Jean-Bdel Bokassa is sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.

1987 Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

  

1990 Russia Day the parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty. 1991 Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic. 1991 1991 Kokkadichcholai massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.

1993 An election takes place in Nigeria which and is later annulled by the military Government led by Ibrahim Babangida.

1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable inwrongful death civil suit.

   

1994 The Boeing 777, the world's largest twinjet, makes its first flight. 1996 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a panel of federal judges blocks a law against indecency on the internet. 1997 Queen Elizabeth II reopens the Globe Theatre in London. 1999 Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

2000 Sandro Rosa do Nascimento takes hostages while robbing Bus #174 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the highlypublicized standoff becomes a media circus and ends with the death of do Nascimento and a hostage.

2001 Robert Edward Dyer is sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment for attempting to extort money from a British supermarket chain through a letter bomb campaign.

2009 A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide ranging protests in Iran and around the world.

JUNE 13
 
1249 Coronation of Alexander III as King of Scots. 1373 Anglo-Portuguese Alliance between England (succeeded by the United Kingdom) and Portugal is the oldest alliance in the world which is still in force.

1525 Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.

 

1625 King Charles I marries Henrietta Maria of France, Princess of France 1774 Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.

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1777 American Revolutionary War: Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army.

1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition: scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

   

1881 The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack. 1886 A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia. 1886 King Ludwig II of Bavaria is found dead in Lake Starnberg south of Munich at 11:30 PM. 1893 Grover Cleveland undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; operation not revealed to US public until 1917, nine years after the president's death.

 

1898 Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital. 1910 The University of the Philippines College of Engineering is established. This unit of the university is said to be the largest degree granting unit in the Philippines.

1917 World War I: the deadliest German air raid on London during World War I is carried out by Gotha G bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries.

 

1927 Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker-tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City. 1934 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet in Venice, Italy; Mussolini later describes the German dictator as "a silly little monkey".

1944 World War II: German combat elements - reinforced by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division - launch a counterattack on American forces near Carentan.

1944 World War II: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs actually hit their targets.

  

1952 Catalina affair: a Swedish Douglas DC-3 is shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter. 1955 Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR, is discovered. 1966 The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

1967 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1969 Governor of Texas Preston Smith signs a bill into law converting the former Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, originally founded as a research arm of Texas Instruments, into the University of Texas at Dallas.

  

1970 "The Long and Winding Road" becomes the Beatles' last Number 1 song. 1971 Vietnam War: The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers. 1977 Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before.

1978 Israeli Defense Forces withdraw from Lebanon.

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1981 At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager, Marcus Sarjeant, fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.

 

1982 Fahd becomes King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid. 1983 Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).

1994 A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.

    

1995 French president Jacques Chirac announces the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia. 1996 The Montana Freemen surrender after an 81-day standoff with FBI agents. 1997 A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. 1997 Uphaar cinema fire, in New Delhi, India, killed 59 people, and over 100 people injured. 2000 President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea meets Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang.

  

2000 Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. 2002 The United States withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 2002 Two 14-year-old South Korean girls are struck and killed by a United States Army armored vehicle, leading to months of public protests against the US.

2005 A jury in Santa Maria, California acquits pop singer Michael Jackson of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo at his Neverland Ranch.

 

2007 The Al Askari Mosque is bombed for a second time. 2010 A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth.

JUNE 14

1276 While taking exile in Fuzhou in southern China, away from the advancing Mongol invaders, the remnants of the Song Dynasty court hold the coronation ceremony for the young prince Zhao Shi, making him Emperor Duanzong of Song.

1285 Forces led by Prince Tran Quang Khai of Vietnam's Tran Dynasty destroys most of the invading Mongol naval fleet in a battle at Chuong Duong.

1287 Kublai Khan defeated the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria.

1381 Richard II of England meets leaders of Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance.

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1645 English Civil War: Battle of Naseby 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers. 1648 Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts colony. 1775 American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.

 

1777 The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States. 1789 Mutiny on the Bounty: Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,000-mile) journey in an open boat.

1789 Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig. It is named Bourbon because Rev Craig lived inBourbon County, Kentucky.

1800 The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.

1807 Emperor Napoleon I's French Grande Armee defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1821 Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrenders his throne and realm to Isma'il Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom.

1822 Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".

1830 Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Ferruch.

1839 Henley Royal Regatta: the village of Henley-on-Thames, on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, stages its first Regatta.

1846 Bear Flag Revolt begins Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Second Winchester a Union garrison is defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley town of Winchester, Virginia.

     

1863 Second Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson during the American Civil War. 1872 Trade unions are legalised in Canada. 1900 Hawaii becomes a United States territory. 1900 The Reichstag approves a second law that allows the expansion of the German navy. 1907 Norway adopts female suffrage. 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown depart St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1926 Brazil leaves the League of Nations

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1937 Pennsylvania becomes the first (and only) state of the United States to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.

   

1937 U.S. House of Representatives passes the Marihuana Tax Act. 1940 World War II: Paris falls under German occupation, and Allied forces retreat. 1940 The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence. 1940 A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnw become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1941 June deportation, the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, begins.

1944 World War II: After several failed attempts, the British Army abandons Operation Perch, its plan to capture the German-occupied town of Caen.

  

1951 UNIVAC I is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau. 1952 The keel is laid for the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus. 1954 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words "under God" into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.

 

1955 Chile becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1959 A group of Dominican exiles with leftist tendencies that departed from Cuba land in the Dominican Republic with the intent of deposing Rafael Lenidas Trujillo Molina. Save for four of them, all are killed and/or executed by Trujillo's army.

1962 The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris later becoming the European Space Agency.

1965 Nguyen Cao Ky became Prime Minister of South Vietnam at the head of a military junta; General Nguyen Van Thieu became the figurehead chief of state.

1966 The Vatican announces the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of prohibited books), which was originally instituted in 1557.

   

1967 Mariner program: Mariner 5 is launched toward Venus. 1982 The Falklands War ends: Argentine forces in the capital Stanley unconditionally surrender to British forces. 1985 TWA Flight 847 is hijacked by Hezbollah shortly after take-off from Athens, Greece. 1994 The 1994 Stanley Cup riot occurs after the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup from Vancouver, causing an estimated C$1.1 million, thus forcing 200 arrests and injuries. One person is also left with permanent brain damage.

JUNE 15

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763 BC Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history. 923 Battle of Soissons: King Robert I of France is killed and King Charles the Simple is arrested by the supporters of Duke Rudolph of Burgundy.

  

1184 King Magnus V of Norway is killed at the Battle of Fimreite. 1215 King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta. 1219 Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the Dannebrog, the world's first national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.

      

1246 With the death of Duke Frederick II, the Babenberg dynasty ends in Austria. 1389 Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians. 1520 Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in papal bull Exsurge Domine. 1580 Philip II of Spain declares William the Silent to be an outlaw. 1667 The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys. 1752 Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown). 1775 American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

1776 Delaware Separation Day Delaware votes to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.

1785 Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualtiesof an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.

1804 New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document.

   

1808 Joseph Bonaparte becomes King of Spain. 1836 Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state. 1844 Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber. 1846 The Oregon Treaty establishes the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

1859 Pig War: Ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty leads to the "Northwestern Boundary Dispute" between United States and British/Canadian settlers.

 

1864 American Civil War: The Second Battle of Petersburg begins. 1864 Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

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1867 Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode gold mine located in Montana. 1877 Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.

    

1888 Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II; he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire. 1896 The deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people. 1904 A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000. 1905 Princess Margaret of Connaught marries Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden. 1909 Representatives from England, Australia and South Africa meet at Lord's and form the Imperial Cricket Conference.

 

1913 The Battle of Bud Bagsak in the Philippines ends. 1916 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.

1919 John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.

   

1920 Duluth lynchings in Minnesota. 1920 A new border treaty between Germany and Denmark gives northern Schleswig to Denmark. 1934 The U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded. 1937 A German expedition led by Karl Wien loses sixteen members in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat. It is the worst single disaster to occur on an 8000m peak.

1940 World War II: Operation Ariel begins Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.

 

1944 World War II: Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan. 1944 In the Saskatchewan general election, the CCF, led by Tommy Douglas, is elected and forms the first socialist government in North America.

  

1945 The General Dutch Youth League (ANJV) is founded in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 1954 UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) is formed in Basel, Switzerland. 1955 The Eisenhower administration stages the first annual "Operation Alert" (OPAL) exercise, an attempt to assess the USA's preparations for a nuclear attack.

 

1978 King Hussein of Jordan marries American Lisa Halaby, who takes the name Queen Noor. 1985 Rembrandt's painting Dana is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.

1992 The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. lvarez-Machan that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.

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1994 Israel and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations. 1996 The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England. 2002 Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000 miles (121,000 km), about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

JUNE 16

363 Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal Roman forces suffering several attacks from the Persians.

   

1487 Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses. 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir and successor. 1745 British troops take Cape Breton Island, which is now part of Nova Scotia, Canada. 1745 Sir William Pepperell captures the French Fortress of Louisbourg in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia during the War of the Austrian Succession.

 

1746 War of Austrian Succession: Austria and Sardinia defeat a Franco-Spanish army at the Battle of Piacenza. 1755 French and Indian War: the French surrender Fort Beausjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.

    

1774 Foundation of Harrodsburg, Kentucky. 1779 Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins. 1795 First Battle of Groix otherwise known as "Cornwallis' Retreat". 1815 Battle of Ligny and Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before the Battle of Waterloo. 1816 Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.

 

1836 The formation of the London Working Men's Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement. 1846 The Papal conclave of 1846 concludes. Pope Pius IX is elected Pope beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy (not counting St. Peter).

1858 Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

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1858 The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny. 1871 The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).

  

1883 The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children. 1891 John Abbott becomes Canada's third Prime Minister. 1897 A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.

   

1903 The Ford Motor Company is incorporated. 1903 Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway. 1904 Eugen Schauman assassinates Nikolai Bobrikov, Governor-General of Finland. 1904 Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".

        

1911 IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York. 1911 A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin damaging a barn. 1915 Foundation of the British Women's Institute. 1922 General election in the Irish Free State: the pro-Treaty Sinn Fin win a large majority. 1924 The Whampoa Military Academy is founded. 1925 The most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, Artek, is established. 1930 Sovnarkom establishes decree time in the USSR. 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed. 1940 World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Ptain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'tat Franais).

   

1940 A Communist government is installed in Lithuania. 1958 Imre Nagy, Pl Malter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed. 1961 Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union. 1963 Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

   

1967 The Monterey Pop Festival begins 1972 Red Army Faction member Ulrike Meinhof is captured by police in Langenhagen. 1972 The largest single-site hydro-electric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls, Labrador. 1976 Soweto uprising: a non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd.

1977 Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

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1989 Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian Prime Minister, is reburied in Budapest. 1997 The Dairat Labguer massacre in Algeria; 50 people are killed. 2000 Israel complies with UN Security Council Resolution 425 after 22 years of it issuance, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel withdraws from all of Lebanon, except the disputed Sheba Farms.

JUNE 17

1462 Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.

   

1497 Battle of Deptford Bridge forces under King Henry VII defeat troops led by Michael An Gof. 1565 Matsunaga Hisahide assassinates the 13th Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru. 1579 Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England. 1631 Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

1673 French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.

   

1773 Ccuta, Colombia, is founded by Juana Rangel de Cullar. 1775 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Bunker Hill 1789 In France, the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly. 1839 In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Catholic Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace are established as a result.

  

1861 Battle of Vienna, Virginia in the American Civil War. 1863 Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War. 1876 Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

1877 Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon the Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.

    

1885 The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor. 1898 The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established. 1901 The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT. 1910 Aurel Vlaicu pilots a A. Vlaicu nr. 1 on its first flight. 1930 U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.

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1932 Bonus Army: around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.

1933 Union Station Massacre: in Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.

1939 Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison

 

1940 World War II: sinking of the RMS Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. 1940 World War II: the British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.

  

1940 The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union. 1944 Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic. 1948 A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.

1953 East Germany Workers Uprising: in East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.

1958 The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing many of the ironworkers and injuring others.

1958 The wooden roller coaster at Playland, which is in the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada opens. It is still open today.

1960 The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at 4 cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.

1961 The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded by the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress.

1963 The United States Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

1963 A day after South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem announced the Joint Communique to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed.

 

1971 President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. War on Drugs. 1972 Watergate scandal: five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of theRepublican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.

 

1987 With the death of the last individual of the species, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow becomes extinct. 1991 Apartheid: the South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.

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1992 A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II).

1994 Following a televised low-speed highway chase , O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

JUNE 18
 
618 Li Yuan becomes Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating three centuries of Tang Dynasty rule over China. 1178 Five Canterbury monks see what is possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the Moon's distance from the Earth (on the order of meters) are a result of this collision.

1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.

1429 French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeat the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turns the tide of the Hundred Years' War.

1757 Battle of Koln between Prussian forces under Frederick the Great and an Austrian army under the command of Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun in the Seven Years' War.

1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.

  

1778 American Revolutionary War: British troops abandon Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1812 War of 1812: The U.S. Congress declares war on the United Kingdom. 1815 Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blcher forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time.

 

1830 French invasion of Algeria 1858 Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.

   

1859 First ascent of Aletschhorn, second summit of the Bernese Alps. 1873 Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election. 1887 The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia is signed. 1900 Empress Dowager Longyu of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families.

  

1908 Japanese immigration to Brazil begins when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the ship Kasato-Maru. 1908 The University of the Philippines is established. 1923 Checker Taxi puts its first taxi on the streets.

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1928 Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she is a passenger; Wilmer Stultz is the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic).

 

1930 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute are held. 1935 Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada clash with striking longshoremen, resulting in a total 60 injuries and 24 arrests.

  

1940 Appeal of June 18 by Charles de Gaulle. 1940 "Finest Hour" speech by Winston Churchill. 1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) is charged with treason for his pro-German propaganda broadcasting during WWII.

1946 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a Socialist, calls for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa. A road is named after this date in Panjim.

1953 The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 ends with the overthrow of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty and the declaration of the Republic of Egypt.

  

1953 A United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns near Tokyo, Japan killing 129. 1954 Pierre Mends-France becomes Prime Minister of France. 1965 Vietnam War: The United States uses B-52 bombers to attack National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam.

1972 Staines air disaster 118 are killed when a plane crashes two minutes after take off from London Heathrow Airport.

  

1979 SALT II is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union. 1983 Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space. 1983 Mona Mahmudnizhad together with nine other Bah' women, is sentenced to death and hanged in Shiraz, Iran because of her Bah' Faith.

1984 A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners takes place at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike.

1994 The Troubles: the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) open fire inside a pub in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, killing six civilians and wounding five.

  

1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts. 2006 The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat is launched. 2009 The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a NASA robotic spacecraft is launched.

JUNE 19

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1179 The Norwegian Battle of Kalvskinnet outside Nidaros. Earl Erling Skakke is killed, and the battle changes the tide of the civil wars.

1269 King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

 

1306 The Earl of Pembroke's army defeats Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven. 1586 English colonists leave Roanoke Island, after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in North America.

1770 Emanuel Swedenborg reports the completion of the Second Coming of Christ in his work True Christian Religion.

1816 Battle of Seven Oaks between North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

 

1821 Decisive defeat of the Philik Etairea by the Ottomans at Dr g

ani (in Wallachia).

1846 The first officially recorded, organized baseball match is played under Alexander Cartwright's rules on Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23-1. Cartwright umpired.

  

1850 Princess Louise of the Netherlands marries Crown Prince Karl of Sweden-Norway. 1862 The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford. 1865 Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 13 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.

 

1867 Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire is executed by a firing squad in Quertaro, Quertaro. 1870 After all of the Southern States are formally readmitted to the United States, the Confederate States of America ceases to exist.

   

1875 The Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire begins. 1910 The first Father's Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington. 1913 Natives' Land Act in South Africa implemented. 1934 The Communications Act of 1934 establishes the United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

     

1944 World War II: First day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York. 1961 Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom. 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. 1966 Shiv Sena a political party in India is founded in Mumbai. 1970 The Patent Cooperation Treaty is signed.

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1978 Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.

1982 In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University in Beirut, is kidnapped.

 

1982 The body of God's Banker, Roberto Calvi is found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. 1985 Members of the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, dressed as Salvadoran soldiers, attack the Zona Rosa area of San Salvador.

1987 Basque separatist group ETA commits one of its most violent attacks, in which a bomb is set off in a supermarket, Hipercor, killing 21 and injuring 45.

1990 The current international law defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, is ratified for the first time by Norway.

 

1991 The Soviet occupation of Hungary ends. 2009 Mass riots involving over 10,000 people and 10,000 police officers break out in Shishou, China, over the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a local chef.

JUNE 20

451 Battle of Chalons: Flavius Aetius' battles Attila the Hun. After the battle, which was inconclusive Attila retreats, causing the Romans to interpret it as a victory.

         

1214 The University of Oxford receives its charter. 1605 After only three months as tsar, 16-year-old Feodor II of Russia is assassinated. 1631 The sack of Baltimore: the Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates. 1652 Tarhoncu Ahmet Pa a is appointed grand vezir of the Ottoman Empire. 1685 Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth declares himself King of England at Bridgwater. 1756 A British garrison is imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta. 1782 The U.S. Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States. 1787 Oliver Ellsworth moves at the Federal Convention to call the government the United States. 1789 Deputies of the French Third Estate take the Tennis Court Oath. 1819 The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, England, United Kingdom. She is the first steampropelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey is made under sail.

   

1837 Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne. 1840 Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph. 1862 Barbu Catargiu, the Prime Minister of Romania, is assassinated. 1863 American Civil War: West Virginia is admitted as the 35th U.S. state.

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1877 Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

 

1893 Lizzie Borden is acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother. 1895 The Kiel Canal, crossing the base of the Jutland peninsula and the busiest artificial waterway in the world, is officially opened.

1900 Boxer Rebellion: The Imperial Chinese Army begins a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing, China.

 

1919 150 die at the Teatro Yaguez fire, Mayagez, Puerto Rico. 1942 The Holocaust: Kazimierz Piechowski and three others, dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbnde, steal an SS staff car and escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

 

1943 The Detroit Race Riot breaks out and continues for three more days. 1944 World War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory. The lopsided naval air battle is also known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

1944 Continuation war: the Soviet Union demands an unconditional surrender from Finland during the beginning of partially successful VyborgPetrozavodsk Offensive. The Finnish government refuses.

 

1948 Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, makes its television debut. 1956 A Venezuelan Super-Constellation crashes in the Atlantic Ocean off Asbury Park, New Jersey, killing 74 people.

  

1959 A rare June hurricane strikes Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence killing 35. 1960 The Mali Federation gains independence from France (it later splits into Mali and Senegal). 1963 The so-called "red telephone" is established between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1972 Watergate scandal: An 18-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.

1973 Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Snipers fire upon left-wing Peronists. At least 13 are killed and more than 300 are injured.

1979 ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart is shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The murder is caught on tape and sparks an international outcry against the regime.

1982 The Argentine base (Corbeta Uruguay) on Southern Thule surrenders to Royal Marine commandos in the final action of the Falklands War.

  

1990 Asteroid Eureka is discovered. 1991 The German Bundestag votes to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin. 2003 The WikiMedia Foundation is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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2009 During the Iranian election protests, the death of Neda Agha-Soltan is captured on video and spreads virally on the Internet, making it "probably the most widely witnessed death in human history".

JUNE 21

217 BC The Romans, led by Gaius Flaminius, are ambushed and defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.

   

524 Godomar, King of the Burgundians defeats the Franks at the Battle of Vzeronce. 1307 Klg Khan is enthroned as Khagan of the Mongols and Wuzong of the Yuan. 1582 Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga is forced to commit suicide in Honn -ji, Kyoto. 1621 Execution of 27 Czech noblemen on the Old Town Square in Prague as a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain.

1734 In Montreal in New France, a slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Anglique is put to death, having been convicted of setting the firethat destroyed much of the city.

  

1749 Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded. 1768 James Otis, Jr. offends the King and Parliament in a speech to the Massachusetts General Court. 1788 New Hampshire ratifies the Constitution of the United States and is admitted as the 9th state in the United States.

1791 King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.

      

1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798: The British Army defeats Irish rebels at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. 1813 Peninsular War: Battle of Vitoria. 1824 Greek War of Independence: Egyptian forces capture Psara in the Aegean Sea. 1826 Maniots defeat Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha in the Battle of Vergas. 1854 The first Victoria Cross is awarded during the bombardment of Bomarsund in the land Islands. 1864 New Zealand Land Wars: The Tauranga Campaign ends. 1877 The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder, are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.

 

1898 The United States captures Guam from Spain. 1900 Boxer Rebellion. China formally declared war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan, as an edict issued from the Dowager Empress Cixi.

1900 Baron Eduard Toll, leader of the Russian Polar Expedition of 1900, departed Saint Petersburg in Russia on the explorer ship Zarya, never to return.

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1915 The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Guinn v. United States 238 US 347 1915, striking down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens.

1919 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police fire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during the Winnipeg General Strike.

1919 Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed are the last casualties of World War I.

   

1929 An agreement brokered by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow ends the Cristero War in Mexico. 1930 One-year conscription comes into force in France. 1940 France signs an armistice with Germany at Compigne. 1940 The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage begins at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

 

1942 World War II: Tobruk falls to Italian and German forces. 1942 World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at nearby Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by the Japanese against the United States mainland.

1948 Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the WaldorfAstoria Hotel in New York, New York.

1952 The Philippine School of Commerce, through a republic act, is converted to Philippine College of Commerce, later to be the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

 

1957 Ellen Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first woman Cabinet Minister. 1964 Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

 

1970 Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date. 1973 In handing down the decision in Miller v. California 413 US 15, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller Test for obscenity in U.S. law.

 

1977 Blent Ecevit, of CHP forms the new government of Turkey. 1982 John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

2000 Section 28 (of the Local Government Act 1988), outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote.

2001 A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.

  

2004 SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight. 2006 Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix & Hydra. 2009 Greenland assumes self-rule.

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JUNE 22
 
217 BC Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt defeats Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom. 168 BC Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat and capture Macedonian King Perseus ending the Third Macedonian War.

 

1593 Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Turks. 1633 The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.

 

1783 A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France. 1807 In the ChesapeakeLeopard Affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake.

1813 War of 1812: After learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Laura Secord sets out on a 30 kilometer journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon.

  

1825 The British Parliament abolishes feudalism and the seigneurial system in British North America. 1848 Beginning of the June Days Uprising in Paris, France. 1863 Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot are assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota, which had resulted in theTrail of Tears.

1893 The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

1897 British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged.

   

1898 SpanishAmerican War: United States Marines land in Cuba. 1906 The flag of Sweden is adopted. 1907 The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens. 1911 George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

    

1918 The Hammond Circus Train Wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana. 1922 Herrin massacre: 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners are killed in Herrin, Illinois. 1940 France is forced to sign the Second Compigne armistice with Germany. 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. 1941 The June Uprising in Lithuania begins.

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1942 Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk. 1944 Opening day of the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration against the Army Group Centre. 1944 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.

1945 World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.

       

1957 The Soviet Union launches an R-12 missile for the first time (in the Kapustin Yar). 1962 An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashes in bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies, killing 113. 1969 The Cuyahoga River catches fire, triggering a crack-down on pollution in the river. 1976 The Canadian House of Commons abolishes capital punishment. 1978 Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by American astronomer James W. Christy. 1984 Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport. 1990 Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin. 2002 An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slowness of the victims receiving aid and supplies.

 

2003 The largest hailstone ever recorded falls in Aurora, Nebraska 2009 Washington Metro train collision: Two Metro trains collide in Washington, D.C., USA, killing nine and injuring over 80.

2009 Eastman Kodak Company announces that it will discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.

JUNE 23
      
79 Titus succeeds his father Vespasian as the tenth Roman Emperor. 1180 First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan. 1305 A peace treaty between the Flemish and the French is signed at Athis-sur-Orge. 1314 First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn (south of Stirling) begins. 1532 Henry VIII and Franois I sign a secret treaty against Emperor Charles V. 1565 Turgut Reis (Dragut), commander of the Ottoman navy, dies during the Siege of Malta. 1611 The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is nowHudson Bay; they are never heard from again.

1661 Marriage contract between Charles II of England and Catherine of Braganza.

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1683 William Penn signs a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania. 1713 The French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada.

1757 Battle of Plassey 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj Ud Daulah at Plassey.

  

1758 Seven Years' War: Battle of Krefeld British forces defeat French troops at Krefeld in Germany. 1760 Seven Years' War: Battle of Landeshut Austria defeats Prussia. 1780 American Revolution: Battle of Springfield fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey (including Short Hills, formerly of Springfield, now of MillburnTownship).

  

1794 Empress Catherine II of Russia grants Jews permission to settle in Kiev. 1810 John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company. 1812 War of 1812: Great Britain revokes the restrictions on American commerce, thus eliminating one of the chief reasons for going to war.

 

1860 The United States Congress establishes the Government Printing Office. 1865 American Civil War: at Fort Towson in the Oklahoma Territory, Confederate, Brigadier General Stand Watie surrenders the last significant rebel army.

1887 The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada creating the nation's first national park, Banff National Park.

1894 The International Olympic Committee is founded at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

  

1913 Second Balkan War: The Greeks defeat the Bulgarians in the Battle of Doiran. 1914 Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa takes Zacatecas from Victoriano Huerta. 1917 In a game against the Washington Senators, Boston Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retires 26 batters in a row after replacing Babe Ruth, who had been ejected for punching theumpire.

1919 Estonian War of Independence: the decisive defeat of the Baltische Landeswehr in the Battle of Cesis. This day is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.

 

1926 The College Board administers the first SAT exam. 1931 Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine plane.

  

1938 The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States. 1940 World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France. 1941 The Lithuanian Activist Front declares independence from the Soviet Union and forms the Provisional Government of Lithuania; it lasts only briefly as the Nazis will occupy Lithuania a few weeks later.

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1942 World War II: the first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz take place on a train full of Jews from Paris.

1942 World War II: Germany's latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1943 World War II: The British destroyers HMS Eclipse and HMS Laforey sink the Italian submarine Ascianghi in the Mediterranean after she torpedoes the cruiserHMS Newfoundland.

 

1946 The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake strikes Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 1947 The United States Senate follows the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1956 The French National Assembly takes the first step in creating the French Community by passing the Loi Cadre, transferring a number of powers from Paris to elected territorial governments in French West Africa.

 

1958 The Dutch Reformed Church accepts women ministers. 1959 Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.

 

1959 A fire in a resort hotel in Stalheim (Norway) kills 34 people. 1961 Cold War: the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, comes into force after the opening date for signature set for the December 1, 1959.

1967 Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey for the three-day Glassboro Summit Conference.

 

1968 74 are killed and 150 injured in a football stampede towards a closed exit in a Buenos Aires stadium. 1969 Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.

1972 Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

1972 Title IX of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is amended to prohibit sexual discrimination to any educational program receiving federal funds.

1973 A fire at a house in Hull, England which kills a six year old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

1982 Chinese American Vincent Chin is beaten to death in Highland Park, Michigan, by two auto workers who had mistaken him for Japanese and who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.

1985 A terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.

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1989 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a law passed by the U.S. Congress banning all sexually oriented phone message services is unconstitutional.

1990 Moldova adopts the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Soviet Socialist Republic Moldova.

JUNE 24

109 Roman emperor Trajan inaugurates the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channels water from Lake Bracciano, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north-west ofRome.

637 The Battle of Moira is fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is the largest battle in the history of Ireland.

 

972 Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces, takes place. 1128 Battle of So Mamede, near Guimares: forces led by Alfonso I defeat forces led by his mother Teresa of Len and her lover Fernando Prez de Traba. After this battle, the future king calls himself "Prince of Portugal", the first step towards "official independence" that will be reached in 1139 after theBattle of Ourique.

1314 First War of Scottish Independence: the Battle of Bannockburn concludes with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognize Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.

1340 Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys The French fleet is almost destroyed by the English Fleet commanded in person by King Edward III.

1374 A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.

1497 John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

    

1509 Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are crowned King and Queen of England. 1535 The Anabaptist state of Mnster is conquered and disbanded. 1571 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi founds Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines. 1597 The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reaches Bantam (on Java). 1604 Samuel de Champlain discovers the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

 

1622 Battle of Macau: The Dutch attempt but fail to capture Macau. 1717 The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London, England.

 

1793 The first Republican constitution in France is adopted. 1812 Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon's Grande Arme crosses the Neman River beginning the invasion of Russia.

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1813 Battle of Beaver Dams : a British and Indian combined force defeats the United States Army. 1821 The Battle of Carabobo takes place. It is the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain.

1859 Battle of Solferino (Battle of the Three Sovereigns): Sardinia and France defeat Austria in Solferino, northern Italy.

 

1866 Battle of Custoza: an Austrian army defeats the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War. 1880 First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrs national des Canadiens-Franais.

      

1894 Marie Francois Sadi Carnot is assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio. 1902 King Edward VII of the United Kingdom develops appendicitis, delaying his coronation. 1913 Greece and Serbia annul their alliance with Bulgaria. 1916 Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract. 1916 World War I: the Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line. 1918 First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto. 1932 A bloodless Revolution instigated by the People's Party ends the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (Thailand).

1938 Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

  

1939 Siam is renamed Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister. 1947 Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. 1948 Start of the Berlin Blockade: the Soviet Union makes overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.

 

1949 The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd. 1957 In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment .

  

1963 The United Kingdom grants Zanzibar internal self-government. 1975 An Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 crashes at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. 113 people die. 1981 The Humber Bridge is opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years.

1982 "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

1985 STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery completes its mission, best remembered for having Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as aPayload Specialist.

2002 The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281, the worst train accident in African history.

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2004 In New York, capital punishment is declared unconstitutional. 2010 John Isner of the United States defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history.

JUNE 25
  
253 Pope Cornelius is executed (beheaded) at Centumcellae. 524 The Franks defeat the Burgundians in the Battle of Vzeronce. 841 In the Battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye, forces led by Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeat the armies of Lothair I of Italy and Pepin II of Aquitaine.

1530 At the Diet of Augsburg the Augsburg Confession is presented to the Holy Roman Emperor by the Lutheran princes and Electors of Germany.

1678 Venetian Elena Cornaro Piscopia is the first woman awarded a doctorate of philosophy when she graduates from the University of Padua.

     

1741 Maria Theresa of Austria is crowned Queen of Hungary. 1786 Gavriil Pribylov discovers St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. 1788 Virginia becomes the 10th state to ratify the United States Constitution. 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. 1906 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania millionaire Harry Thaw shoots and kills prominent architect Stanford White. 1910 The United States Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for immoral purposes; the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.

    

1913 American Civil War veterans begin arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913. 1935 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Colombia are established. 1938 Dr. Douglas Hyde is inaugurated as the first President of Ireland. 1944 World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic Countries, begins. 1944 The final page of the comic Krazy Kat was published, exactly two months after its author George Herriman died.

    

1947 The Diary of a Young Girl (better known as The Diary of Anne Frank) is published. 1948 The Berlin airlift begins. 1949 Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny, is released in theaters. 1950 The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. 1960 Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.

1967 Broadcasting of the first live global satellite television program: Our World

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1975 The State of Emergency is declared in India. 1975 Mozambique achieves independence. 1976 Missouri Governor Kit Bond issues an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order, formally apologizing on behalf of the state of Missouri for the suffering it had caused to the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

1978 The rainbow flag representing gay pride is flown for the first time in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

   

1981 Microsoft is restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington. 1982 Greece abolishes the head shaving of recruits in the military. 1991 Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence from Yugoslavia. 1993 Kim Campbell is chosen as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and becomes the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

   

1996 The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia kills 19 U.S. servicemen. 1997 An unmanned Progress spacecraft collides with the Russian space station Mir. 1997 The Soufrire Hills volcano in Montserrat erupts resulting in the death of 19 people. 1998 In Clinton v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court decides that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 is unconstitutional.

2006 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, is kidnapped by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid from the Israeli territory.

JUNE 26
 
221 Roman Emperor Elagabalus adopts his cousin Alexander Severus as his heir and receives the title of Caesar. 363 Roman Emperor Julian is killed during the retreat from the Sassanid Empire. General Jovian is proclaimed Emperor by the troops on the battlefield.

 

1284 the legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany 1409 Western Schism: the Roman Catholic church is led into a double schism as Petros Philargos is crowned Pope Alexander V after the Council of Pisa, joining Pope Gregory XII in Rome and Pope Benedict XII in Avignon.

1541 Francisco Pizarro is assassinated in Lima by the son of his former companion and later antagonist, Diego Almagro the younger. Almagro is later caught and executed.

1718 Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia, Peter the Great's son, mysteriously dies after being sentenced to death by his father for plotting against him.

1723 After a siege and bombardment by cannon, Baku surrenders to the Russians.

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1848 End of the June Days Uprising in Paris. 1857 The first investiture of the Victoria Cross in Hyde Park, London. 1870 The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States. 1907 The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery took place in Yerevan Square, now Freedom Square, Tbilisi. 1909 The Science Museum in London comes into existence as an independent entity. 1917 The first U.S. troops arrive in France to fight alongside Britain and France against Germany in World War I. 1918 World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.

    

1924 American occupying forces leave the Dominican Republic. 1927 The Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island. 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Federal Credit Union Act, which establishes credit unions. 1936 Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter. 1940 World War II: under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Romania requiring it to cede Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina.

1941 World War II: Soviet planes bomb Kassa, Hungary (now Ko ice, Slovakia), giving Hungary the impetus to declare war the next day.

   

1942 The first flight of the Grumman F6F Hellcat. 1945 The United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco. 1948 The Western allies begin an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin. 1948 William Shockley files the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.

        

1948 Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery is published in The New Yorker magazine. 1952 The Pan-Malayan Labour Party is founded in Malaya, as a union of statewise labour parties. 1953 Lavrentiy Beria,head of MVD, is arrested by Nikita Khrushchev and other members of the Politburo. 1955 The South African Congress Alliance adopts the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown. 1959 The Saint Lawrence Seaway opens, opening North America's Great Lakes to ocean-going ships. 1960 The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland . 1960 Madagascar gains its independence from France. 1973 At Plesetsk Cosmodrome 9 people are killed in an explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket. 1974 The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio

1975 Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.

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1977 The Yorkshire Ripper kills 16 year old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald in Leeds, changing public perception of the killer as she is the first victim who is not a prostitute.

1978 Air Canada Flight 189 to Toronto overruns the runway and crashes into the Etobicoke Creek ravine. Two of 107 passengers on board perish.

 

1991 Ten-Day War: the Yugoslav people's army begins the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. 1995 Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani deposes his father Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, in a bloodless coup.

 

1996 Irish Journalist Veronica Guerin is shot in her car while in traffic in the outskirts of Dublin 1997 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Communications Decency Act violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

  

2003 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional. 2006 Mari Alkatiri, the first Prime Minister of East Timor, resigns after weeks of political unrest. 2008 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual right, and that the District of Columbia handgun ban is unconstitutional.

JUNE 27
   
1358 Republic of Dubrovnik is founded 1497 Cornish rebels Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank are executed at Tyburn, London, England. 1709 (O.S.) Peter the Great defeats Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava. 1743 War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: On the battlefield in Bavaria, George II personally leads troops into battle. The last time that a British monarch would command troops in the field.

  

1759 General James Wolfe begins the siege of Quebec. 1806 British forces take Buenos Aires during the first British invasions of the Ro de la Plata. 1844 Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, are murdered by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail.

1895 The inaugural run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York, New York, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.

  

1898 The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia. 1899 A. E. J. Collins scores 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket. 1905 Battleship Potemkin uprising: sailors start a mutiny aboard the Battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war.

1923 Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Lt. John P. Richter perform the first ever aerial refueling in a DH-4B biplane

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1927 Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi leads a conference to discuss Japan's plans for China; later, a document detailing these plans, the "Tanaka Memorial" is leaked, although it is now considered a forgery.

1941 Romanian governmental forces, allies of Nazi Germany, launch one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Ia i, (Romania), resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews.

 

1941 German troops capture the city of Bia ystok during Operation Barbarossa. 1946 In the Canadian Citizenship Act, the Parliament of Canada establishes the definition of Canadian citizenship.

  

1950 The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War. 1954 The world's first nuclear power station opens in Obninsk, near Moscow. 1954 The 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turns violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game.

 

1967 The world's first ATM is installed in Enfield Town, England, United Kingdom. 1971 After only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Graham closes the Fillmore East in New York, New York, the "Church of Rock and Roll".

  

1973 The President of Uruguay Juan Mara Bordaberry dissolves Parliament and establishes a dictatorship. 1974 U.S. president Richard Nixon visits the Soviet Union. 1976 Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) is hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda.

 

1977 France grants independence to Djibouti. 1980 Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously explodes in mid air while in route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster

1981 The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issues its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong.

1982 Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4.

 

1989 The current international treaty defending indigenous peoples, ILO 169 convention, is adopted. 1991 Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before is invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft starting the Ten-Day War.

2007 The Brazilian Military Police invades the favelas of Complexo do Alemo in an episode which is remembered as the Complexo do Alemo massacre.

2008 In a highly-scrutizined election President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters.

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JUNE 28
     
1098 Fighters of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosul. 1461 Edward IV is crowned King of England. 1519 Charles V is elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 1635 Guadeloupe becomes a French colony. 1651 The Battle of Beresteczko between Poland and Ukraine starts. 1763 A massive earthquake occurs on the same day in Komrom in Hungary, in Komrno in Slovakia and in Zsmbk in Hungary.

1776 American Revolutionary War: Fort Moultrie is attacked during the Battle of Sullivan's Island; this event is commemorated in Carolina Day.

1776 American Revolutionary War: Thomas Hickey, Continental Army private and bodyguard to General George Washington, is hanged for mutiny andsedition.

1778 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Monmouth is fought between the American Continental Army under George Washington and the British Army led by Sir Henry Clinton.

1807 Second British invasion of the Ro de la Plata; John Whitelock lands at Ensenada on an attempt to recapture Buenos Aires and is defeated by the locals.

           

1838 Coronation of Victoria of the United Kingdom. 1841 The Paris Opera Ballet premieres Giselle in the Salle Le Peletier 1846 The saxophone is patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France. 1859 The first conformation dog show is held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. 1865 The Army of the Potomac is disbanded. 1880 The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan. 1881 Secret treaty between Austria and Serbia. 1882 The Anglo-French Convention of 1882 marks the territorial boundaries between Guinea and Sierra Leone. 1883 In Milan in Italy inaugurated the first central European electricity power station. 1894 Labor Day becomes an official US holiday. 1895 El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua form the Greater Republic of Central America. 1895 Court of Private Land Claims rules James Reavis' claim to Barony of Arizona is "wholly fictitious and fraudulent".

1896 An explosion in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston City, Pennsylvania results in a massive cave-in that kills 58 miners.

1902 The U.S. Congress passes the Spooner Act, authorizing President Theodore Roosevelt to acquire rights from Colombia for the Panama Canal.

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1904 The SS Norge runs aground and sinks 1914 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.

1919 The Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, formally ending World War I between Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, the United States and allies on the one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other side.

1921 Serbian King Alexander I proclaimed the new constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, known thereafter as the Vidovdan Constitution.

    

1922 The Irish Civil War begins with the shelling of the Four Courts in Dublin by Free State forces. 1936 The Japanese puppet state of Mengjiang is formed in northern China. 1940 Romania cedes Bessarabia (current-day Moldova) to the Soviet Union. 1942 Nazi Germany started its strategic summer offensive against the Soviet Union, codenamed Case Blue 1948 The Cominform circulates the "Resolution on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia"; Yugoslavia is expelled from the Communist bloc.

1948 Boxer Dick Turpin beats Vince Hawkins at Villa Park in Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.

  

1950 Seoul is captured by North Korean troops. 1950 Bodo League massacre: Korean War. 1956 in Pozna , workers from HCP factory went to the streets, sparking one of the first major protests against communist government both in Poland and Europe.

   

1964 Malcolm X forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity. 1967 Israel annexes East Jerusalem. 1969 Stonewall Riots begin in New York City marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement. 1973 Elections are held for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will lead to power-sharing between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the first time.

1976 The Angolan court sentenced US and UK mercenaries to death sentences and prison terms in the Luanda Trial.

1978 The United States Supreme Court, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke bars quota systems in college admissions.

 

1981 A powerful bomb explodes in Tehran, killing 73 officials of Islamic Republic Party. 1989 The 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Serbian leader Slobodan Milo evi delivers the Gazimestan speech at the site of the historic battle, which is later interpreted as foreshadowing the Yugoslav Wars.

 

1992 The Constitution of Estonia is signed into law. 1994 Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult release sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan; 7 persons are killed, 660 injured.

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1996 The Constitution of Ukraine is signed into law. 1997 Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield II Tyson is disqualified in the 3rd round for biting a piece off Holyfield's ear.

 

2001 Slobodan Milo evi deported to ICTY to stand trial. 2004 Sovereign power is handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S.-led rule of that nation.

2005 War in Afghanistan: Three U.S. Navy SEALs, 16 American Special Operations Forces soldiers, and an unknown number of Taliban insurgents are killed during Operation Red Wing, a failed counter-insurgent mission in Kunar province, Afghanistan.

2006 Montenegro is admitted as the 192nd Member of the United Nations by General Assembly.

JUNE 29
      
226 Cao Pi dies after an illness; his son Cao Rui succeeds him as emperor of the Kingdom of Wei. 1149 Raymond of Poitiers is defeated and killed at the Battle of Inab by Nur ad-Din Zangi. 1194 Sverre is crowned King of Norway. 1444 Skanderbeg defeats an Ottoman invasion force at Torvioll. 1534 Jacques Cartier is the first European to reach Prince Edward Island. 1613 The Globe Theatre in London, England burns to the ground. 1644 Charles I of England defeats a Parliamentarian detachment at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge, the last battle won by an English King on English soil.

1659 At the Battle of Konotop the Ukrainian armies of Ivan Vyhovsky defeat the Russians led by Prince Trubetskoy.

1786 Alexander Macdonell and over five hundred Roman Catholic highlanders leave Scotland to settle in Glengarry County, Ontario.

   

1807 Russo-Turkish War: Admiral Dmitry Senyavin destroys the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Athos. 1850 Autocephaly officially granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Church of Greece. 1864 Ninety-nine people are killed in Canada's worst railway disaster near St-Hilaire, Quebec. 1874 Greek politician Charilaos Trikoupis publishes a manifesto in the Athens daily Kairoi entitled "Who's to Blame?" in which he lays out his complaints against King George. He is elected Prime Minister of Greece the next year.

 

1880 France annexes Tahiti. 1888 George Edward Gouraud records Handel's Israel in Egypt onto a phonograph cylinder, thought for many years to be the oldest known recording of music.

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1889 Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships vote to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest United States city in area and second largest in population.

  

1895 Doukhobors burn their weapons as a protest against conscription by the Tsarist Russian government. 1914 Jina Guseva attempts to assassinate Grigori Rasputin at his home town in Siberia. 1916 The Irish Nationalist and British diplomat Sir Roger Casement is sentenced to death for his part in the Easter Rising.

1922 France grants 1 km at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes".

     

1926 Arthur Meighen returns to office as Prime Minister of Canada. 1927 First test of Wallace Turnbull's controllable pitch propeller. 1928 The Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge in Staten Island, New York are both opened. 1945 Carpathian Ruthenia is annexed by the Soviet Union. 1950 The United States defeats England during the 1950 FIFA World Cup. 1956 The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System.

1972 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case Furman v. Georgia that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

1974 Isabel Pern is sworn in as the first female President of Argentina. Her husband, President Juan Peron, had delegated responsibility due to weak health and died two days later.

  

1974 Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with Bolshoi Ballet. 1976 The Seychelles become independent from the United Kingdom. 1995 Space Shuttle program: STS-71 Mission (Atlantis) docks with the Russian space station Mir for the first time.

1995 The Sampoong Department Store collapses in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937.

2002 Naval clashes between South Korea and North Korea lead to the death of six South Korean sailors and sinking of a North Korean vessel.

2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. andinternational law.

2009 Yemenia Flight 626 crashes into the Indian Ocean, killing 152 people and leaving schoolgirl Bahia Bakari as the sole survivor.

JUNE 30

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350 Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, is defeated and killed by troops of the usurper Magnentius, in Rome.

    

1422 Battle of Arbedo between the duke of Milan and the Swiss cantons. 1520 Spanish conquistadors led by Hernn Corts fight their way out of Tenochtitlan. 1559 King Henry II of France is mortally wounded in a jousting match against Gabriel de Montgomery. 1651 The Deluge: Khmelnytsky Uprising the Battle of Beresteczko ends with a Polish victory. 1688 The Immortal Seven issue the Invitation to William (continuing the English rebellion from Rome), which would culminate in the Glorious Revolution.

       

1758 Seven Years' War: The Battle of Domstadtl takes place. 1794 Native American forces under Blue Jacket attack Fort Recovery. 1805 The U.S. Congress organizes the Michigan Territory. 1859 French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope. 1860 The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History takes place. 1864 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation". 1882 Charles J. Guiteau is hanged in Washington, D.C. for the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield. 1886 The first transcontinental train trip across Canada departs from Montreal. It arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia on July 4.

1905 Albert Einstein publishes the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduces special relativity.

   

1906 The United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act. 1908 The Tunguska event occurs in remote Siberia. 1912 The Regina Cyclone hits Regina, Saskatchewan, killing 28. It remains Canada's deadliest tornado event. 1921 U.S. President Warren G. Harding appoints former President William Howard Taft Chief Justice of the United States.

  

1934 The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, takes place. 1935 The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its first congress. 1936 Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia appeals for aid to the League of Nations against Italy's invasion of his country.

 

1941 World War II: Operation Barbarossa Germany captures Lviv, Ukraine. 1944 World War II: The Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.

 

1953 The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. 1956 A TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 (Flight 718) collide above the Grand Canyon in Arizona, United States, killing all 128 on board the two planes.

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1959 A United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, crashes into a nearby elementary school, killing 11 students plus six residents from the local neighborhood.

 

1960 Congo gains independence from Belgium. 1963 Ciaculli massacre: a car bomb, intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco, kills seven police officers and military personnel near Palermo.

   

1968 Pope Paul VI issues the Credo of the People of God. 1969 Nigeria bans Red Cross aid to Biafra. 1971 The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve. 1971 Ohio ratifies the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, reducing the voting age to 18, thereby putting the amendment into effect.

  

1972 The first leap second is added to the UTC time system. 1977 The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands. 1985 Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

1986 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bowers v. Hardwick that states can outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults.

    

1987 The Royal Canadian Mint introduces the $1 coin, known as the Loonie. 1990 East Germany and West Germany merge their economies. 1991 32 miners are killed when a coal mine catches fire in the Donbass region of Ukraine and releases toxic gas. 1997 The United Kingdom transfers sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China. 2009 Yemenia Flight 626 crashes into the Indian Ocean, near Comoros, killing all but one of the 153 passengers and crew on board.

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JULY
July 1

69 Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as Emperor.

1097 Battle of Dorylaeum: Crusaders led by Prince Bohemond of Taranto defeat a Seljuk army led by Sultan Kilij Arslan I.

1569 Union of Lublin: the Kingdom of Poland and the Great Duchy of Lithuania confirm a real union; the united country is called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations.

 

1690 Glorious Revolution: Battle of the Boyne (as reckoned under the Julian calendar). 1770 Lexell's Comet passed closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 a.u.

     

1782 American privateers attack Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 1837 A system of the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths is established in England and Wales. 1855 Signing of the Quinault Treaty: the Quinault and the Quileute cede their land to the United States. 1858 Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society. 1862 The Russian State Library is founded. 1862 American Civil War: the Battle of Malvern Hill takes place. It is the final battle in the Seven Days Campaign, part of George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign.

  

1863 Keti Koti (Emancipation Day) in Suriname, marking the abolition of slavery by the Netherlands. 1863 American Civil War: the Battle of Gettysburg begins. 1867 The British North America Act of 1867 takes effect as the Constitution of Canada, creating the Canadian Confederation and the federal dominion of Canada; Sir John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada.

  

1870 The United States Department of Justice formally comes into existence. 1873 Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian Confederation. 1874 The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful typewriter, goes on sale.

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1878 Canada joins the Universal Postal Union. 1879 Charles Taze Russell publishes the first edition of the religious magazine The Watchtower. 1881 The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.

1881 General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell and Childers reforms of the British Army, comes into effect.

     

1885 The United States terminates reciprocity and fishery agreement with Canada. 1890 Canada and Bermuda are linked by telegraph cable. 1898 Spanish-American War: the Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba. 1908 SOS is adopted as the international distress signal. 1911 Germany despatched the gunship Panther to Morocco, sparking the Agadir Crisis. 1915 Lieutenant Kurt Wintgens achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronized gun-equipped fighter plane, the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker.

1916 World War I: First day on the Somme On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.

   

1921 The Communist Party of China is founded. 1923 The Canadian Parliament suspends all Chinese immigration. 1931 United Airlines begins service (as Boeing Air Transport). 1935 Regina, Saskatchewan police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ambush strikers participating in On-toOttawa-Trek.

1935 Grant Park Music Festival begins its tradition of free summer symphonic music concert series in Chicago's Grant Park, which continues as the United States' only annual free outdoor classical music concert series.

 

1942 World War II: first Battle of El Alamein. 1942 The Australian Federal Government becomes the sole collector of Income Tax in Australia as the State Income Tax is abolished.

1943 Tokyo City merges with Tokyo Prefecture and is dissolved. Since then, no city in Japan has had the name "Tokyo" (present-day Tokyo is not officially a city).

  

1947 The Philippine Air Force is established. 1948 Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Quaid-i-Azam) inaugurates Pakistan's central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan. 1949 The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later reorganized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin Royal Family.

 

1957 The International Geophysical Year begins. 1958 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.

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1958 Flooding of Canada's St. Lawrence Seaway begins. 1959 The Party of the African Federation holds its constitutive conference. 1959 Specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units (e.g. inch, mile and ounce) are adopted after agreement between the U.S.A., the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.

 

1960 Independence of Somalia. 1960 Ghana becomes a Republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ceases to be its Head of state.

     

1962 Independence of Rwanda. 1962 Independence of Burundi. 1963 ZIP Codes are introduced for United States mail. 1963 The British Government admits that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent. 1966 The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto. 1967 The European Community is formally created out of a merger with the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.

1967 Canada celebrates the 100th anniversary of the British North America Act, 1867, which officially made Canada its own federal dominion.

 

1968 The CIA's Phoenix Program is officially established. 1968 The Nuclear non-proliferation treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.

       

1968 Formal separation of the United Auto Workers from the AFL-CIO. 1970 President General Yahya Khan abolishes One-Unit of West Pakistan restoring the provinces. 1972 The first Gay Pride march in England takes place. 1976 Portugal grants autonomy to Madeira. 1978 The Northern Territory in Australia is granted Self-Government. 1979 Sony introduces the Walkman. 1980 O Canada officially becomes the national anthem of Canada. 1981 The Wonderland Murders occurred in the early morning hours, allegedly masterminded by businessman and drug dealer Eddie Nash.

1983 A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea crashes into the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea-Bissau, killing all 23 people on board.

 

1984 The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA. 1987 The American radio station WFAN in New York, New York is launched as the world's first all-sports radio station.

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1990 German re-unification: East Germany accepts the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the economies of East and West Germany.

  

1991 The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague. 1997 China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule. 1999 The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on the day that legislative powers are officially transferred from the old Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh.

2002 The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

2002 A Bashkirian Airlines (flight 2937) Tupolev TU-154 and a DHL (German cargo) Boeing 757 collide in mid-air over Ueberlingen, southern Germany, killing 71.

    

2003 Over 500,000 people protested against efforts to pass anti-sedition legislation in Hong Kong. 2004 Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini-Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC. 2006 The first operation of Qinghai-Tibet Railway in the People's Republic of China. 2007 Smoking in England is banned in all public indoor spaces. 2008 Rioting erupted in Mongolia in response to allegations of fraud surrounding the 2008 legislative elections.

July 2

626 Li Shimin, the future Emperor Taizong of Tang, Emperor of China, ambushes and kills his rival brothers Li Yuanji and Li Jiancheng in the Incident at Xuanwu Gate.

706 In China, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang inters the bodies of relatives in the Qianling Mausoleum, located on Mount Liang outside Chang'an.

963 The imperial army proclaims Nicephorus Phocas Emperor of the Romans on the plains outside Cappadocian Caesarea.

       

1298 The Battle of Gllheim is fought between Albert I of Habsburg and Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg. 1494 The Treaty of Tordesillas is ratified by Spain. 1555 The Ottoman Admiral Turgut Reis sacks the Italian city of Paola. 1561 Menas, Emperor of Ethiopia, defeats a revolt in Emfraz. 1582 Battle of Yamazaki: Toyotomi Hideyoshi defeats Akechi Mitsuhide. 1613 The first English expedition from Massachusetts against Acadia led by Samuel Argall takes place. 1644 English Civil War: Battle of Marston Moor. 1679 Europeans first visit Minnesota and see headwaters of Mississippi in an expedition led by Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth.

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1698 Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine. 1776 The Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not approved until July 4.

 

1777 Vermont becomes the first American territory to abolish slavery. 1823 Bahia Independence Day: the end of Portuguese rule in Brazil, with the final defeat of the Portuguese crown loyalists in the province of Bahia.

1839 Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqu take over the slave ship Amistad.

1853 The Russian Army crossed the Pruth river into the Danubian Principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia providing the spark that set off the Crimean War.

 

1871 Victor Emmanuel II of Italy enters Rome after having conquered it from the Papal States. 1881 Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President James Garfield, who eventually dies from an infection on September 19.

     

1890 The U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. 1897 Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London. 1900 The first Zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany. 1917 The East St. Louis Riots end. 1934 The Night of the Long Knives ends with the death of Ernst Rhm. 1937 Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight.

   

1940 Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose is arrested and detained in Calcutta. 1950 The Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto, Japan burns down. 1962 The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas. 1964 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.

1966 The French military explodes a nuclear test bomb codenamed Aldbaran in Mururoa, their first nuclear test in the Pacific.

1976 Fall of the Republic of Vietnam; Communist North Vietnam declares their union to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

1986 Rodrigo Rojas and Carmen Gloria Quintana where burnt alive during a street demonstration against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

1993 37 participants in an Alevi cultural and literary festival are killed when a mob of demonstrators set fire to their hotel in Sivas during a violent protest.

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2000 Vicente Fox Quesada is elected the first President of Mxico from an opposition party, the Partido Accin Nacional, after more than 70 years of continuous rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.

2000 The resund Bridge, connecting Sweden and Denmark and the longest road and rail bridge in Europe, opens for traffic.

  

2001 The AbioCor self contained artificial heart is first implanted. 2002 Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon. 2010 The South Kivu tank truck explosion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo kills at least 230 people.

July 3
 
324 Battle of Adrianople Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium. 987 Hugh Capet is crowned King of France, the first of the Capetian dynasty that would rule France till the French Revolution in 1792.

  

1608 Qubec City is founded by Samuel de Champlain. 1754 French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French forces. 1767 Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.

 

1767 Norway's oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, is founded and the first edition is published. 1775 American Revolutionary War: George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  

1778 American Revolutionary War: British forces kill 360 people in the Wyoming Valley massacre. 1819 The Bank of Savings in New York City, the first savings bank in the United States, opens. 1839 The first state normal school in the United States, the forerunner to today's Framingham State College, opens in Lexington, Massachusetts with 3 students.

 

1844 The last pair of Great Auks is killed. 1848 Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands) by Peter von Scholten in the culmination of a year-long plot by enslaved Africans.

1849 The French enter Rome in order to restore Pope Pius IX to power. This would prove a major obstacle to Italian unification.

  

1852 Congress establishes the United States' 2nd mint in San Francisco, California. 1863 American Civil War: The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg culminates with Pickett's Charge. 1866 Austro-Prussian War is decided at the Battle of Kniggratz, resulting in Prussia taking over as the prominent German nation from Austria.

1884 Dow Jones and Company publishes its first stock average.

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1886 Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent Motorwagen the first purpose-built automobile. 1886 The New York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand.

 

1890 Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state. 1898 Spanish-American War: The Spanish fleet, led by Pascual Cervera y Topete, is destroyed by the U.S. Navy in Santiago, Cuba.

1913 Confederate veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913 reenact Pickett's Charge; upon reaching the high-water mark of the Confederacy they are met by the outstretched hands of friendship from Union survivors.

1938 World speed record for a steam railway locomotive is set in England, by the Mallard, which reaches a speed of 126 miles per hour (203 km/h).

1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and lights the eternal flame at Gettysburg Battlefield.

1940 World War II: the French fleet of the Atlantic based at Mers el Kbir, is bombarded by the British fleet, coming from Gibraltar, causing the loss of three battleships: Dunkerque,Provence and Bretagne. One thousand two hundred sailors perish.

  

1944 World War II: Minsk is liberated from Nazi control by Soviet troops during Operation Bagration. 1952 The Constitution of Puerto Rico is approved by the Congress of the United States. 1952 The SS United States sets sail on her maiden voyage to Southampton. During the voyage, the ship takes the Blue Riband away from the RMS Queen Mary.

 

1962 The Algerian War of Independence against the French ends. 1969 The biggest explosion in the history of rocketry occurs when the Soviet N-1 rocket explodes and subsequently destroys its launchpad.

 

1970 The Troubles: the "Falls Curfew" begins in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1970 A British Dan-Air De Havilland Comet chartered jetliner crashes into mountains north of Barcelona, Spain killing 113 people.

1979 U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.

1988 United States Navy warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

1988 The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, providing the second connection between the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus.

1994 The deadliest day in Texas traffic history, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Forty-six people are killed in crashes.

1996 Stone of Scone is returned to Scotland.

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2001 A Vladivostok Avia Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner crashes on approach to landing at Irkutsk, Russia killing 145 people.

 

2005 Same-sex marriage in Spain becomes legal. 2006 Valencia metro accident leaves 43 dead in Valencia, Spain.

July 4
  
836 Pactum Sicardi, peace between the Principality of Benevento and the Duchy of Naples 993 Saint Ulrich of Augsburg is canonized. 1054 A supernova is seen by Chinese, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

      

1120 Jordan II of Capua is anointed as prince after his infant nephew's death. 1187 The Crusades: Battle of Hattin Saladin defeats Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem. 1253 Battle of West-Capelle: John I of Avesnes defeats Guy of Dampierre. 1359 Francesco II Ordelaffi of Forl surrenders to the Papal commander Gil de Albornoz. 1456 The Siege of Nndorfehrvr (Belgrade) begins. (Part of the Ottoman wars in Europe) 1534 Christian III is elected King of Denmark and Norway in the town of Rye. 1569 The King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus finally sign the document of union between Poland and Lithuania, creating new country known as PolishLithuanian Commonwealth.

1610 The Battle of Klushino between forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia during the Polish-Muscovite War.

  

1634 The city of Trois-Rivires is founded in New France (Quebec, Canada) 1636 City of Providence, Rhode Island forms. 1744 The Treaty of Lancaster, in which the Iriquois ceded lands between the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River to the British colonies, is signed inLancaster, Pennsylvania.

1754 French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French Capt. Louis Coulon de Villiers.

1774 Orangetown Resolutions adopted in the Province of New York, one of many protests against the British Parliament's Coercive Acts

1776 American Revolution: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress.

1778 American Revolutionary War: American forces under George Clark capture Kaskaskia during the Illinois campaign.

1802 At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens.

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1803 The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people.

1810 The French occupy Amsterdam. 1817 At Rome, New York, United States, construction on the Erie Canal begins. 1826 Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, dies the same day as John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence.

    

1827 Slavery is abolished in New York State. 1831 Samuel Francis Smith wrote My Country, 'Tis of Thee for the Boston, MA July 4th festivities. 1837 Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool. 1838 The Iowa Territory is organized. 1855 In Brooklyn, New York, the first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, titled Leaves of Grass, is published.

1862 Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.

1863 American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant after 47 days of siege. 150 miles up the Mississippi River, a Confederate Army is repulsed at the Battle of Helena, Arkansas.

1863 The Army of Northern Virginia withdraws from the battlefield after its loss at the Battle of Gettysburg, signalling an end to the Southern invasion of the North.

 

1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is published. 1878 Thoroughbred horses Ten Broeck and Mollie McCarty run a match race, immortalized in the song Molly and Tenbrooks.

1879 Anglo-Zulu War: the Zululand capital of Ulundi is captured by British troops and burnt to the ground, thus, ending the war and forcing King Cetshwayo to flee.

    

1881 In Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute opens. 1886 The people of France offer the Statue of Liberty to the people of the United States. 1886 The first scheduled Canadian transcontinental train arrives in Port Moody, British Columbia. 1887 The founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, joins Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam, Karachi. 1892 Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4.

 

1894 The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole. 1903 Dorothy Levitt is reported as the first woman in the world to compete in a 'motor race'.

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1910 African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match sparking race riots across the United States.

     

1913 President Woodrow Wilson addresses American Civil War veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913. 1918 Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI ascends to the throne. 1918 Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date). 1927 First flight of the Lockheed Vega. 1934 Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb. 1939 Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, tells a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announces his retirement from major league baseball.

 

1941 Nazi Germans massacre Polish scientists and writers in the captured Ukrainian city of Lviv. 1943 World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history and the world's largest tank battle at Prokhorovka village.

1946 After 381 years of near-continuous colonial rule by various powers, the Philippines attains full independence from the United States.

1947 The "Indian Independence Bill" is presented before British House of Commons, suggesting bifurcation of British India into two sovereign countries India and Pakistan.

 

1950 The first broadcast by Radio Free Europe. 1960 Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniaalmost ten and a half months later (see Flag Act).

1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act goes into effect the next year.

1969 Two teens (one male, one female) are attacked at Blue Rock Springs in California. They are the second (known) victims of the Zodiac Killer. The male survives.

1976 Israeli commandos raid Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing all but four of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by Palestinian terrorists.

1977 The George Jackson Brigade plants a bomb at the main power substation for the Washington state capitol in Olympia in solidarity with a prison strike at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary Intensive Security Unit

1982 Iranian diplomats kidnapping (1982): four Iranian diplomats are kidnapped by Lebanese militia in Lebanon.

1987 In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie (aka the "Butcher of Lyon") is convicted of crimes against humanity and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

1993 Sumitomo Chemical's resin plant in Nihama explodes killing one worker and injuring three others.

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1997 NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars. 2004 The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. 2005 The Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1. 2006 North Korea tests four short-range missiles, one medium-range missile, and a long-range Taepodong-2. The long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly fails in mid-air over the Sea of Japan.

2009 The Statue of Liberty's crown reopens to the public after 8 years, due to security reasons following the World Trade Center attacks.

July 5
      
1295 Scotland and France form an alliance, the so-called "Auld Alliance", against England. 1316 Battle of Manolada between the Burgundian and Majorcan claimants of the Principality of Achaea. 1610 John Guy sets sail from Bristol with 39 other colonists for Newfoundland. 1687 Isaac Newton publishes Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica. 1770 The Battle of Chesma between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire begins. 1775 The Second Continental Congress adopts the Olive Branch Petition. 1803 The Convention of Artlenburg leads to the French occupation of Hanover (which had been ruled by the British king).

   

1809 The Battle of Wagram, the largest of the Napoleonic Wars. 1811 Venezuela declares independence from Spain. 1813 War of 1812: three weeks of British raids on Fort Schlosser, Black Rock and Plattsburgh, New York begin. 1814 War of 1812: Battle of Chippawa American Major General Jacob Brown defeats British General Phineas Riall at Chippawa, Ontario.

 

1830 France invades Algeria. 1833 Admiral Charles Napier defeats the navy of the Portuguese usurper Dom Miguel at the third Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

    

1865 The Salvation Army is founded in the East End of London, England. 1878 The coat of arms of the Baku governorate is established. 1884 Germany takes possession of Cameroon. 1934 "Bloody Thursday" Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco. 1935 The National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations in the United States, is signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1937 Spam, the luncheon meat, is introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.

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1940 World War II: the United Kingdom and the Vichy France government break off diplomatic relations. 1941 World War II: German troops reach the Dnieper River. 1943 World War II: An Allied invasion fleet sails for Sicily (Operation Husky, July 10, 1943). 1945 World War II: Liberation of the Philippines declared. 1947 Larry Doby signs a contract with the Cleveland Indians baseball team, becoming the first black player in the American League. (Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrierwith the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League 11 weeks earlier.)

 

1948 National Health Service Acts created the national public health systems in the United Kingdom 1950 Korean War: Task Force Smith First clash between American and North Korean forces in the Battle of Osan.

     

1950 Zionism: the Knesset passes the Law of Return which grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel. 1951 William Shockley invents the junction transistor. 1954 The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin. 1954 The Andhra Pradesh High Court is established. 1962 Algeria becomes independent from France. 1962 The Late Late Show, the world's longest-running chat show by the same broadcaster, airs on RT One for the first time.

 

1970 Air Canada Flight 621 crashes near Toronto International Airport killing 109 people. 1971 Right to vote: the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon.

1973 Catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane is being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills 11 firefighters.

   

1975 Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title. 1975 Cape Verde gains its independence from Portugal. 1977 Military coup in Pakistan: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, is overthrown. 1987 First instance of the LTTE using suicide attacks on Sri Lankan Army. The Black Tigers are born and in the following years continue to use it to deadly effect.

1989 Iran-Contra Affair: Oliver North is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. His convictions are later overturned.

  

1995 Armenia adopts its constitution, four years after their independence from the Soviet Union. 1996 Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. 1998 Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space exploring nation.

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1999 Wolverhampton, England is hit by storms which include a tornado. The area is hit again with severe storms on August 1.

1999 U.S. President Bill Clinton imposes trade and economic sanctions against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

 

2004 The first Indonesian presidential election is held. 2006 North Korea launches at least two short-range Nodong-2 missiles, one SCUD missile and one longrange Taepodong-2 missile.

2009 A series of violent riots break out in rmqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China.

2009 Roger Federer wins a record 15th Grand Slam title in tennis, winning a five set match against Andy Roddick at Wimbledon.

2009 The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered, consisting of more than 1,500 items, is found near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England.

July 6
 
371 BC The Battle of Leuctra, where Epaminondas defeats Cleombrotus I, takes place. 1044 The Battle of Mnf between troops led by Emperor Henry III and Magyar forces led by King Samuel takes place.

      

1189 Richard I "the Lionheart" is crowned King of England. 1253 Mindaugas is crowned King of Lithuania. 1348 Papal bull of Pope Clement VI protecting the Jews accused to have caused the Black Death. 1415 Jan Hus is burned at the stake. 1483 Richard III is crowned King of England. 1484 Portuguese sea captain Diogo Co finds the mouth of the Congo River. 1495 First Italian War: Battle of Fornovo Charles VIII defeats the Holy League, but ultimately ends his attempted conquest of Italy.

 

1535 Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England. 1557 King Philip II of Spain, consort of Queen Mary I of England, sets out from Dover to war with France, which eventually results in the loss of the City ofCalais, the last English possession on the continent, and Mary I never seeing her husband again.

  

1560 The Treaty of Edinburgh is signed by Scotland and England. 1573 Crdoba, Argentina, is founded by Jernimo Luis de Cabrera. 1609 Bohemia is granted freedom of religion.

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1630 Thirty-Years War: 4,000 Swedish troops under Gustavus Adolphus land in Pomerania, Germany. 1751 Pope Benedict XIV suppresses the Patriarchate of Aquileia and establishes from its territory the Archdiocese of Udine and Gorizia.

1777 American Revolutionary War: Siege of Fort Ticonderoga After a bombardment by British artillery under General John Burgoyne, American forces retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York.

   

1779 Battle of Grenada: French victory over British naval forces during the American Revolutionary War. 1785 The dollar is unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States. 1801 Battle of Algeciras: the French navy are defeated by the Royal Navy. 1809 The second day of the Battle of Wagram sees a French victory over the Austrian army in the largest battle yet of the Napoleonic Wars.

 

1854 In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party is held. 1885 Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.

1887 David Kalakaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, is forced at gunpoint, at the hands of the Americans, to sign the Bayonet Constitution giving Americans more power inHawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights.

 

1892 Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain. 1892 3,800 striking steelworkers engage in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving 10 dead and dozens wounded.

  

1893 The small town of Pomeroy, Iowa, is nearly destroyed by a tornado that kills 71 people and injures 200. 1905 Alfred Deakin becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the second time. 1917 World War I: Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.

1919 The British dirigible R34 lands in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.

1933 The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game is played in Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League defeats the National League 42.

1936 A major breach of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal in England sends millions of gallons of water cascading 200 feet (61 m) into the River Irwell.

 

1939 Holocaust: the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed. 1942 Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the "Secret Annexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

1944 Jackie Robinson refuses to move to the back of a bus, leading to a court martial.

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1944 The Hartford Circus Fire, one of America's worst fire disasters, kills approximately 168 people and injures over 700 in Hartford, Connecticut.

  

1947 The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union. 1957 Althea Gibson wins the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so. 1957 John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles are introduced to each other when Lennon's band the Quarrymen performs at the St. Peter's Church Hall fte in Woolton.

       

1962 As a part of Operation Plowshare, the Sedan nuclear test takes place. 1964 Malawi declares its independence from the United Kingdom. 1966 Malawi becomes a republic, with Hastings Banda as its first President. 1967 Nigerian Civil War: Nigerian forces invade Biafra, beginning the war. 1975 The Comoros declare independence from France. 1978 The Taunton sleeping car fire occurs in Taunton, Somerset killing twelve people. 1986 Davis Phinney became the first American cyclist to win a road stage of the Tour de France. 1988 The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. 167 oil workers are killed, making it the world's worst offshore oil disaster.

1989 The Israeli 405 Bus slaughter in which 14 bus passengers are killed when an Arab assaulted the bus driver as the bus is driving by the edge of a cliff.

  

1994 Storm King Mountain, Glenwood Springs, Colorado: South Canyon Fire: 14 firefighters died in the fire. 1997 The Troubles: Five days of fierce riots and clashes in Irish nationalist districts of Northern Ireland begin. 1998 Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport is closed and the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok becomes operational.

1999 U.S. Army private Barry Winchell dies from baseball-bat injuries inflicted in his sleep the previous day by a fellow soldier, Calvin Glover, for his relationship with transgendershowgirl and former Navy Corpsman Calpernia Addams.

2003 The 70-metre Eupatoria Planetary Radar sends a METI message (Cosmic Call 2) to 5 stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri (HD 75732), HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris (HD 95128). The messages will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044 and 2049 respectively.

2006 The Nathula Pass between India and China, sealed during the Sino-Indian War, re-opens for trade after 44 years.

July 7

1456 A retrial verdict acquits Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.

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1534 European colonization of the Americas: first known exchange between Europeans and natives of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in New Brunswick.

        

1543 French troops invade Luxembourg. 1575 Raid of the Redeswire, the last major battle between England and Scotland. 1585 The Treaty of Nemours abolishes tolerance to Protestants in France. 1770 The Battle of Larga between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire takes place. 1777 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Hubbardton. 1798 Quasi-War: the U.S. Congress rescinds treaties with France sparking the "war". 1807 Napoleonic Wars: the Peace of Tilsit between France, Prussia and Russia ends the Fourth Coalition. 1834 In New York City, four nights of rioting against abolitionists began. 1846 Mexican-American War: American troops occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena, thus beginning the U.S. acquisition of California.

  

1863 United States begins its first military draft; exemptions cost $300. 1865 American Civil War: four conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln are hanged. 1892 Katipunan: the Revolutionary Philippine Brotherhood is established, contributing to the fall of the Spanish Empire in Asia.

1898 U.S. President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.

1911 The United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia sign the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 banning open-water seal hunting, the first international treaty to address wildlife preservation issues.

 

1915 World War I: end of First Battle of the Isonzo. 1915 An International Railway trolley with an extreme overload of 157 passengers crashes near Queenston, Ontario, killing 15.

        

1928 Sliced bread is sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. 1930 Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser begins construction of the Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam). 1937 Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lugou Bridge Japanese forces invade Beijing, China. 1941 World War II: U.S. forces land in Iceland, taking over from an earlier British occupation. 1941 World War II: Beirut is occupied by Free France and British troops. 1944 World War II: Largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War at the Battle of Saipan. 1946 Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first American to be canonized. 1946 Howard Hughes nearly dies when his XF-11 spy plane prototype crashes in a Beverly Hills neighborhood. 1952 The ocean liner SS United States passes Bishop's Rock on her maiden voyage, breaking the transatlantic speed record to become the fastest passenger ship in the world.

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1953 Ernesto "Che" Guevara sets out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.

1954 Elvis Presley made his radio debut when WHBQ Memphis played his first recording for Sun Records, "That's All Right."

  

1956 Fritz Moravec and two other Austrian mountaineers make the first ascent of Gasherbrum II (8,035 m). 1958 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into law. 1959 Venus occults the star Regulus. This rare event is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere.

  

1978 The Solomon Islands become independent from the United Kingdom. 1980 Institution of sharia in Iran. 1980 During the Lebanese civil war, 83 Tiger militants are killed during what will be known as the Safra massacre.

1981 U.S. President Ronald Reagan appoints Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1983 Cold War: Samantha Smith, a U.S. schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov.

 

1985 Boris Becker becomes the youngest player ever to win Wimbledon at age 17 1991 Yugoslav Wars: the Brioni Agreement ends the ten-day independence war in Slovenia against the rest of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

1997 The Turkish Armed Forces withdraw from northern Iraq after assisting the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War.

2002 A scandal breaks out in the United Kingdom when news reports accuse MI6 of sheltering Abu Qatada, the supposed European Al Qaeda leader.

2005 A series of four explosions occurs on London's transport system killing 56 people including four alleged suicide bombers and injuring over 700 others.

2011 Roof of a stand in De Grolsch Veste Stadium in Enschede which was under construction collapsed, one killed and 14 injured.

July 8

1099 First Crusade: 15,000 starving Christian soldiers march in a religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders look on.

1283 War of the Sicilian Vespers: the naval Battle of Malta between the Aragonese and the Neapolitan fleets is fought.

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1497 Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India. 1579 Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, is discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan.

 

1663 Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Royal Charter to Rhode Island. 1709 Great Northern War: Battle of Poltava Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe.

  

1716 Great Northern War: the naval Battle of Dynekilen takes place. 1758 French forces hold Fort Carillon against the British at Ticonderoga, New York. 1760 French and Indian War: Battle of Restigouche British forces defeat French forces in last naval battle in New France.

 

1775 The Olive Branch Petition is signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies. 1808 Joseph Bonaparte approves the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as king of Spain.

        

1822 Chippewas turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom. 1859 King Charles XV & IV accedes to the throne of Sweden-Norway. 1864 Ikedaya Jiken: the Choshu Han shishi's planned Shinsengumi sabotage on Kyoto, Japan at Ikedaya. 1874 The Mounties begin their March West. 1876 White supremacists kill five Black Republicans in Hamburg, SC. 1879 Sailing ship USS Jeannette (1878) departs San Francisco carrying an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole. 1889 The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published. 1892 St. John's, Newfoundland is devastated in the Great Fire of 1892. 1896 William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetalism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

  

1898 The death of crime boss Soapy Smith (who is shot) releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip. 1907 Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first Follies on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City. 1912 Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro leads an unsuccessful royalist attack against the Portuguese First Republic in Chaves.

   

1932 The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22. 1937 Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan sign the Treaty of Saadabad. 1947 Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico. 1948 The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).

1960 Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.

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1962 Ne Win besieges and dynamites the Rangoon University Student Union building to crash the Student Movement.

 

1966 King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi is deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi. 1970 Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American Self-Determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination Act.

 

1982 Assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. 1988 The Island Express train travelling from Bangalore to Kanyakumari derails on the Peruman bridge and falls into Ashtamudi Lake, killing 105 passengers and injuring over 200 more.

 

1994 Kim Jong-il begins to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

July 9
 
455 Roman military commander Avitus is proclaimed Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. 869 A magnitude 8.6Ms earthquake and subsequent tsunami strikes the the area around Sendai in the northern part of Honshu, Japan.

 

1357 Emperor Charles IV assists in laying the foundation stone of Charles Bridge in Prague. 1386 The Old Swiss Confederacy makes great strides in establishing control over its territory by soundly defeating the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Sempach.

   

1540 King Henry VIII of England annuls his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. 1572 Nineteen Catholics suffer martyrdom for their beliefs in the Dutch town of Gorkum. 1701 War of the Spanish Succession: Austrians defeat France in the Battle of Carpi. 1745 War of the Austrian Succession: French victory in the Battle of Melle allows them to capture Ghent in the days after.

1755 French and Indian War: Braddock Expedition British troops and colonial militiamen are ambushed and suffer a devastating defeat by French andNative American forces.

1776 George Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence to be read out loud to members of the Continental Army in New York City for the first time.

1789 In Versailles, the National Assembly reconstitutes itself as the National Constituent Assembly and begins preparations for a French constitution.

1790 Russo-Swedish War: Second Battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Navy captures one third of the Russian fleet.

1793 The Act Against Slavery is passed in Upper Canada and the importation of slaves into Lower Canada is prohibited.

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1807 The Treaties of Tilsit are signed by Napoleon I of France and Alexander I of Russia. 1810 Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire. 1811 Explorer David Thompson posts a sign at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers (in modern Washington state, US), claiming the land for the United Kingdom.

  

1815 Talleyrand becomes the first Prime Minister of France. 1816 Argentina declares independence from Spain. 1821 470 prominent Cypriots including Archbishop Kyprianos are executed in response to Cypriot aid to the Greek War of Independence

   

1850 U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies and Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th President of the United States. 1850 The Persian prophet Bb is executed in Tabriz, Persia. 1863 American Civil War: the Siege of Port Hudson ends. 1868 The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

1875 Outbreak of the Herzegovina Uprising against Ottoman rule, which would last until 1878 and have farreaching implications throughout the Balkans

 

1877 The inaugural Wimbledon Championships opens. 1900 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom gives royal assent to an Act creating the Commonwealth of Australia thus uniting separate colonies on the continent under one federal government.

1900 Boxer Rebellion: The Governor of Shanxi province in North China orders the execution of 45 foreign Christian missionaries and local church members, including children.

1918 Great train wreck of 1918: in Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history.

1922 Johnny Weissmuller swims the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking the world swimming record and the 'minute barrier'.

1932 The state of So Paulo revolts against the Brazilian Federal Government, starting the Constitutionalist Revolution

   

1943 World War II: Operation Husky Allied forces perform an amphibious invasion of Sicily. 1944 World War II: Battle of Normandy British and Canadian forces capture Caen, France. 1944 World War II: Battle of Saipan American forces take Saipan in the Mariana Islands. 1944 World War II: Battle of Tali-Ihantala Finland wins the Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in northern Europe. The Red Army withdraws its troops from Ihantala and digs into defensive position, thus ending the VyborgPetrozavodsk Offensive.

1955 The Russell-Einstein Manifesto is released by Bertrand Russell in London.

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1958 Lituya Bay is hit by a mega-tsunami. The wave is recorded at 524 meters high, the largest in recorded history.

    

1961 Turkish voters approve the Turkish Constitution of 1961 in a referendum. 1962 The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test is conducted by the United States of America. 1962 Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans exhibition opens at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. 1972 The Troubles: In Belfast, British Army snipers shoot five civilians dead in the Springhill Massacre. 1979 A car bomb destroys a Renault motor car owned by famed "Nazi hunters" Serge and Beate Klarsfeld at their home in France. A note purportedly from ODESSA claims responsibility.

1982 Pan Am Flight 759 crashes in Kenner, Louisiana killing all 145 people on board and eight others on the ground.

1986 The New Zealand Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalising homosexuality in New Zealand.

 

1995 The Navaly church bombing is carried out by the Sri Lankan Air Force killing 125 Tamil civilian refugees. 1999 Days of student protests begin after Iranian police and hardliners attack a student dormitory at the University of Tehran.

2006 At least 122 people are killed after a Sibir Airlines Airbus A310 passenger jet, carrying 200 passengers veers off the runway while landing in wet conditions at Irkutsk Airport inSiberia.

2011 South Sudan gains independence and secedes from Sudan.

July 10
 
48 BC Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey in Macedonia. 138 Emperor Hadrian dies after a heart failure at Baiae, he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina.

988 Norse King Glun Iarainn recognises Mel Sechnaill II, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin.

 

1212 The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton.

1499 Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon, after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama.

  

1553 Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland by Balthasar Grard. 1645 English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place.

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1778 American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company.

  

1821 The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory of Florida from Spain. 1832 U.S.President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, 16 months into his term.

 

1877 The then-villa of Mayagez, Puerto Rico formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepcin when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears.

  

1890 Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1913 Death Valley, California hits 134 F (~56.7 C), the highest temperature recorded in the United States. 1921 Belfast's Bloody Sunday: 16 people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1925 Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration.

1925 Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

  

1938 Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world. 1940 World War II: the Vichy government is established in France. 1940 World War II: Battle of Britain The German Luftwaffe begins attacking British convoys in the English Channel thus starting the battle (this start date is contested, though).

  

1941 Jedwabne Pogrom: the massacre of Jewish people living in and near the village of Jedwabne in Poland. 1942 Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established. 1946 Hungarian hyperinflation sets a record with inflation of 348.46 percent per day, or prices doubling every eleven hours.

1947 Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee.

  

1951 Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. As many as 60,000 people came to hear Dr. King as well as Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter Paul and Mary.

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1967 Uruguay becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. 1968 Maurice Couve de Murville becomes Prime Minister of France. 1971 Hassan II of Morocco survives an attempted coup d'tat, which lasts until June 11. 1973 The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1973 National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on the recognition of Bangladesh. 1973 John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy. 1976 The Seveso disaster occurs in Italy. 1976 One American and three British mercenaries are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'tat. 1980 Alexandra Palace burns down for a second time. 1985 Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland, New Zealand harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira.

1991 The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid.

1992 In Miami, Florida, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.

1997 In London scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which support the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

1997 Partido Popular (Spain) member Miguel ngel Blanco is kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests.

1998 Roman Catholic sex abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by former priestRudolph Kos.

 

2000 A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline. 2000 EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Arospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA.

2002 At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for 49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson.

2003 A Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off a bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. This is the deadliest traffic accident to date in Hong Kong.

 

2005 Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2006 Pakistan International Flight PK-688 crashes in Multan, Pakistan, shortly after takeoff, killing all 45 people on board.

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2008 Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Bo koski is acquitted of all charges by a United Nations Tribunal accusing him of war crimes.

2011 British tabloid News of the World publishes its last edition after 168 years in the wake of a phone hacking scandal.

July 11

472 After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in the Old St. Peter's Basilica and put to death.

 

911 Signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple and Rollo of Normandy. 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) a coalition around the Flemish cities defeats the king of France's royal army.

     

1346 Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 1405 Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time. 1476 Giuliano della Rovere is appointed bishop of Coutances. 1576 Martin Frobisher sights Greenland. 1616 Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec. 1735 Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979.

     

1740 Pogrom: Jews are expelled from Little Russia. 1750 Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire. 1776 Captain James Cook begins his third voyage. 1789 Jacques Necker is dismissed as France's Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille. 1796 The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty. 1798 The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.

1801 French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovered another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.

1804 A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

1833 Noongar Australian aboriginal warrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, is killed.

 

1848 Waterloo railway station in London opens. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempt to invade Washington, D.C..

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1882 The British Mediterranean fleet begins the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the 1882 AngloEgyptian War.

  

1889 Tijuana, Mexico, is founded. 1893 The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto. 1893 A revolution led by the liberal general and politician, Jos Santos Zelaya, takes over state power in Nicaragua.

 

1895 The Lumire brothers demonstrate film technology to scientists. 1897 Salomon August Andre leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies.

     

1906 The Gillette-Brown murder inspires Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. 1914 Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major league baseball. 1919 The eight-hour working day and free Sunday become law in the Netherlands. 1920 In the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decides to remain with Weimar Germany 1921 A truce is called in the Irish War of Independence; see Irish calendar. 1921 Former U.S. President William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person to ever be both President and Chief Justice.

  

1921 The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People's Republic. 1922 The Hollywood Bowl opens. 1930 Australian cricketer Don Bradman scores a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England.

 

1936 The Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic. 1940 World War II: Vichy France regime is formally established. Henri Philippe Ptain becomes Prime Minister of France.

 

1943 Massacres of Poles in Volhynia. 1943 World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily German and Italian troops launch a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily.

  

1947 The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France. 1950 Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank. 1957 Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherits the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismaili worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III.

   

1960 Independence of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published. 1960 Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1962 First transatlantic satellite television transmission.

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1971 Copper mines in Chile are nationalized. 1972 The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.

  

1973 Varig Flight 820 crashes near Paris on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 on-board. 1977 Martin Luther King Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 1978 Los Alfaques Disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashes and explodes at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists.

1979 America's first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

     

1983 A Boeing 737 crashes into hilly terrain after a tail strike in Cuenca, Ecuador, claiming 119 lives. 1987 According to the United Nations, the world population crosses the 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) mark. 1990 Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada begins. 1991 A Nationair DC-8 crashes during an emergency landing at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing 261. 1995 A Cubana de Aviacin Antonov An-24 crashes into the Caribbean off southeast Cuba killing 44 people. 1995 Over 8,000 Bosnian men and children (all Bosniaks) are killed by Serbian troops commanded by Ratko Mladic in Poto ari near Srebrenica Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

2006 209 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India. 2011 Neptune completes its first orbit since its discovery on September 23, 1846.

July 12

927 thelstan, King of England, secures a pledge from Constantine II of Scotland that the latter will not ally with Viking kings, beginning the process of unifying Great Britain.

       

1191 Third Crusade: Saladin's garrison surrenders to Conrad of Montferrat, ending the two-year siege of Acre. 1543 King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace. 1561 Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is consecrated. 1562 Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatan, burns the sacred books of the Maya. 1580 The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published. 1690 Battle of the Boyne (Julian calendar) The armies of William III defeat those of the former James II. 1691 Battle of Aughrim (Julian calendar) The decisive victory of William III of England's forces in Ireland. 1789 French revolutionary and radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gave a speech, following hearing the news that France's financial minister Jacques Necker has been dismissed. The speech called the citizens to arms, which lead to the falling of the Bastille two days later.

1790 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly.

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1804 Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel. 1806 Sixteen German imperial states leave the Holy Roman Empire and form the Confederation of the Rhine. 1812 War of 1812: the United States invade Canada at Windsor, Ontario. 1843 1843 Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, proclaimed a revelation recommending polygamy.

  

1862 The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress. 1879 The National Guards Unit of Bulgaria is founded. 1913 Second Balkan War: Serbian forces begin their siege of the Bulgarian city of Vidin; the siege is later called off when the war ends.

1917 The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona.

1918 The Japanese Imperial Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621.

  

1920 The SovietLithuanian Peace Treaty is signed. Soviet Russia recognises independent Lithuania. 1932 Hedley Verity takes a cricket world record 10 wickets for 10 runs in a county match for Yorkshire 1943 World War II: Battle of Prokhorovka German and Soviet forces engage in the largest tank engagement of all time.

1948 ArabIsraeli War: Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the explusion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramla.

 

1960 Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded. 1961 Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams. Half of Pune is submerged, more than 100,000 families need to be relocated and the death tally exceeds 2,000.

  

1962 The Rolling Stones perform their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London. 1967 The Newark riots began in Newark, New Jersey. 1970 A fire consumes the wooden home of Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt and irretrievably destroys about 90 percent of his output.

      

1971 The Australian Aboriginal flag is flown for the first time. 1973 A fire destroys the entire 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States. 1975 So Tom and Prncipe declare independence from Portugal. 1979 The island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from Great Britain. 1979 Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park Chicago, IL 2006 The Hezbollah initiate Operation True Promise. 2007 U.S. Army Apache helicopters perform airstrikes in Baghdad, Iraq; footage from the cockpit is later leaked to the Internet.

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July 13

1174 William I of Scotland, a key rebel in the Revolt of 11731174, is captured at Alnwick by forces loyal to Henry II of England.

1260 The Livonian Order suffers its greatest defeat in the 13th century in the Battle of Durbe against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

1558 Battle of Gravelines: in France, Spanish forces led by Count Lamoral of Egmont defeat the French forces of Marshal Paul de Thermes at Gravelines.

 

1573 Eighty Years' War: the Siege of Haarlem ends after seven months. 1643 English Civil War: Battle of Roundway Down In England, Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, commanding the Royalist forces, heavily defeats the Parliamentarian forces led by Sir William Waller.

1787 The Continental Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It also establishes procedures for the admission of new states and limits the expansion of slavery.

1793 Journalist and French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat is assassinated in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a member of the opposing political faction.

  

1794 The Battle of the Vosges is fought between French forces and those of Prussia and Austria. 1814 The Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, is established. 1830 The General Assembly's Institution, now the Scottish Church College, one of the pioneering institutions that ushered the Bengal Renaissance, is founded by Alexander Duff and Raja Ram Mohan Roy, in Calcutta, India.

1854 In the Battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon.

1863 New York Draft Riots: in New York City, opponents of conscription begin three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.

1878 Treaty of Berlin: the European powers redraw the map of the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania become completely independent of theOttoman empire.

1905 The verdict in the six-month long Smarthavicharam trial of Kuriyedath Thathri is pronounced, leading to the excommunication of 65 men of various castes.

1919 The British airship R34 lands in Norfolk, England, completing the first airship return journey across the Atlantic in 182 hours of flight.

1923 The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywoodland " but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.

1941 World War II: Montenegrins begin a popular uprising against the Axis Powers (Trinaestojulski ustanak), the first in Axis-controlled countries.

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1962 In an unprecedented action, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dismisses seven members of his Cabinet, marking the effective end of the National Liberals as a distinct force within British politics.

1973 Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the "Nixon tapes" to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break in.

1977 New York City, amidst a period of financial and social turmoil experiences a blackout lasting nearly 24 hours that leads to widespread fires and looting.

1985 The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London and Philadelphia, as well as other venues such as Sydney and Moscow.

1985 Vice President George H.W. Bush becomes the Acting President for the day when President Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to remove polyps from his colon.

1990 An earthquake with its epicentre in Afghanistan results in the greatest number of fatalities in a mountaineering accident in High Asian mountains when an avalanche kills 43 climbers in Camp I on Pik Lenina (Lenin Peak).

2003 French DGSE personnel abort an operation to rescue Ingrid Betancourt from FARC rebels in Colombia, causing a political scandal when details are leaked to the press.

2008 War in Afghanistan: Taliban guerrillas attack NATO troops near the village of Wanat in the Waygal district in Afghanistan's far eastern province of Nuristan.

2011 13 July 2011 Mumbai bombings: Three bomb blasts rocked India's largest city, Mumbai, in congested areas during the evening rush hour, killing at least 21 people and

injuring more than 100 others.

July 14
 
1223 Louis VIII becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Philip II of France. 1769 An expedition led by Gaspar de Portol establishes a base in California and sets out to find the Port of Monterey (now Monterey, California).

1771 Foundation of the Mission San Antonio de Padua in modern California by the Franciscan friar Junpero Serra.

 

1789 French Revolution: citizens of Paris storm the Bastille. 1790 French Revolution: citizens of Paris celebrate the constitutional monarchy and national reconciliation in the Fte de la Fdration.

1791 The Priestley Riots drive Joseph Priestley, a supporter of the French Revolution, out of Birmingham, England.

1798 The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about theUnited States government.

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1853 Opening of the first major US world's fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City. 1865 First ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper and party, four of whom die on the descent. 1877 The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia, US, when Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers have their wages cut for the second time in a year.

   

1881 Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner. 1900 Armies of the Eight-Nation Alliance capture Tientsin during the Boxer Rebellion. 1902 The Campanile in St. Mark's Square, Venice collapses, also demolishing the loggetta. 1911 Harry Atwood, an exhibition pilot for the Wright Brothers lands his airplane at the South Lawn of the White House. He is later awarded a Gold medalfrom President Taft for this feat.

1916 Start of the Battle of Delville Wood as an action within the Battle of the Somme, which was to last until 3 September 1916.

 

1933 Gleichschaltung: in Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party. 1943 In Diamond, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument becomes the first United States National Monument in honor of an African American.

  

1948 Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, is shot and wounded near the Italian Parliament. 1950 Korean War: North Korean troops initiate the Battle of Taejon. 1957 Rawya Ateya takes her seat in the National Assembly of Egypt, thereby becoming the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world.

1958 Iraqi Revolution: in Iraq the monarchy is overthrown by popular forces led by Abdul Karim Kassem, who becomes the nation's new leader.

1960 Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.

 

1965 The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another planet. 1969 Football War: after Honduras loses a soccer match against El Salvador, riots break out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers.

  

1969 The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation. 1987 Montreal, Canada, is hit by a series of thunderstorms causing the Montreal Flood of 1987. 1992 386BSD is released by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz beginning the Open Source Operating System Revolution. Linus Torvalds releases his Linux soon afterwards.

 

2000 A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth. 2002 French President Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt unscathed during Bastille Day celebrations.

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2003 In an effort to discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an article critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak revealsthat Wilson's wife Valerie Plame is a CIA "operative".

July 15

1099 First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege.

  

1149 The reconstructed Church of the Holy Sepulchre is consecrated in Jerusalem. 1207 King John of England expels Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop Stephen Langton. 1240 Swedish-Novgorodian Wars: a Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeats the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.

1381 John Ball, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England.

1410 PolishLithuanianTeutonic War: Battle of Grunwald the allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeat the army of the Teutonic Order.

1685 Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth is executed at Tower Hill, England after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685.

1741 Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.

1789 Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, is named by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris.

1799 The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-Franois Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.

1806 Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the west.

  

1815 Napoleonic Wars: Napolon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon. 1823 A fire destroys the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.

1870 Reconstruction era of the United States: Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1870 Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory are transferred to Canada from the Hudson's Bay Company, and the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories are established from these vast territories.

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1888 The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupts killing approximately 500 people, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. 1910 In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.

1916 In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).

    

1918 World War I: the Second Battle of the Marne begins near the River Marne with a German attack. 1920 The Polish Parliament establishes Silesian Voivodeship before the Polish-German plebiscite. 1927 Massacre of July 15, 1927: 89 protesters are killed by the Austrian police in Vienna. 1954 First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series. 1955 Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirtyfour others.

1959 The steel strike of 1959 begins, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.

1966 Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam begin Operation Hastings to push the North Vietnamese out of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone.

1974 In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek Junta-sponsored nationalists launch a coup d'tat, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president.

1975 Space Race: ApolloSoyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets.

1979 U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his so-called "malaise" speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation" but in which he never uses the word malaise

 

1980 A massive storm tears through western Wisconsin, causing US$160 million in damage. 1983 A terrorist attack is launched by Armenian militant organisation ASALA at the Paris-Orly Airport in Paris; it leaves 8 people dead and 55 injured.

1996 A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashes on landing at Eindhoven Airport.

 

1997 In Miami, Florida, serial killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan guns down Gianni Versace outside his home. 2002 "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

2002 Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan hands down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

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2003 AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day.

2009 Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 crashes in northwestern Iran, killing all 153 aboard.

July 16
 
622 The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 Three Roman legates break relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal Bull ofExcommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as the start of the East-West Schism.

1212 Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: after Pope Innocent III calls European knights to a crusade, forces of Kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, Pedro II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal defeat those of the Berber Muslim leader Almohad, thus marking a significant turning point in theReconquista and in the medieval history of Spain.

  

1377 Coronation of Richard II of England. 1661 The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco. 1683 Manchu Qing Dynasty naval forces under traitorous commander Shi Lang defeat the Kingdom of Tungning in the Battle of Penghu near thePescadores Islands.

1769 Father Junipero Serra founds California's first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcal. Over the following decades, it evolves into the city of San Diego.

1779 American Revolutionary War: light infantry of the Continental Army seize a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack at the Battle of Stony Point.

 

1782 First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail. 1790 The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.

1809 The city of La Paz, in what is today Bolivia, declares its independence from the Spanish Crown during the La Paz revolution and forms the Junta Tuitiva, the first independent government in Spanish America, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo.

1861 American Civil War: at the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25 mile march into Virginia for what will become The First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the war.

1862 American Civil War: David Farragut is promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.

1880 Emily Stowe becomes the first female physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada.

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1909 Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.

1910 John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia.

 

1915 Henry James becomes a British citizen, to highlight his commitment to England during the first World War. 1927 Augusto Csar Sandino leads a raid on U.S. Marines and Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional that had been sent to apprehend him in the village of Ocotal, but is repulsed by one of the first dive-bombing attacks in history.

   

1931 Emperor Haile Selassie I signs the first constitution of Ethiopia. 1935 The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1941 Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as a MLB record. 1942 Holocaust: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv): the government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.

1945 World War II: the leaders of the three Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.

1945 World War II: The Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island. This would be the last time the Indianapolis would be seen by the Mainland she would be torpedoed by the Japanese Submarine I-58 on July 30 and sink with 880 out of 1,196 crewmen.

1945 Manhattan Project: the Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutoniumbased test nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1948 The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.

   

1950 Chaplain-Medic massacre: American POWs were massacred by North Korean Army. 1951 King Lopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium. 1951 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is published for the first time by Little, Brown and Company. 1956 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its very last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, due to changing economics all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas.

1957 United States Marine major John Glenn flies a F8U Crusader supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting a new transcontinental speed record.

1960 USS George Washington a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first ballistic missile while submerged.

1965 The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens.

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1969 Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1973 Watergate Scandal: former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield informs the United States Senate that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.

 

1979 Iraqi President Hasan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein. 1981 Mahathir bin Mohamad becomes Malaysia's 4th Prime Minister; his 22 years in office, ending with retirement on 31 October 2003, made him Asia's longest-serving political leader.

 

1983 Sikorsky S-61 disaster: a helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities. 1990 The Luzon Earthquake strikes in Benguet, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, La Union, Aurora, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac, Philippines, with an intensity of 7.7.

   

1990 The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. 1993 The Slackware operating system is first released. 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter. Impacts continue until July 22. 1999 John F. Kennedy, Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies when his plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. His wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are also killed.

2004 Millennium Park, considered Chicago's first and most ambitious early 21st century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley.

2007 2007 Ch etsu offshore earthquake: an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing 8 people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant.

July 17

180 Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.

1203 The Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus flees from his capital into exile.

1402 Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumes the throne over the Ming Dynasty of China.

1453 Hundred Years' War: Battle of Castillon: The French under Jean Bureau defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle inGascony.

1586 A meeting takes place at Lneburg between several Protestant powers in order to discuss the formation of an 'evangelical' league of defence, called the 'Confederatio Militiae Evangelicae', against the Catholic League.

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1717 King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered.

 

1762 Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia. 1771 Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, travelling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.

1791 Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars,Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.

1794 The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.

   

1856 The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people. 1867 Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston. It was the first dental school in the U.S. 1899 NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. 1917 King George V of the United Kingdom issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family will bear the surname Windsor.

1918 On the orders of the Bolshevik Party carried out by Cheka, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

1918 The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives are lost.

1933 After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.

1936 Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.

1938 Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and becomes known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

1944 Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.

1944 World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. L, France.

  

1948 The South Korean constitution is proclaimed. 1955 Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California. 1962 Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

1968 A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.

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1973 King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.

1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

 

1976 History of East Timor: East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia. 1976 The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team.

  

1979 Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida. 1981 The opening of the Humber Bridge by HM The Queen in England. 1981 A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.

 

1989 First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. 1996 TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.

1998 Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.

1998 A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

2007 TAM Airlines (TAM Linhas Areas) Flight 3054 crashes upon landing during rain in So Paulo. This is Brazil's deadliest aviation accident to date with an estimated 199 deaths.

2009 Jakarta double bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels killed 9 people including 4 foreigners.

July 18

390 BCE Roman-Gaulish Wars: Battle of the Allia a Roman army is defeated by raiding Gauls, leading to the subsequent sacking of Rome.

362 Roman-Persian Wars: Emperor Julian arrives at Antioch with a Roman expeditionary force (60,000 men) and stays there for nine months to launch a campaign against the Persian Empire.

1290 King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B'Av on theHebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.

1334 The bishop of Florence blesses the first foundation stone for the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral, designed by the artist Giotto di Bondone.

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1389 Kingdom of France and Kingdom of England agree to the Truce of Leulinghem, in inaugurating a 13 year peace; the longest period of sustained peace during the Hundred Years War.

1656 Polish-Lithuanian forces clash with Sweden and its Brandenburg allies in the start of what is to be known as The Battle of Warsaw which ends in a decisive Swedish victory.

1857 Louis Faidherbe, French governor of Senegal, arrives to relieve French forces at Kayes, effectively ending El Hajj Umar Tall's war against the French.

 

1862 First ascent of Dent Blanche, one of the highest summits in the Alps. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Fort Wagner/Morris Island the first formal African American military unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, fails in their assault on Confederate-held Battery Wagner.

 

1870 The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility. 1914 The U.S. Congress forms the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, giving definite status to aircraft within the U.S. Army for the first time.

    

1925 Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf. 1942 World War II: the Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time. 1944 World War II: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort. 1955 The first Disneyland theme park, in Anaheim, California, officially opens to the public. 1966 Human spaceflight: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.

 

1968 The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California. 1969 After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.

1976 Nadia Com neci became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.

1982 268 campesinos ("peasants" or "country people") are slain in the Plan de Snchez massacre in Ros Montt's Guatemala.

1984 McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California: in a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty opens fire, killing 21 people and injuring 19 others before being shot dead by police.

1986 A tornado is broadcast live on KARE television in Minnesota when the station's helicopter pilot makes a chance encounter.

 

1992 The ten victims of the La Cantuta massacre disappear from their university in Lima. 1994 The bombing of the Asociacin Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentinian Jewish Communal Center) in Buenos Aires kills 85 people (mostly Jewish) and injures 300.

1995 On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.

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1996 Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River, beginning one of Quebec's costliest natural disasters ever.

1996 Battle of Mullaitivu. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam capture the Sri Lanka Army's base, killing over 1200 Army soldiers.

July 19

64 Great Fire of Rome: a fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control. According to a popular, but untrue legend, Nero fiddled as the city burned.

711 Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic.

  

1333 Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Halidon Hill The English win a decisive victory over the Scots. 1544 Italian War of 1542: the first Siege of Boulogne begins. 1545 The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth; in 1982 the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

  

1553 Lady Jane Grey is replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after only nine days of reign. 1588 Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines The Spanish Armada is sighted in the English Channel. 1701 Representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy sign the Nanfan Treaty, ceding a large territory north of the Ohio River to England.

1702 Great Northern War: A numerically superior Polish-Saxon army of Augustus II the Strong, operating from an advantageous defensive position, is defeated by a Swedish army half its size under the command of King Charles XII in the Battle of Klissow.

1832 The British Medical Association is founded as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association by Sir Charles Hastings at a meeting in the Board Room of the Worcester Infirmary.

1843 Brunel's steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.

1848 Women's rights: a two-day Women's Rights Convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York; there the "Bloomers" are introduced.

1863 American Civil War: Morgan's Raid At Buffington Island in Ohio, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan's raid into the north is mostly thwarted when a large group of his men are captured while trying to escape across the Ohio River.

1864 Taiping Rebellion: Third Battle of Nanking The Qing Dynasty finally defeats the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

1870 Franco-Prussian War: France declares war on Prussia.

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1900 The first line of the Paris Mtro opens for operation. 1908 Dutch football club Feyenoord was founded 1916 World War I: Battle of Fromelles British and Australian troops attack German trenches in a prelude to the Battle of the Somme.

1919 Following Peace Day celebrations marking the end of World War I, ex-servicemen riot and burn down Luton Town Hall.

1940 World War II: Battle of Cape Spada The Royal Navy and the Regia Marina clash; the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni sinks, with 121 casualties.

 

1940 World War II: Army order 112 forms the Intelligence Corps of the British Army. 1942 World War II: Battle of the Atlantic German Grand Admiral Karl Dnitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to the effective American convoy system.

1947 The Prime Minister of the shadow Burmese government, Bogyoke Aung San and 6 of his cabinet and 2 noncabinet members are assassinated by Galon U Saw.

 

1947 Korean politician Yuh Woon-Hyung is assassinated. 1961 Tunisia imposes a blockade on the French naval base at Bizerte; the French would capture the entire town four days later.

1963 Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.

1964 Vietnam War: at a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Khanh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam.

1972 Dhofar Rebellion: British SAS units help the Omani government against Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman rebels in the Battle of Mirbat.

  

1976 Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created. 1979 The Sandinista rebels overthrow the government of the Somoza family in Nicaragua. 1981 In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French Prime Minister Franois Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.

   

1983 The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published. 1985 The Val di Stava dam collapses killing 268 people in Val di Stava, Italy. 1989 United Airlines flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa killing 112 of the 296 passengers. 1992 Anti-Mafia Judge Paolo Borsellino is killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo, Italy together with five police officers.

1997 The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

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July 20

70 First Jewish-Roman War: Siege of Jerusalem Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. TheRoman army is drawn into street fights with the Zealots.

 

911 Rollo lays siege to Chartres. 1304 Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf.

1402 Ottoman-Timurid Wars: Battle of Ankara Timur, ruler of Timurid Empire, defeats forces of the Ottoman Empire sultan Bayezid I.

1738 Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vrendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.

1807 Nicphore Nipce is awarded a patent by Napoleon Bonaparte for the Pyrolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Sane in France.

 

1810 Citizens of Bogot, New Granada declare independence from Spain. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Peachtree Creek Near Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate forces led by General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully attackUnion troops under General William T. Sherman.

1866 Austro-Prussian War: Battle of Lissa The Austrian Navy , led by Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, defeats the Italian Navy near the island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea.

 

1871 British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada. 1885 The Football Association legalizes professionalism in football under pressure from the British Football Association.

 

1903 The Ford Motor Company ships its first car. 1917 World War I: The Corfu Declaration, which leads to the creation of the post-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is signed by the Yugoslav Committee and Kingdom of Serbia.

 

1922 The League of Nations awards mandates of Togoland to France and Tanganyika to the United Kingdom. 1932 In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans, part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, who attempt to march to the White House.

1934 Labor unrest in the U.S.: as police in Minneapolis fire upon striking truck drivers, during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, killing two and wounding sixty-seven.

1934 1934 West Coast waterfront strike: In Seattle, police fire tear gas on and club 2,000 striking longshoremen. The governor of Oregon calls out the National Guard to break a strike on the Portland docks.

1935 Switzerland: A Royal Dutch Airlines plane en route from Milan to Frankfurt crashes into a Swiss mountain, killing thirteen.

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1936 The Montreux Convention is signed in Switzerland, authorizing Turkey to fortify the Dardanelles and Bosphorus but guaranteeing free passage to ships of all nations in peacetime.

1938 The United States Department of Justice files suit in New York City against the motion picture industry charging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regards to the studio system. The case would eventually result in a break-up of the industry in 1948.

  

1940 Denmark leaves the League of Nations. 1940 California opens its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway. 1941 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin consolidates the Commissariats of Home Affairs and National Security to form the NKVD and names Lavrenti Beria its chief.

1944 World War II: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

 

1949 Israel and Syria sign a truce to end their nineteen-month war. 1950 Cold War: In Philadelphia, Harry Gold pleads guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs.

  

1951 King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem. 1954 Germany: Otto John, head of West Germany's secret service, defects to East Germany. 1960 Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.

1960 The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.

 

1961 French military forces break the Tunisian siege of Bizerte. 1964 Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack the capital of Dinh Tuong Province, Cai Be, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children).

 

1968 The first Special Olympics is held. 1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on another world almost 7 hours later.

1969 A cease fire is announced between Honduras and El Salvador, 6 days after the beginning of the "Football War".

1974 Turkish occupation of Cyprus: Forces from Turkey invade Cyprus after a coup d'etat, organised by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios.

  

1976 The American Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars. 1976 Hank Aaron hits his 755th home run, the final home run of his career. 1977 Johnstown, Pennsylvania is hit by a flash flood that kills eighty and causes $350 million in damage.

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1977 The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.

1980 The United Nations Security Council votes 14-0 that member states should not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

1982 Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs in Hyde Park and Regents Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, wounding forty-seven people, and leading to the deaths of seven horses.

   

1985 The government of Aruba passes legislation to secede from the Netherlands Antilles. 1989 Burma's ruling junta puts opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. 1992 Vclav Havel resigns as president of Czechoslovakia. 1999 Falun Gong is banned in the People's Republic of China, and a large scale crackdown of the practice is launched.

2000 In Zimbabwe, Parliament opens its new session and seats opposition members for the first time in a decade.

July 21
   
356 BC The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is destroyed by arson. 230 Pope Pontian succeeds Urban I as the eighteenth pope. 285 Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar and co-ruler. 365 A tsunami devastates the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami was caused by the Crete earthquake estimated to be 8.0 on the Richter Scale. 5,000 people perished in Alexandria, and 45,000 more died outside the city.

1403 Battle of Shrewsbury: King Henry IV of England defeats rebels to the north of the county town of Shropshire, England.

1545 The first landing of French troops on the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion of the Isle of Wight.

1568 Eighty Years' War: Battle of Jemmingen Fernando lvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva defeats Louis of Nassau.

 

1718 The Treaty of Passarowitz between the Ottoman Empire, Austria and the Republic of Venice is signed. 1774 Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774: Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of KuchukKainarji ending the war.

1831 Inauguration of Leopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians.

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1861 American Civil War: First Battle of Bull Run at Manassas Junction, Virginia, the first major battle of the war begins and ends in a victory for theConfederate army.

1865 In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first western showdown.

1873 At Adair, Iowa, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang pull off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West.

1877 After rioting by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers and the deaths of nine rail workers at the hands of the Maryland militia, workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stage a sympathy strike that is met with an assault by the state militia.

1904 Louis Rigolly, a Frenchman, becomes the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brille in Ostend, Belgium.

  

1914 The Crown council of Romania decides the country shall remain neutral in World War I 1918 U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts. 1919 The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express crashes into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, killing 12 people.

1925 Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1925 Sir Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to break the 150 mph (241 km/h) land barrier at Pendine Sands in Wales. He drove a Sunbeam at a two-way average speed of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).

1944 World War II: Battle of Guam American troops land on Guam starting the battle. It would end on August 10.

1944 World War II: Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators are executed in Berlin, Germany for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

   

1949 The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty. 1954 First Indochina War: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. 1954 Publication of the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. 1959 Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green becomes the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last team to integrate. He came in as a pinch runner for Vic Wertz and stayed in as shortstop in a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox.

1961 Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

1969 Space Race: Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission (July 20 in North America).

1970 After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.

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1972 Bloody Friday bombings by the Provisional IRA around Belfast, Northern Ireland 22 bombs are detonated, killing 9 and seriously injuring 130.

1973 In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.

1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland is assassinated by the Provisional IRA.

  

1977 The start of the four day long Libyan-Egyptian War. 1983 The world's lowest temperature is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at 89.2 C ( 128.6 F). 1995 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People's Liberation Army begins firing missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.

1997 The fully restored USS Constitution (aka Old Ironsides) celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

2001 At the conclusion of a fireworks display on Okura Beach in Akashi, Hy go, Japan, 11 people are killed and more than 120 are injured when a pedestrian footbridge connecting the beach to JR Asagiri railway station becomes overcrowded and people leaving the event fall down in a domino effect.

2005 Four terrorist bombings, occurring exactly two weeks after the similar July 7 bombings, target London's public transportation system. All four bombs fail to detonate and all four suspected suicide bombers are captured and later convicted and imprisoned for long terms.

2011 NASA's Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135.

July 22
 
838 Battle of Anzen: the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffers a heavy defeat by the Abbasids. 1099 First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1298 Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottishschiltrons outside the town of Falkirk.

1456 Ottoman Wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade John Hunyadi, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, defeats Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire

1484 Battle of Lochmaben Fair A 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas are defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany's brother James III of Scotland; Douglas is captured.

1499 Battle of Dornach The Swiss decisively defeat the Imperial army of Emperor Maximilian I.

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1587 Colony of Roanoke: a second group of English settlers arrives on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to reestablish the deserted colony.

 

1686 Albany, New York is formally chartered as a municipality by Governor Thomas Dongan. 1706 The Acts of Union 1707 are agreed upon by commissioners from the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, which, when passed by each countries' Parliaments, lead to the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1793 Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.

1796 Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.

1797 Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Battle between Spanish and British naval forces during the French Revolutionary Wars. During the Battle, Rear-Admiral Nelson is wounded in the arm and the arm had to be partially amputated.

1805 Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition Battle of Cape Finisterre an inconclusive naval action is fought between a combined French and Spanish fleet under AdmiralPierre-Charles Villeneuve of Spain and a British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder.

1812 Napoleonic Wars: Peninsular War Battle of Salamanca British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeat French troops near Salamanca, Spain.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Atlanta outside Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.

1894 The first ever motorized racing event is held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen. The race is won by Comte Jules-Albert de Dion.

1916 In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.

1933 Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles (25,099 km) in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1934 Outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

1937 New Deal: the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.

  

1942 The United States government begins compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands. 1942 Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins. 1943 World War II: Allied forces capture the Italian city of Palermo.

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1944 The Polish Committee of National Liberation publishes its manifesto, starting the period of Communist rule in Poland

1946 King David Hotel bombing: a Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, site of the civil administration and military headquarters forMandate Palestine, resulting in 91 deaths.

 

1951 Dezik (

) and Tsygan (

, "Gypsy") are the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight.

1962 Mariner program: Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.

1976 Japan completes its last reparation to the Philippines for war crimes committed during the imperial Japan's conquest of the country in the Second World War

   

1977 Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power. 1983 Martial law in Poland is officially revoked. 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested in Milwaukee after police discover human remains in his apartment. 1992 Near Medelln, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.

1993 Great Flood of 1993: levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois rupture, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

 

1997 The second Blue Water Bridge opens between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario. 2002 Israel kills Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas's military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.

2005 Jean Charles de Menezes is killed by police as the hunt begins for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.

2011 Oslo Norwegian government building and a political youth convention is attacked by terrorists and at least 15 people were injured and 17 killed.

July 23
   
1632 Three hundred colonists bound for New France depart from Dieppe, France. 1793 Prussia re-conquers Mainz from France. 1829 In the United States, William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter. 1833 Cornerstones are laid for the construction of the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio.

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1840 The Province of Canada is created by the Act of Union. 1862 American Civil War: Henry W. Halleck takes command of the Union Army. 1874 Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos is appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa. 1881 The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, the world's oldest international sport federation, is founded.

  

1881 The Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina is signed in Buenos Aires. 1903 The Ford Motor Company sells its first car. 1914 Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Serbia will reject those demands and Austria will declare war on July 28.

  

1926 Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film. 1929 The Fascist government in Italy bans the use of foreign words. 1936 In Catalonia, Spain, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia is founded through the merger of Socialist and Communist parties.

1940 The United States' Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles issues a declaration on the U.S. nonrecognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

    

1942 The Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp is opened. 1942 World War II: Operation Edelweiss begins. 1945 The post-war legal processes against Philippe Ptain begin. 1952 The European Coal and Steel community is established. 1952 General Muhammad Naguib leads the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real power behind the coup) in overthrowing King Farouk of Egypt.

  

1956 The Loi Cadre is passed by the French Republic in order to order French overseas territory affairs. 1961 The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua. 1962 Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

 

1962 The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed. 1967 12th Street Riot: in Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city. It will leave 43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.

1968 Glenville Shootout: in Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins and lasts for five days.

1968 The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a Boeing 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The aircraft was en route from Rome, Italy, to Lod, Israel.

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1970 Qaboos ibn Said becomes Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Said ibn Taimur initiating massive reforms ;modernisation programs and end to a decade long civil war.

  

1972 The United States launch Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite. 1982 The International Whaling Commission decides to end commercial whaling by 1985-86. 1983 The Sri Lankan Civil War begins with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Terrorist group. In the subsequent riots of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils are slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils flee to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many find refuge in Europe and Canada.

 

1983 Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel and makes a deadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba. 1984 Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.

  

1986 In London, Prince Andrew, Duke of York marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey. 1988 General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigns after pro-democracy protests. 1992 A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that it is necessary to limit rights of homosexual people and non-married couples.

   

1992 Abkhazia declares independence from Georgia. 1995 Comet Hale-Bopp is discovered; it will become visible to the naked eye nearly a year later. 1997 Digital Equipment Company files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel. 1999 Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan is crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father.

 

1999 ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan. 2005 Three bombs explode in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

July 24
    
1132 Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily. 1148 Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade. 1411 Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place. 1487 Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against ban on foreign beer. 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gasp Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.

 

1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI. 1701 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.

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1715 A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain. Seven days later, 9 of them sink in a storm off the coast ofFlorida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.

1814 War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advances toward the Niagara River to halt Jacob Brown's American invaders.

 

1823 Slavery is abolished in Chile. 1847 After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City. Celebrations of this event include the Pioneer Day Utah state holiday and the Days of '47 Parade.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1866 Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.

  

1901 O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank. 1911 Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas". 1915 The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

1923 The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.

  

1924 Archeologist Themistoklis Sofoulis becomes Prime Minister of Greece. 1927 The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres. 1929 The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers).

  

1931 A fire at a home for the elderly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people. 1935 The world's first children's railway opens in Tbilisi, USSR. 1935 The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109F (44C) in Chicago and 104F (40C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

  

1937 Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys". 1938 First ascent of the Eiger north face. 1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

 

1950 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket. 1959 At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "Kitchen Debate".

421

1966 Michael Pelkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan along with Brian Schubert. Both came out with broken bones. BASE jumping has now been banned from El Cap.

1967 During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Qubec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

  

1969 Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean. 1972 Bugojno group is caught by Yugoslav security forces. 1974 Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.

  

1974 After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus the Greek military junta collapses and democracy is restored. 1977 End of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War. 1980 The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.

 

1982 Heavy rain causes a mudslide that destroys a bridge at Nagasaki, Japan, killing 299. 1983 George Brett batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".

 

1990 Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwait-Iraq border. 1998 Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.

2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

2001 Bandaranaike Airport attack is carried out by 14 Tamil Tiger commandos, all died in this attack. They destroyed 11 Aircraft (mostly military) and damaged 15, there are no civilian casualties. This incident slowed down Sri Lankan economy.

2002 Democrat James Traficant is expelled from the United States House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.

 

2005 Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France. 2010 Over 80,000 people from around the world record their daily lives for submission to the YouTube documentary Life In A Day.

July 25

422

  

285 Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar, co-ruler. 306 Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops. 315 The Arch of Constantine is completed near the Colosseum at Rome to commemorate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.

 

864 The Edict of Pistres of Charles the Bald orders defensive measures against the Vikings. 1139 Battle of Ourique: The independence of Portugal from the Kingdom of Len declared after the Almoravids, led by Ali ibn Yusuf, are defeated by Prince Afonso Henriques.

1261 The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.

 

1536 Sebastin de Belalczar on his search of El Dorado founds the city of Santiago de Cali. 1538 The city of Guayaquil is founded by the Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana and given the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil.

 

1547 Henry II of France is crowned. 1567 Don Diego de Losada founds the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas, modern-day Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela.

 

1593 Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. 1603 James VI of Scotland is crowned as king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.

1693 Ignacio de Maya founds the Real Santiago de las Sabinas, now known as Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Len, Mxico.

 

1722 Dummer's War begins along the Maine-Massachusetts border. 1755 British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council order the deportation of the Acadians. Thousands of Acadians are sent to the British Colonies in America, France and England. Some later move to Louisiana, while others resettle in New Brunswick.

1758 Seven Years' War: the island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken.

1759 French and Indian War: in Western New York, British forces capture Fort Niagara from the French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouill.

 

1788 Wolfgang Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550). 1792 The Brunswick Manifesto is issued to the population of Paris promising vengeance if the French Royal Family is harmed.

 

1795 The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is laid. 1797 Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).

423

 

1799 At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha. 1814 War of 1812: Battle of Lundy's Lane reinforcements arrive near Niagara Falls for General Riall's British and Canadian forces and a bloody, all-night battle with Jacob Brown'sAmericans commences at 18.00; the Americans retreat to Fort Erie.

 

1824 Costa Rica annexes Guanacaste from Nicaragua. 1837 The first commercial use of an electric telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Townin London.

 

1853 Joaquin Murietta, the famous Californio bandit known as "Robin Hood of El Dorado", is killed. 1861 American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.

1866 The United States Congress passes legislation authorizing the five-star rank of General of the Army. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to be promoted to this rank.

 

1868 Wyoming becomes a United States territory. 1869 The Japanese daimy begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869).

  

1893 The Corinth Canal in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece is used for the first time. 1894 The First Sino-Japanese War begins when the Japanese fire upon a Chinese warship. 1898 The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with U.S. troops led by General Nelson Miles landing at harbor of Gunica, Puerto Rico (The land invasion, proper, began that day: Sea-based bombardment and shelling of the capital city of San Juan had been occurring since May 1898).

 

1907 Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan. 1908 Ajinomoto is founded. Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in Konbu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG), and patents a process for manufacturing it.

1909 Louis Blriot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from (Calais to Dover) in 37 minutes.

1915 RFC Captain Lanoe Hawker becomes the first British military aviator to earn the Victoria Cross, for defeating three German two-seat observation aircraft in one day, over theWestern Front.

1917 Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

    

1920 Telecommunications: the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast takes place. 1920 France captures Damascus. 1925 Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established. 1934 The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt. 1940 General Guisan orders the Swiss Army to resist German invasion and makes surrender illegal.

424

 

1942 Norwegian Manifesto calls for nonviolent resistance to the Nazis. 1943 World War II: Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.

1944 World War II: Operation Spring one of the bloodiest days for the First Canadian Army during the war: 1,500 casualties, including 500 killed.

 

1946 Operation Crossroads: an atomic bomb is detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll. 1946 At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.

1952 The U.S. non-incorporated colonial territory of Puerto Rico adopts a "constitution" of local-limited powers, approved by the United States Congress in contravention of then-current international law.

1956 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51.

    

1957 The Republic of Tunisia is proclaimed. 1958 The African Regroupment Party (PRA) holds its first congress in Cotonou. 1959 SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours. 1961 In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO. 1965 Bob Dylan goes electric as he plugs in at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.

1969 Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This is the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.

    

1973 Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched. 1978 The Cerro Maravilla incident occurs. 1978 Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube baby" is born. 1979 Another section of the Sinai Peninsula is peacefully returned by Israel to Egypt. 1983 Black July: 37 Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by the fellow Sinhalese prisoners.

 

1984 Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk. 1993 Israel launches a massive attack against terrorist forces in Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call Seven-Day War.

 

1993 The Saint James Church massacre occurs in Kenilworth, Cape Town, South Africa. 1994 Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration, which formally ends the state of war that had existed between the nations since 1948.

425

1995 A gas bottle explodes in Saint Michel station of line B of the RER (Paris regional train network). Eight are killed and 80 wounded.

 

1996 In a military coup in Burundi, Pierre Buyoya deposes Sylvestre Ntibantunganya. 2000 Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 4 on the ground.

2007 Pratibha Patil is sworn in as India's first woman president.

July 26
    
657 First Fitna: the Battle of Siffin see the troops led by Ali ibn Abi Talib and those led by Muawiyah I clashing. 811 Battle of Pliska: Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I is killed and his heir Stauracius is seriously wounded. 920 Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Lon against the Muslims at Pamplona. 1309 Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V. 1469 Wars of the Roses: the Battle of Edgecote Moor pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of Edward IV of Englandtakes place.

1581 Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): the northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.

 

1745 The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. 1758 French and Indian War: the Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

1775 The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress.

   

1788 New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States. 1803 The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world's first public railway, opens in south London. 1822 Jos de San Martn arrives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to meet with Simn Bolvar. 1822 First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.

 

1847 Liberia declares independence. 1861 American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.

1863 American Civil War: Morgan's Raid ends At Salineville, Ohio, Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his volunteers are captured by Union forces.

426

1878 In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box will be found later with a taunting poem inside.

     

1882 Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal at Bayreuth. 1882 The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa. 1887 Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement. 1890 In Buenos Aires the Revolucin del Parque takes place, forcing President Jurez Celman's resignation. 1891 France annexes Tahiti. 1908 United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

  

1914 Serbia and Bulgaria interrupt diplomatic relationship. 1936 The Axis Powers decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War. 1936 King Edward VIII, in one of his few official duties before he abdicates the throne, officially unveils the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

 

1937 End of the Battle of Brunete in the Spanish Civil War. 1941 World War II: in response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.

1944 World War II: the Soviet army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, liberating it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

 

1944 The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain. 1945 The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power.

 

1945 The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany. 1945 The US Navy cruiser USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with parts of the warhead for the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

 

1946 Aloha Airlines begins service from Honolulu International Airport 1947 Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.

1948 U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military of the United States.

  

1951 Walt Disney's 13th animated film, Alice in Wonderland, premieres in London, United Kingdom. 1952 King Farouk of Egypt abdicates in favor of his son Fuad. 1953 Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution.

427

1953 Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle orders an anti-polygamy law enforcement crackdown on residents of Short Creek, Arizona, which becomes known as the Short Creek Raid.

1956 Following the World Bank's refusal to fund building the Aswan High Dam, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

  

1957 Carlos Castillo Armas, dictator of Guatemala, is assassinated. 1958 Explorer program: Explorer 4 is launched. 1963 Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.

   

1963 An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now in the Republic of Macedonia) leaves 1,100 dead. 1963 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development votes to admit Japan. 1965 Full independence is granted to the Maldives. 1968 Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Tr ng nh Dz is sentenced to five years hard

labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.

 

1971 Apollo Program: launch of Apollo 15 on the first Apollo "J-Mission", and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle. 1974 Greek Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis forms the country's first civil government after seven years of military rule.

 

1975 Formation of a military triumvirate in Portugal. 1977 The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.

1989 A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

 

1990 The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush. 2005 Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.

2005 Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days.

2008 56 people are killed and over 200 people are injured in 21 bomb blasts in Ahmedabad bombing in India.

July 27

1054 Siward, Earl of Northumbria invades Scotland to support Malcolm Canmore against Macbeth of Scotland, who usurped the Scottish throne from Malcolm's father, King Duncan. Macbeth is defeated at Dunsinane.

 

1214 Battle of Bouvines: in France, Philip II of France defeats John of England. 1302 Battle of Bapheus: decisive Ottoman victory over the Byzantines opening up Bithynia for Turkish conquest.

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1549 The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier's ship reaches Japan. 1663 The English Parliament passes the second Navigation Act requiring that all goods bound for the American colonies have to be sent in English ships from English ports.

    

1689 Glorious Revolution: the Battle of Killiecrankie ends. 1694 A Royal Charter is granted to the Bank of England. 1720 The Battle of Grengam marks the second important victory of the Russian Navy. 1778 American Revolution: First Battle of Ushant British and French fleets fight to a standoff. 1789 The first U.S. federal government agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs, is established (it will be later renamed Department of State).

1794 French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 "enemies of the Revolution".

1862 Sailing from San Francisco to Panama City, the SS Golden Gate catches fire and sinks off Manzanillo, Mexico, killing 231.

1866 The Atlantic Cable is successfully completed, allowing transatlantic telegraph communication for the first time.

1880 Second Anglo-Afghan War: Battle of Maiwand Afghan forces led by Ayub Khan defeat the British Army in battle near Maiwand, Afghanistan.

  

1914 Felix Manalo registers the Iglesia ni Cristo with the Philippine government. 1917 The Allies reach the Yser Canal at the Battle of Passchendaele. 1919 The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.

1921 Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announce the discovery of the hormone insulin.

     

1928 Tich Freeman becomes the only bowler ever to take 200 first-class wickets before the end of July. 1940 The animated short A Wild Hare is released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny. 1941 Japanese troops occupy French Indo-China. 1942 World War II: Allied forces successfully halt the final Axis advance into Egypt. 1949 Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner. 1953 The Korean War ends when the United States, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.

 

1955 The Allied occupation of Austria stemming from World War II, ends. 1964 Vietnam War: 5,000 more American military advisers are sent to South Vietnam bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.

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1974 Watergate Scandal: the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) againstPresident Richard Nixon.

1976 Former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka is arrested on suspicion of violating foreign exchange and foreign trade laws in connection with the Lockheed bribery scandals.

1981 British television: on Coronation Street, Ken Barlow marries Deirdre Langton, which proves to be a national event scoring massive viewer numbers for the show.

1981 6 year old Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh is kidnapped in Hollywood, Florida and is found murdered two weeks later.

1983 Black July: 18 Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by Sinhalese prisoners, the second such massacre in two days.

 

1987 RMS Titanic, Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of wreckage of the RMS Titanic. 1990 The Supreme Soviet of the Belarusian Soviet Republic declares independence of Belarus from the Soviet Union. Until 1996 the day is celebrated as the Independence Day of Belarus; after a referendum held that year the celebration of independence is moved to June 3.

1990 The Jamaat al Muslimeen attempt a coup d'tat in Trinidad and Tobago, occupying the Trinidad and the studios of Trinidad and Tobago Television, holding Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson and most of his Cabinet as well as the staff at the television station hostage for 6 days.

 

1995 The Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.. 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing: in Atlanta, United States, a pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics. One woman (Alice Hawthorne) is killed, and a cameraman suffers a heart attack fleeing the scene. 111 are injured.

 

1997 About 50 people are killed in the Si Zerrouk massacre in Algeria. 2002 Ukraine airshow disaster: a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine killing 85 and injuring more than 100 others, the largest air show disaster in history.

2005 STS-114: NASA grounds the Space Shuttle, pending an investigation of the continuing problem with the shedding of foam insulation from the external fuel tank. During ascent, the external tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery sheds a piece of foam slightly smaller than the piece that caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; this foam does not strike thespacecraft.

2006 The Federal Republic of Germany is deemed guilty in the loss of Bashkirian 2937 and DHL Flight 611, because it is illegal to outsource flight surveillance.

2007 Phoenix News Helicopter Collision: news helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase;

July 28

430

 

1364 Troops of the Republic of Pisa and of the Republic of Florence clash in the Battle of Cascina. 1540 Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

  

1609 Bermuda is first settled by survivors of the English ship Sea Venture en route to Virginia. 1794 Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution. 1809 Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera Sir Arthur Wellesley's British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeats a French force led by Joseph Bonaparte.

 

1821 Jos de San Martn declares the independence of Peru from Spain. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.

 

1865 Welsh settlers arrive at Chubut in Argentina. 1868 The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is certified, establishing AfricanAmerican citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.

 

1896 The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated. 1914 World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following theassassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1932 U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.

  

1933 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Spain are established. 1935 First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. 1942 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be immediately executed.

1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.

1945 A U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.

   

1948 The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport". 1955 The Union Mundial pro Interlingua is founded at the first Interlingua congress in Tours, France. 1957 Heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Ky sh , Japan, kill 992. 1965 Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1973 Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: 600,000 people attend a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.

431

1976 The Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattens Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851.

1991 Pitcher Dennis Martinez of the Montreal Expos throws the 15th perfect game in Major League Baseball history, a 2-0 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadiumin Los Angeles.

 

1993 Andorra joins the United Nations. 1996 The remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains will be known as the Kennewick Man.

 

2001 Australian Ian Thorpe becomes the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships. 2002 Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground.

2005 The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

2005 Tornadoes touch down in a residential areas in south Birmingham and Coventry England, causing 4,000,000 worth of damages and injuring 39 people.

2008 The historic Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare burns down for the second time in 80 years.

July 29

238 The Praetorian Guard stormed the palace and capture Pupienus and Balbinus. They are dragged through the streets of Rome and executed. On the same day Gordian III, age 13, is proclaimed emperor.

 

615 Pakal ascends the throne of Palenque at age 12. 904 Sack of Thessalonica: Saracen raiders under Leo of Tripoli sack Thessalonica, the Byzantine Empire's second-largest city, after a short siege, and plunder it for a week.

1014 Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars: Battle of Kleidion Byzantine emperor Basil II inflicts a decisive defeat on the Bulgarian army, and his subsequent treatment of 15,000 prisoners reportedly causes Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria to die of a heart attack several months later, on October 6.

1030 Ladejarl-Fairhair succession wars: Battle of Stiklestad King Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian throne from the Danes.

1565 The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

1567 James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling. 1588 Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat theSpanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.

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1693 War of the Grand Alliance: Battle of Landen France wins a Pyrrhic victory over Allied forces in the Netherlands.

   

1793 John Graves Simcoe decides to build a fort and settlement at Toronto, having sailed into the bay there. 1830 Abdication of Charles X of France. 1836 Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 1847 Cumberland School of Law is founded in Lebanon, Tennessee, United States, one of only 15 law schools to exist in the United States at the end of 1847.

1848 Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt in Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police.

  

1851 Annibale de Gasparis discovers asteroid 15 Eunomia. 1858 United States and Japan sign the Harris Treaty. 1864 American Civil War: Confederate spy Belle Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C..

  

1899 The First Hague Convention is signed. 1900 In Italy, King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci. 1907 Sir Robert Baden Powell sets up the Brownsea Island Scout camp in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England. The camp runs from August 1 to August 9, 1907, and is regarded as the foundation of the Scouting movement.

  

1920 Construction of the Link River Dam begins as part of the Klamath Reclamation Project. 1921 Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. 1932 Great Depression: in Washington, D.C., troops disperse the last of the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans.

  

1937 T ngzh u Incident: in T ngzh u (China), the East Hopei Army attacks Japanese troops and civilians. 1945 The BBC Light Programme radio station is launched for mainstream light entertainment and music. 1948 Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad after a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, open in London.

 

1957 The International Atomic Energy Agency is established. 1958 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

 

1959 First United States Congress elections in Hawaii as a state of the Union. 1965 Vietnam War: the first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.

1967 Vietnam War: off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.

433

1967 During the fourth day of celebrating its 400th anniversary, the city of Caracas, Venezuela is shaken by an earthquake, leaving approximately 500 dead.

1976 In New York City, David Berkowitz (aka the "Son of Sam") kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks.

1981 A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

1987 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France Franois Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (Eurotunnel).

1987 Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi and President of Sri Lanka J. R. Jayawardene sign the Indo-Lankan Pact on ethnic issues.

 

1988 The film Cry Freedom is seized by South African authorities. 1993 The Israeli Supreme Court acquits alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges and he is set free.

1996 The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act is struck down by a U.S. federal court as too broad .

2005 Astronomers announce their discovery of the dwarf planet Eris.

July 30
  
762 Baghdad is founded by caliph Al-Mansur. 1419 First Defenestration of Prague: a crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council. 1502 Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.

1608 At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.

1619 In Jamestown, Virginia, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.

 

1629 An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people. 1656 Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.

  

1729 Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland. 1733 The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts. 1756 In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly-built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.

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1811 Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua, Mexico.

  

1825 Malden Island is discovered by captain George Anson Byron. 1859 First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps. 1863 Indian Wars: Chief Pocatello of the Shoshone tribe signs the Treaty of Box Elder, agreeing to stop the harassment of emigrant trails in southernIdaho and northern Utah.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of the Crater Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.

1865 The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time.

1866 New Orleans's Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.

   

1871 The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people. 1916 Black Tom Island explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey. 1930 In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first Football World Cup. 1932 Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

 

1945 World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. 1956 A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.

1965 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

1969 Vietnam War: US President Richard M. Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguy n V n Thi u and U.S. military commanders.

1971 Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

 

1971 An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Japan killing 162. 1974 Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the United States Supreme Court.

1974 Six Royal Canadian Army Cadets are killed and fifty-four are injured in an accidental grenade blast at CFB Valcartier Cadet Camp.

1975 Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again, and will be declared legally dead on this date in 1982.

435

1975 The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland (see Miami Showband killings).

    

1978 The 730 (transport), Okinawa changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side. 1980 Vanuatu gains independence. 1980 Israel's Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law 2003 In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line. 2006 The world's longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.

2006 Lebanon War: At least 28 civilians, including 16 children are killed by the Israeli Air Force in what Lebanese call the Second Qana massacre and what Israel considers to be an attempt to stop rockets' being fired, from Lebanon, at Israeli civilian targets.

July 31

30 BC Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.

    

781 The oldest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781). 904 Thessalonica falls to the Arabs, who destroy the city. 1009 Pope Sergius IV becomes the 142nd pope, succeeding Pope John XVIII. 1201 Attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat. 1423 Hundred Years' War: Battle of Cravant the French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.

  

1451 Jacques C ur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France. 1492 The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect. 1498 On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

 

1588 The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England. 1655 Russo-Polish War (1654-1667): the Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.

  

1658 Aurangzeb is proclaimed Moghul emperor of India. 1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War: Treaty of Breda ends the conflict. 1703 Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.

436

 

1741 Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia. 1777 The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Marquis de Lafayette "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."

   

1790 First U.S. patent is issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process. 1856 Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city. 1865 The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia. 1895 The Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco) is founded by Basque nationalist leader Sabino Arana.

     

1913 The Balkan States signs an armistice at Bucharest. 1919 German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution, which comes into force on August 14. 1930 The radio mystery program The Shadow is aired for the first time. 1931 New York City experimental television station W2XAO (now known as WCBS) begins broadcasts. 1932 The NSDAP wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections. 1936 The International Olympic Committee announces that the 1940 Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo. However, the games are given back to the IOC after the Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out, and are eventually cancelled altogether because of World War II.

1938 Bulgaria signs a non-aggression pact with Greece and other states of Balkan Antanti (Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia).

 

1938 Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius in Persepolis. 1940 A doodlebug train in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio collides with a multi-car freight train heading in the opposite direction, killing 43 people.

1941 Holocaust: under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Gring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

  

1945 Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria. 1945 John K. Giles attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison. 1948 At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.

   

1951 Japan Airlines is established. 1954 First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio. 1959 The Basque separatist organisation ETA is founded. 1961 At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in major league baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning because of rain.

437

1964 Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.

   

1970 Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy. 1971 Apollo program: Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover. 1972 Northeast Airlines flies its last flight before being integrated into Delta Air Lines the next day. 1972 Operation Motorman: British troops move into the no-go areas of Belfast and Derry, Northern Ireland. End of Free Derry.

1972 Three car bombs are detonated in Claudy, Northern Ireland, killing nine in what is believed to be a Provisional Irish Republican Army attack.

   

1973 A Delta Air Lines jetliner crashes while landing in fog at Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts killing 89. 1976 Viking program: Viking 1 NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo. 1981 A 42 day-long strike of Major League Baseball ends. 1987 A rare, class F4 tornado rips through Edmonton, Alberta, killing 27 people and causing $330 million in damage.

1988 32 people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Malaysia.

1991 The United States and Soviet Union both sign the Start I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.

1991 The Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai, killing 7 officers and severely wounding one other.

1992 A Thai Airways Flight 311 crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.

 

1992 Georgia joins the United Nations. 1999 Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

  

2002 Hebrew University of Jerusalem is attacked when a bomb explodes in a cafeteria, killing 9. 2006 Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Ral Castro. 2007 Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

438

AUGUST
AUGUST 1

30 BC Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.

69 Batavian rebellion: The Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of Gaius Julius Civilis.

   

527 Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire. 607 Ono no Imoko is dispatched as envoy to the Sui court in China (Traditional Japanese date: July 3, 607). 902 Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid army. 1203 Isaac II Angelus, restored Eastern Roman Emperor, declares his son Alexius IV Angelus co-emperor after pressure from the forces of the Fourth Crusade.

   

1291 The Swiss Confederation is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter. 1492 Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile drive the Jews out of Spain. 1498 Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela. 1664 The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvr.

1759 Seven Years' War: The Battle of Minden, an allied Anglo-German army victory over the French. In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.

1798 French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navyfleet in an unusual night action.

1800 The Act of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1801 First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.

  

1820 London's Regent's Canal opens. 1828 Bolton and Leigh Railway opens to freight traffic. 1831 A new London Bridge opens.

439

        

1834 Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force. 1838 Non-labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated. 1840 Labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated. 1842 Lombard Street Riot erupts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. 1855 First ascent of Monte Rosa, the second highest summit in the Alps. 1876 Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state. 1894 The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea. 1907 Start of First Scout camp on Brownsea Island. 1914 Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilises because of World War I

1927 The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.

1937 Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.

         

1944 Anne Frank makes the last entry in her diary. 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland. 1948 The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded. 1957 The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). 1960 Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France. 1960 Communist Party of Independence and Work is banned in Senegal. 1960 Islamabad declared as the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan. 1964 The Belgian Congo is renamed the Republic of the Congo. 1966 Charles Whitman kills 16 people at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police. 1966 Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official People's Republic of China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

      

1967 Israel annexes East Jerusalem. 1968 The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei. 1975 CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. 1977 Former Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers crashes the news helicopter he is flying in Los Angeles 1980 Buttevant Rail Disaster kills 18 and injures dozens of train passengers in Ireland. 1980 Vigds Finnbogadttir becomes the first democratically elected female head of state 1981 MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles.

440

1984 Commercial peat-cutters discovers a the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, North West England.

  

1993 The Great Flood of 1993 comes to a peak. 1995 The first Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 1996 Michael Johnson breaks the 200m world record by 0.30 seconds with a time of 19.32 seconds at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

  

2001 An agreement is reached on the position of the minority Albanian language in the Republic of Macedonia. 2001 Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia join the European Environment Agency. 2001 Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has a Ten Commandments monument installed in the judiciary building, leading to a lawsuit to have it removed and his own removal from office.

 

2004 A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asuncin, Paraguay. 2007 The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour.

2009 A shooting attack at the Gay and Lesbian Association building in Tel-Aviv, Israel, results in the deaths of two people.

AUGUST 2

338 BC A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonianhegemony in Greece and the Aegean.

216 BC Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under command ofconsuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro.

 

1377 Russian troops are defeated in the Battle on Pyana River because of drunkenness. 1610 Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.

   

1776 The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place. 1790 The first US Census is conducted. 1798 French Revolutionary Wars: the Battle of the Nile concludes in a British victory. 1869 Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shin k sh ) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).

 

1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London. 1903 Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization against OttomanTurkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.

441

     

1916 World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto. 1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I. 1922 A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China killing more than 50,000 people. 1932 The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson. 1934 Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Fhrer of Germany. 1937 The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal.

1939 Albert Einstein and Le Szilrd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.

 

1943 Rebellion in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka. 1943 World War II: the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.

1944 ASNOM: birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, celebrated as Day of the Republic in the Republic of Macedonia.

1945 World War II: the Potsdam Conference, at which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, is concluded.

1964 Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin incident North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fire on the U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy.

   

1968 An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261. 1973 A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man. 1980 A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200. 1985 Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.

1989 Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restoring democracy for the first time since 1972.

  

1989 A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians. 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War. 2005 Air France Flight 358, landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and ran off the runway causing the plane to burst into flames. There are 12 serious injuries and no fatalities.

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AUGUST 3
 
8 Roman Empire general Tiberius defeats Dalmatians on the river Bathinus. 435 Deposed Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, is exiled by Roman Emperor Theodosius II to amonastery in Egypt.

881 Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeats the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied.

   

1492 Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain. 1492 The Jews of Spain are expelled by the Catholic Monarchs. 1527 The first known letter from North America is sent by John Rut while at St. John's, Newfoundland. 1645 Thirty Years' War: the Second Battle of Nrdlingen sees French forces defeating those of the Holy Roman Empire.

  

1678 Robert LaSalle builds the Le Griffon, the first known ship built on the Great Lakes. 1783 Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing 35,000 people. 1811 First ascent of Jungfrau, third highest summit in the Bernese Alps by brothers Johann Rudolf and Hieronymus Meyer.

     

1852 First Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event. Harvard won. 1860 The Second Maori War begins in New Zealand. 1900 The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company is founded. 1913 A major labour dispute, known as the Wheatland Hop Riot, starts in Wheatland, California. 1914 World War I: Germany declares war against France. 1916 World War I: Battle of Romani Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai Peninsula.

1923 Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th President of the United States in the early morning following the death of Warren G. Harding the previous day.

1934 Adolf Hitler becomes the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of President and Chancellor into Fhrer.

     

1936 Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics. 1940 World War II: Italian forces begin the invasion of British Somaliland. 1948 Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. 1949 The National Basketball Association is founded in the United States. 1958 The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travels beneath the Arctic ice cap. 1960 Niger gains independence from France.

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1972 The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1975 A privately chartered Boeing 707 crashes into the mountainside near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188. 1977 The United States Senate begins its hearing about Project MKULTRA. 1981 Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front-Suxxali Reew Mi.

1997 Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria; a total of 116 villagers killed, 40 in Oued El-Had and 76 in Mezouara.

  

2001 The Real IRA detonates a car bomb in Ealing, London, UK injuring seven people. 2004 The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks. 2005 President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya of Mauritania is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia.

AUGUST 4
 
70 The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. 367 Gratian, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, is named co-Augustus by his father and associated to the throne aged eight.

1265 Second Barons' War: Battle of Evesham the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.

 

1532 the Duchy of Brittany is annexed to the Kingdom of France. 1578 Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir the Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle,Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.

 

1693 Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of Champagne. 1704 War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied withArchduke Charles.

1789 In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.

1790 A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).

   

1791 The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman-Habsburg wars. 1821 Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper. 1824 The Battle of Kos is fought between Turk and Greek forces. 1854 The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.

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1863 Matica slovensk, Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation, is established in Martin.

1873 Indian Wars: whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Sioux near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.

   

1892 The parents of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. 1902 The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens. 1906 Central Railway Station, Sydney opens. 1914 World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.

  

1916 World War I: Liberia declares war on Germany. 1924 Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union are established. 1936 Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Metaxas suspends parliament and the Constitution and establishes the 4th of August Regime.

1944 The Holocaust: a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.

1946 An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. 100 are killed and 20,000 are left homeless.

 

1947 The Supreme Court of Japan is established. 1954 The Government of Pakistan approves Qaumi Tarana, written by Hafeez Jullundhry and composed by Ahmed Ghulamali Chagla, as the national anthem.

 

1958 The Billboard Hot 100 is founded. 1964 American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

1965 The Constitution of Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand.

1969 Vietnam War: at the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.

1974 A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.

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1975 The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish charg daffaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.

  

1977 US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy. 1984 The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso. 1987 The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

  

1989 Licence to Kill goes on general cinema release in the United Kingdom. 1991 The Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa. 1993 A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

 

1995 Operation Storm begins in Croatia. 2002 Soham murders: 10 year old school girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells go missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.

 

2005 Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michalle Jean will be Canada's 27th Governor General. 2006 A massacre, is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).

 

2007 NASA's Phoenix spaceship is launched. 2007 Airport police officer Mara del Lujn Telpuk discovers a suitcase containing the undeclared sum of US$800,000 as it goes through an x-ray machine in Aeroparque Jorge Newbery in Buenos Aires, sparking an international scandal involving Venezuela and Argentina known as "Maletinazo".

2010 California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state's voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

AUGUST 5
 
642 Battle of Maserfield Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald of Northumbria. 910 The last major Danish army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward the Elder and Earl Aethelred of Mercia.

 

1100 Henry I is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey. 1305 William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed.

1388 The Battle of Otterburn, a border skirmish between the Scottish and the English in Northern England, is fought near Otterburn.

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1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert establishes the first English colony in North America, at what is now St John's, Newfoundland.

1600 The Gowrie Conspiracy against King James VI of Scotland (later to become King James I of England) takes place.

   

1620 The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America. 1689 1,500 Iroquois attack the village of Lachine in New France. 1716 The Battle of Petrovaradin takes place. 1735 Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he had published was true.

1763 Pontiac's War: Battle of Bushy Run British forces led by Henry Bouquet defeat Chief Pontiac's Indians at Bushy Run.

  

1772 The First Partition of Poland begins. 1781 The Battle of Dogger Bank takes place. 1858 Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It will operate for less than a month.

 

1860 Charles XV of Sweden of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway in Trondheim. 1861 American Civil War: in order to help pay for the war effort, the United States government levies the first income tax as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).

 

1861 The United States Army abolishes flogging. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Baton Rouge along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Confederate troops drive Union forces back into the city.

1864 American Civil War: the Battle of Mobile Bay begins at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports.

    

1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Battle of Spicheren is fought, resulting in a Prussian victory. 1874 Japan launches its postal savings system, modeled after a similar system in the United Kingdom. 1882 The Standard Oil of New Jersey is established. 1884 The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor. 1888 Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip, commemorated as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route since 2008.

1901 Peter O'Connor sets the first IAAF recognised long jump world record of 24 ft 11ins. The record will stand for 20 years.

1906 Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, King of Iran, agrees to convert the government to a constitutional monarchy.

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1914 World War I: the German minelayer Knigin Luise lays a minefield about 40 miles of the Thames Estuary (Lowestoft). She is intercepted and sunk by the British light-cruiserHMS Amphion.

 

1914 In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed. 1925 Plaid Cymru is formed with the aim of disseminating knowledge of the Welsh language that is at the time in danger of dying out.

 

1940 World War II: the Soviet Union formally annexes Latvia. 1944 World War II: possibly the biggest prison breakout in history occurs as 545 Japanese POWs attempt to escape outside the town of Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.

   

1944 World War II: Polish insurgents liberate a German labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners. 1949 In Ecuador an earthquake destroys 50 towns and kills more than 6,000. 1949 The Mann Gulch fire kills 13 firefighters in Montana. 1957 American Bandstand, a show dedicated to the teenage "baby-boomers" by playing the songs and showing popular dances of the time, debuts on the ABC television network.

   

1960 Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta, becomes independent from France. 1962 Nelson Mandela is jailed. He would not be released until 1990. 1963 The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty. 1964 Vietnam War: Operation Pierce Arrow American aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

     

1969 Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers). 1974 Vietnam War: the U.S. Congress places a $1 billion dollar limit on military aid to South Vietnam. 1979 In Afghanistan, Maoists undertake an attempted military uprising. 1981 Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work. 1989 General elections are held in Nicaragua with the Sandinista Front winning a majority. 1995 The city of Knin, a significant Serb stronghold, is captured by Croatian forces during Operation Storm. The date is celebrated in Croatia as Victory Day.

2003 A car bomb explodes in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel killing 12 and injuring 150.

2010 2010 Copiap mining accident occurs, trapping 33 Chilean miners approximately 2,300 ft below the ground.

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AUGUST 6

1284 The Republic of Pisa is defeated in the Battle of Meloria by the Republic of Genoa, thus losing its naval dominance in the Mediterranean.

   

1506 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Crimean Khanate in the Battle of Kletsk 1538 Bogot, Colombia, is founded by Gonzalo Jimnez de Quesada. 1661 The Treaty of The Hague is signed by Portugal and the Dutch Republic. 1787 Sixty proof sheets of the Constitution of the United States are delivered to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

     

1806 Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates ending the Holy Roman Empire. 1819 Norwich University is founded in Vermont as the first private military school in the United States. 1825 Bolivia gains independence from Spain. 1845 The Russian Geographical Society is founded in Saint Petersburg. 1861 The United Kingdom annexes Lagos, Nigeria. 1862 American Civil War: the Confederate ironclad CSS Arkansas is scuttled on the Mississippi River after suffering damage in a battle with USS Essexnear Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

 

1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Battle of Wrth results in a decisive Prussian victory. 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York, murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by electric chair.

   

1901 Kiowa land in Oklahoma is opened for white settlement, effectively dissolving the contiguous reservation. 1909 Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip. 1912 The Bull Moose Party meets at the Chicago Coliseum. 1914 World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Helgoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.

 

1914 World War I: Serbia declares war on Germany; Austria declares war on Russia. 1915 World War I: Battle of Sari Bair the Allies mount a diversionary attack timed to coincide with a major Allied landing of reinforcements at Suvla Bay.

  

1917 World War I: Battle of M r

e ti between the Romanian and German armies begins.

1926 Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. 1926 In New York City, the Warner Brothers' Vitaphone system premieres with the movie Don Juan starring John Barrymore.

1926 Harry Houdini performs his greatest feat, spending 91 minutes underwater in a sealed tank before escaping.

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1930 Judge Joseph Force Crater steps into a taxi in New York and disappears to be never seen again. 1942 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands becomes the first reigning queen to address a joint session of the United States Congress.

1945 World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.

1956 After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network makes its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena in New York in theBoxing from St. Nicholas Arena series.

1960 Cuban Revolution: in response to a United States embargo, Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.

     

1962 Jamaica becomes independent. 1964 Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down. 1965 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. 1966 Braniff Airlines Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, NE killing all 42 on board. 1976 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto lays the foundation stone of Port Qasim, Karachi. 1986 A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney.

1988 The Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City spurs a reform of the NYPD, held responsible for the event.

1990 Gulf War: the United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1991 Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.

1991 Doi Takako, chair of the Social Democratic Party, becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives.

 

1993 Heavy rains and debris kill 72 in the Kagoshima and Aira areas of Ky sh , Japan. 1996 NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.

1997 Korean Air Flight 801, a Boeing 747-300, crashes into the jungle on Guam on approach to airport, killing 228.

2008 A military junta led by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz stages a coup d'tat in Mauritania, overthrowing president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.

2010 The incoming coalition government of the United Kingdom discontinues the use of the controversial ContactPoint database of children.

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AUGUST 7
      
322 BC Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon. 626 The Avar and Slav armies leave the siege of Constantinople. 936 Coronation of King Otto I of Germany. 1420 Construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore begins in Florence. 1427 The Visconti of Milan's fleet is destroyed by the Venetians on the Po River. 1461 The Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor. 1679 The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by Ren Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the southeastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.

 

1714 The Battle of Gangut: the first important victory of the Russian Navy. 1782 George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poeticPurple Heart.

 

1789 The United States War Department is established. 1791 United States troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in the Northwest Indian War.

1794 U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Law of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.

    

1819 Simn Bolvar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyac. 1879 The opening of the Poor Man's Palace in Manchester. 1890 Anna Mnsdotter becomes the last woman in Sweden to be executed, for the 1889 Yngsj murder. 1927 The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York. 1930 The last lynching in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana. Two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.

1933 The Simele massacre: The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.

 

1940 World War II: Alsace Lorraine is annexed by the Third Reich. 1942 World War II: the Battle of Guadalcanal begins United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

1944 IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947 Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

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1947 The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST). 1955 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan. 1959 The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design and is still in use.

  

1959 Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 1960 Cte d'Ivoire becomes independent. 1964 Vietnam War: the U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks onAmerican forces.

 

1964 Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down. 1965 The infamous first party between Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and motorcycle gang the Hells Angels takes place at Kesey's estate in La Honda, California introducing psychedelics to the gang world and forever linking the hippie movement to the Hell's Angels.

 

1966 Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan. 1967 Vietnam War: the People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.

1970 California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.

1974 Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

       

1976 Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars. 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal. 1979 Several tornadoes struck the city of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada and the surrounding communities. 1981 The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication. 1985 Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts. 1988 Rioting in New York City's Tompkins Square Park. 1989 U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia. 1998 The United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.

 

1999 Second Chechen War began. 2007 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run.

2008 Georgia launches a military offensive against South Ossetia to counter the alleged Russian invasion, starting the South Ossetia War.

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AUGUST 8
 
1220 Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. 1503 King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, Scotland.

1509 The Emperor Krishnadeva Raya is crowned, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire.

  

1576 The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on Hven. 1585 John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. 1588 Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England.

 

1605 The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden. 1647 The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungans Hill English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces.

1709 Bartolomeu de Gusmo demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal in Lisbon

1786 Mont Blanc on the French Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr MichelGabriel Paccard.

   

1793 The insurrection of Lyon occurs during the French Revolution. 1794 Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska. 1839 Beta Theta Pi is founded in Oxford, Ohio. 1844 The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

1863 American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).

  

1870 The Republic of Ploie ti, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania. 1876 Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph. 1908 Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.

  

1910 The US Army installs the first tricycle landing gear on the Army's Wright Flyer. 1911 The millionth patent is filed in the United States Patent Office by Francis Holton for a tubeless vehicle tire. 1911 Public Law 62-5 sets the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives at 435. The law would come into effect in 1913.

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1918 World War I: the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive).

     

1929 The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight. 1931 Workers go on strike at the Hoover dam. 1938 The building of Mauthausen concentration camp begins. 1940 The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel. 1942 Walt Disney's animated film, Bambi premieres in United Kingdom. 1945 World War II: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and begins the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.

     

1945 The United Nations Charter is signed by the United States, which becomes the third nation to join. 1946 First flight of the Convair B-36. 1949 Bhutan becomes independent. 1960 South Kasai secedes from the Congo. 1963 Great Train Robbery: in England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal 2.6 million pounds in bank notes. 1967 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

 

1968 Jur Wada successfully performs Japan's first heart transplant. 1973 U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew appears on television to denounce accusations he had taken kickbacks while governor of Maryland.

  

1973 Kim Dae-Jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped. 1974 Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day. 1976 As part of the ABA-NBA merger agreement, a dispersal draft is conducted to assign teams for the players on the two ABA franchises which had folded.

  

1980 The Central Hotel Fire, Bundoran occurs in Ireland. 1988 The "8888 Uprising" occurs in Burma. 1988 The lights are turned on at Wrigley Field for the first time, making it the last major league stadium to host night games. (The game, against the Philadelphia Phillies, is rained out after three-and-a-half innings.)

1989 Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.

  

1990 Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward. 1991 The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses. 2000 Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence and 5 years after being filmed by a dive team funded by novelist Clive Cussler.

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2007 An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York State, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.

2009 Typhoon Morakot makes landfall in Taiwan, and almost the entire southern region of Taiwan is flooded by record-breaking rainfall.

AUGUST 9

480 BC Greco-Persian Wars: Battle of Artemisium the Persians win a naval victory over the Greeks in an engagement fought near Artemisium, a promontory on the north coast of Euboea.

48 BC Caesar's civil war: Battle of Pharsalus Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.

378 Gothic War: Battle of Adrianople A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens is defeated by the Visigoths in present-day Turkey. Valens is killed along with over half of his army.

681 Bulgaria is founded as a Khanate on the south bank of the Danube after defeating the Byzantine armies of Emperor Constantine IV south of theDanube delta.

1173 Construction of the campanile of the cathedral of Pisa (now known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) begins; it will take two centuries to complete.

1329 Quilon, the first Indian Christian Diocese, is erected by Pope John XXII; the French-born Jordanus is appointed the first Bishop.

   

1483 Opening of the Sistine Chapel in Rome with the celebration of a Mass. 1810 Napoleon annexes Westphalia as part of the First French Empire. 1814 Indian Wars: the Creek sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving up huge parts of Alabama and Georgia. 1842 The Webster-Ashburton Treaty is signed, establishing the United States-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains.

 

1854 Henry David Thoreau published Walden. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Cedar Mountain At Cedar Mountain, Virginia, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson narrowly defeats Unionforces under General John Pope.

  

1877 Indian Wars: Battle of Big Hole A small band of Nez Perc Indians clash with the United States Army. 1892 Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph. 1902 Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

  

1907 The first Boy Scout encampment concludes at Brownsea Island in southern England. 1925 A train robbery takes place in Kakori, near Lucknow, India 1930 Betty Boop made her cartoon debut in Dizzy Dishes.

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1936 Summer Olympic Games: Games of the XI Olympiad Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal at the games becoming the first American to win four medals in oneOlympiad.

1942 Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.

1942 World War II: Battle of Savo Island Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.

1944 The United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.

1944 Continuation war: The VyborgPetrozavodsk Offensive, the largest offensive launched by Soviet Union against Finland during the Second World War, ends to a strategic stalemate. Both Finnish and Soviet troops at the Finnish front dug to defensive positions, and the front remains stable until the end of the war.

1945 World War II: Nagasaki is devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, is dropped by the United States B29 Bockscar. 39,000 people are killed outright.

1965 Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the first and only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.

 

1965 A fire at a Titan missile base near Searcy, Arkansas kills 53 construction workers. 1969 Members of a cult led by Charles Manson brutally murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate (wife of Roman Polanski), coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish actor Wojciech Frykowski, men's hairstylist Jay Sebring and recent high-school graduate Steven Parent.

1971 The Troubles: The British security forces in Northern Ireland launch Operation Demetrius. Hundreds of people are arrested and interned, thousands are displaced, and twenty are killed in the violence that follows.

1974 As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.

1977 The military-controlled Government of Uruguay announces that it will return the nation to civilian rule through general elections in 1981 for a President and Congress.

1988 Wayne Gretzky is traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in one of the most controversial player transactions in ice hockey history, upsetting many Canadians so much that some considered him a "traitor" to his home country.

 

1993 The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan loses a 38-year hold on national leadership. 1999 Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time fires his entire cabinet.

1999 The Diet of Japan enacts a law establishing the Hinomaru and Kimi Ga Yo as the official national flag and national anthem.

2001 US President George W. Bush announces his support for federal funding of limited research on embryonic stem cells.

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2006 At least 21 suspected terrorists were arrested in the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot that happened in the United Kingdom. The arrests were made in London, Birmingham, andHigh Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in an overnight operation.

AUGUST 10
 
610 Laylat al-Qadr: Muhammad begins to receive the Qur'an (traditional date). 955 Battle of Lechfeld: Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor defeats the Magyars, ending 50 years of Magyar invasion of the West.

991 Battle of Maldon: the English, led by Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex, are defeated by a band of inlandraiding Vikings near Maldon in Essex.

1270 Yekuno Amlak takes the imperial throne of Ethiopia, restoring the Solomonic dynasty to power after a 100year Zagwe interregnum.

 

1316 The Second Battle of Athenry takes place near Athenry during the Bruce campaign in Ireland. 1519 Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second in command Sebastian Elcano will complete the expedition after Magellan's death in the Philippines.

 

1557 Battle of St. Quentin: Spanish victory over the French in the Habsburg-Valois Wars. 1628 The Swedish warship Vasa sinks in the Stockholm harbour after only about 20 minutes of her maiden voyage.

   

1675 The foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London is laid. 1680 The Pueblo Revolt begins in New Mexico. 1776 American Revolutionary War: word of the United States Declaration of Independence reaches London. 1792 French Revolution: Storming of the Tuileries Palace Louis XVI of France is arrested and taken into custody.

 

1793 The Muse du Louvre is officially opened in Paris, France. 1809 Quito, now the capital of Ecuador, declares independence from Spain. This rebellion will be crushed on August 2, 1810.

1813 Instituto Nacional, is founded by the Chilean patriot Jos Miguel Carrera. It is Chile's oldest and most prestigious school. Its motto is Labor Omnia Vincit, which means "Work conquers all things".

 

1821 Missouri is admitted as the 24th U.S. state. 1846 The Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the United States Congress after James Smithson donates $500,000.

1861 American Civil War: Battle of Wilson's Creek the war enters Missouri when a band of raw Confederate troops defeat Union forces in the southwestern part of the state.

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1901 The U.S. Steel Recognition Strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers begins. 1904 Russo-Japanese War: the Battle of the Yellow Sea between the Russian and Japanese battleship fleets takes place.

 

1905 Russo-Japanese War: peace negotiations begin in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 1913 Second Balkan War: delegates from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece sign the Treaty of Bucharest, ending the war.

1920 World War I: Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI's representatives sign the Treaty of Svres that divides up the Ottoman Empire between the Allies.

1932 A 5.1 kilograms (11 lb) chondrite-type meteorite breaks into at least seven pieces and lands near the town of Archie in Cass County, Missouri.

  

1944 World War II: American forces defeat the last Japanese troops on Guam. 1948 Candid Camera makes its television debut after being on radio for a year as Candid Microphone. 1949 U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment, streamlining the defense agencies of the United States government, and replacing theDepartment of War with the United States Department of Defense.

 

1954 At Massena, New York, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Saint Lawrence Seaway is held. 1969 A day after murdering Sharon Tate and four others, members of Charles Manson's cult kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

 

1971 The Society for American Baseball Research is founded in Cooperstown, New York. 1977 In Yonkers, New York, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") is arrested for a series of killings in the New York City area over the period of one year.

 

1978 Three members of the Ulrich family are killed in an accident. This leads to the Ford Pinto litigation. 1981 Murder of Adam Walsh: the head of John Walsh's son is found. This inspires the creation of the television series America's Most Wanted.

1988 Japanese American internment: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, providing $20,000 payments to Japanese Americans who were either interned in or relocated by the United States during World War II.

   

1990 The Magellan space probe reaches Venus. 1990 More than 127 Muslims are killed in North East Sri Lanka by paramilitary troops. 1993 An earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter Scale hits the South Island of New Zealand. 1995 Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are indicted for the bombing. Michael Fortier pleads guilty in a plea-bargain for his testimony.

1998 HRH Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah is proclaimed the crown prince of Brunei with a Royal Proclamation.

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2003 The highest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom 38.5 C (101.3 F) in Kent. It is the first time the United Kingdom has recorded a temperature over 100 F(38 C).

 

2003 Yuri Malenchenko becomes the first person to marry in space. 2006 Scotland Yard disrupts a major terrorist plot to destroy aircraft traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States.

2009 Twenty people are killed in Handlov, Tren n Region, in the deadliest mining disaster in Slovakia's history.

AUGUST 11

3114 BC The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begins.

  

2492 BC Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation. 355 Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II. 1755 Charles Lawrence gives expulsion orders to remove the Acadians from Nova Scotia beginning the Great Upheaval.

  

1786 Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia 1804 Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria. 1858 The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.

   

1898 Spanish-American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagez, Puerto Rico. 1918 World War I: the Battle of Amiens ends. 1919 The constitution of the Weimar Republic is adopted. 1920 The Latvia-Bolshevist Russia peace treaty, which relinquished Russia's authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed.

1929 Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

1934 The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island. 1942 Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a frequency hopping, spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.

   

1952 Hussein is proclaimed King of Jordan. 1960 Chad declares independence. 1965 Race riots (the Watts riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California. 1972 Vietnam War: the last United States ground combat unit departs South Vietnam.

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1975 East Timor: Governor Mrio Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.

1982 A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo to Honolulu, killing one teenager and injuring 15 passengers.

 

1999 The Salt Lake City Tornado tears through the downtown district of the city, killing one. 2003 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.

  

2003 Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. 2003 A heat wave in Paris results in temperatures rising to 112 F (44 C), leaving about 144 people dead. 2003 The highest temperature ever seen in Great Briton (38.1 degrees C, 100.6 degrees F) was recorded at Gravesend, Kent.

AUGUST 12

30 BC Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, commits suicide, allegedly by means of an asp bite.

1099 First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon Crusaders under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon defeat Fatimid forces led by Al-Afdal Shahanshah. This is considered the last engagement of the First Crusade.

1121 Battle of Didgori: the Georgian army under King David the Builder wins a decisive victory over the famous Seljuk commander Ilghazi.

1164 Battle of Harim: Nur ad-Din Zangi defeats the Crusader armies of the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch.

 

1281 The Mongolian fleet of Kublai Khan is destroyed by a typhoon while approaching Japan. 1323 Signature of the Treaty of Nteborg between Sweden and Novgorod (Russia), that regulates the border between the two countries for the first time.

1332 Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.

  

1480 Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam. 1499 First engagement of the Battle of Zonchio between Venetian and Ottoman fleets. 1624 The president of Louis XIII of France's royal council is arrested, leaving Cardinal Richelieu in the role of the King's principal minister.

1676 Praying Indian John Alderman shoots and kills Metacomet, the Wampanoag war chief, ending King Philip's War.

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1687 Battle of Mohcs: Charles of Lorraine defeats the Ottomans. 1793 The Rhne and Loire (Lre) dpartments are created when the former dpartement of Rhne-et-Loire is split into two.

     

1806 Santiago de Liniers re-takes the city of Buenos Aires after the first British invasion. 1851 Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine. 1877 Asaph Hall discovers the Mars moon Deimos. 1883 The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam. 1898 An Armistice ends the Spanish-American War. 1898 The Hawaiian flag is lowered from Iolani Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the flag of the United States to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawai`i to the United States.

1914 World War I: the United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit.

  

1943 Alleged date of the first Philadelphia Experiment test on United States Navy ship USS Eldridge. 1944 Waffen SS troops massacre 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema. 1944 Alenon is liberated by General Leclerc, the first city in France to be liberated from the Nazis by French forces.

 

1952 The Night of the Murdered Poets: 13 prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow. 1953 Nuclear weapons testing: the Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of Joe 4, the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon.

1953 The islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia in Greece are severely damaged by an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale.

  

1960 Echo 1A, NASA's first successful communications satellite, is launched. 1964 South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country's racist policies. 1964 Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers, escapes from Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, England.

1969 Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a threeday communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside.

1976 Between 1,000 and 3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War

 

1977 The first free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. 1977 The Sri Lankan riots of 1977, targeting the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people, begin, less than a month after the United National Party came to power. Over 300 Tamils are killed.

 

1978 The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People's Republic of China is signed. 1980 The Montevideo Treaty, establishing the Latin American Integration Association, is signed.

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1981 The IBM Personal Computer is released. 1982 Mexico announces it is unable to pay its enormous external debt, marking the beginning of a debt crisis that spreads to all of Latin America and the Third World.

1985 Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Osutaka ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520, to become the worst single-plane air disaster.

1992 Canada, Mexico and the United States announce completion of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

 

1994 Major League Baseball players go on strike. This will force the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. 2000 The Oscar class submarine K-141 Kursk of the Russian Navy explodes and sinks in the Barents Sea during a military exercise.

 

2005 Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, is fatally shot by an LTTE sniper at his home. 2007 The bulk carrier M/V New Flame collides with the oil tanker Torm Gertrud at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar, ending up partially submerged.

AUGUST 13
 
3114 BC According to the Lounsbury correlation, the start of the Maya calendar. 1516 The Treaty of Noyon between France and Spain is signed. Francis I of France recognises Charles's claim to Naples, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor recognises Francis's claim to Milan.

 

1521 Tenochtitln (present day Mexico City) falls to conquistador Hernn Corts. 1536 Buddhist monks from Ky to's Enryaku-ji temple set fire to 21 Nichiren temples throughout in what will be known as the Tenbun Hokke Disturbance. (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1536).

  

1553 Michael Servetus is arrested by John Calvin in Geneva as a heretic. 1650 The Coldstream GuardsRegiment are officialy approved by the UK Parliment. 1704 War of the Spanish Succession: Battle of Blenheim English and Austrian forces are victorious over French and Bavarian troops.

1792 King Louis XVI of France is formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.

1806 Battle of Mi ar during the Serbian revolution begins. The battle will end two days later, with a decisive Serbian victory over the Ottomans.

1814 The Convention of London, a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United Provinces, is signed in London.

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1831 Nat Turner sees a solar eclipse, which he believes is a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves kill approximately 55 whites inSouthampton County, Virginia.

   

1889 German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his Navigable Balloon. 1913 Otto Witte, an acrobat, is purportedly crowned King of Albania. 1913 First production in the UK of stainless steel by Harry Brearley. 1918 Women enlist in the United States Marine Corps for the first time. Opha Mae Johnson is the first woman to enlist.

     

1918 Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) established as a public company in Germany. 1920 Polish-Soviet War: the Battle of Warsaw begins and will last till August 25. The Red Army is defeated. 1937 The Battle of Shanghai begins. 1954 Radio Pakistan broadcasts the National Anthem of Pakistan for the first time. 1960 The Central African Republic declares independence from France. 1961 The German Democratic Republic closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants' attempts to escape to the West.

1968 Alexandros Panagoulis attempts to assassinate the Greek dictator Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos in Varkiza, Athens.

1969 The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

1978 150 Palestinians in Beirut are killed in a terrorist attack during the second phase of the Lebanese Civil War.

1979 The roof of the uncompleted Rosemont Horizon near Chicago, Illinois collapses, killing 5 workers and injuring 16.

   

2004 Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, strikes Punta Gorda, Florida and devastates the surrounding area. 2004 156 Congolese Tutsi refugees are massacred at the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi. 2004 Opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. 2008 Michael Phelps sets the Olympic record for the most gold medals (8 in Beijing and 6 in Athens) won by an individual in Olympic history with his win in the men's 200m butterfly.

AUGUST 14

1183 Taira no Munemori and the Taira clan take the young Emperor Antoku and the three sacred treasures and flee to western Japan to escape pursuit by the Minamoto clan. (Traditional Japanese date: Twenty-fifth Day of the Seventh Month of the Second Year of Juei).

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1385 Portuguese Crisis of 13831385: Battle of Aljubarrota Portuguese forces commanded by King Joo I and his general Nuno lvares Pereiradefeat the Castilian army of King Juan I.

 

1592 Imjin War: Battle of Hansando Admiral Yi Sun-sin decisively defeats the Japanese Navy at Hasan Island. 1598 Nine Years War: Battle of the Yellow Ford Irish forces under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, defeat an English expeditionary force under Henry Bagenal.

1816 the United Kingdom formally annexed the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, ruling them from the Cape Colony in South Africa.

 

1842 Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminoles forced from Florida to Oklahoma. 1846 The Cape Girardeau meteorite, a 2.3 kg chondrite-type meteorite strikes near the town of Cape Girardeau in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.

   

1848 Oregon Territory is organized by act of Congress. 1880 Construction of Cologne Cathedral, the most famous landmark in Cologne, Germany, is completed. 1885 Japan's first patent is issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint. 1888 A recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's The Lost Chord, one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London.

  

1893 France introduces motor vehicle registration. 1897 The town of Anosimena is captured by French troops from Menabe defenders in Madagascar. 1900 A joint European-Japanese-United States force (Eight-Nation Alliance) occupies Beijing, in a campaign to end the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China.

  

1901 The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21. 1908 The first beauty contest is held in Folkestone, England. 1911 United States Senate leaders agree to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the Senate among leading candidates to fill the vacancy left by William P. Frye's death.

1912 United States Marines invade Nicaragua to support the U.S.-backed government installed there after Jos Santos Zelaya had resigned three years earlier.

 

1916Romania declares war on Austro-Hungary, joining Antante in World War I 1921 Tannu Tuva, later Tuvinian People's Republic is established as a completely independent country (which is supported by Soviet Russia).

 

1925 The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is completed and goes on line. 1933 Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn. It is extinguished on September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres (970 km ).

 

1935 United States Social Security Act passes, creating a government pension system for the retired. 1936 Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States.

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1937 Chinese Air Force Day: The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when 6 Imperial Japanese Mitsubishi G3M bombers are shot down by the Nationalist Chinese Air Force while raiding Chinese air bases.

1941 World War II Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims.

1945 Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan standard time).

 

1947 Pakistan gains Independence from the British Indian Empire and joins the Commonwealth of Nations. 1948 Don Bradman, widely regarded as the best cricket batsman in history, makes a duck in his final Test innings.

     

1959 Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League. 1967 UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. 1969 British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland. 1972 An East German Ilyushin Il-62 crashes during takeoff from East Berlin, killing 156. 1973 The constitution of 1973 comes into effect in Pakistan 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus: The second Turkish attach against Cyprus starts an hour and a half after Turkey's denial to allow for 36 to 48 hours so that the Cypriot governmentcould give an answer to their plan for a federal state and population transfer.

1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus: 140,000 to 200,000 Greek Cypriots are forced out of their homes by the Turkish army and become refugees.

 

1974 126 Turkish Cypriots are massacred in the villages of Maratha, Santalaris and Aloda. 1976 The Senegalese political party PAI-Rnovation is legally recognized. PAI-Rnovation thus becomes the third legal party in the country.

 

1980 Lech Wa sa leads strikes at the Gda sk, Poland shipyards. 1987 All the children held at Kia Lama, a rural property on Lake Eildon, Australia, run by the Santiniketan Park Association, are released after a police raid.

1996 Greek Cypriot refugee Solomos Solomou is murdered by Turkish forces while trying to climb a flagpole in order to remove a Turkish flag from its mast in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus.

    

1994 Ilich Ramrez Snchez, also known as "Carlos the Jackal," is captured. 2003 Widescale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada. 2006 Chencholai bombing in which 61 Tamil girls are killed in Sri Lankan Airforce bombing. 2007 The 2007 Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 796 people. 2010 2010 Summer Youth Olympic Games, first ever Youth Olympics, officially starts in Singapore.

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AUGUST 15
   
778 The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed. 927 The Saracens conquer and destroy Taranto. 982 Holy Roman Emperor Otto II is defeated by the Saracens in the battle of Capo Colonna, in Calabria 1018 Byzantine general Eustathios Daphnomeles blinds and captures Ibatzes of Bulgaria by a ruse, thereby ending Bulgarian resistance against Emperor Basil II's conquest of Bulgaria.

1040 King Duncan I is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth. The latter succeeds him as King of Scotland.

  

1057 King Macbeth is killed at the Battle of Lumphanan by the forces of Mel Coluim mac Donnchada. 1185 The cave city of Vardzia is consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia. 1248 The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men, is laid. (Construction is eventually completed in1880.)

 

1261 Michael VIII Palaeologus is crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. 1309 The city of Rhodes surrenders to the forces of the Knights of St. John, completing their conquest of Rhodes. The knights establish their headquarters on the island and rename themselves the Knights of Rhodes.

 

1430 Francesco Sforza, lord of Milan, conquers Lucca. 1461 The Empire of Trebizond surrenders to the forces of Sultan Mehmet II. This is regarded by some historians as the real end of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor David is exiled and later murdered.

 

1483 Pope Sixtus IV consecrates the Sistine Chapel. 1517 Seven Portuguese armed vessels led by Ferno Pires de Andrade meet Chinese officials at the Pearl River estuary.

 

1519 Panama City, Panama, is founded. 1534 Saint Ignatius of Loyola and six classmates take initial vows, leading to the creation of the Society of Jesus in September 1540.

   

1537 Asuncin, Paraguay, is founded. 1540 Arequipa, Peru, is founded. 1549 Jesuit priest Saint Francis Xavier comes ashore at Kagoshima (Traditional Japanese date: July 22, 1549). 1599 Nine Years War: Battle of Curlew Pass Irish forces led by Hugh Roe O'Donnell successfully ambush English forces, led by Sir Conyers Clifford, sent to relieve Collooney Castle.

 

1695 French forces end the Bombardment of Brussels, leaving a third of the buildings in the city in ruins. 1760 Seven Years' War: Battle of Liegnitz Frederick the Great's victory over the Austrians under Ernst von Laudon.

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1824 Freed American slaves found Liberia. 1843 The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, Hawaii is dedicated. Now the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu, it is the oldest Roman Catholic cathedralin continuous use in the United States.

1843 Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1863 The Anglo-Satsuma War begins between the Satsuma Domain of Japan and the United Kingdom (Traditional Japanese date: July 2, 1863).

  

1869 The Meiji government in Japan establishes six new ministries, including one for Shinto. 1891 San Sebastian Church in Manila, the first all-steel church in Asia, is officially inaugurated and blessed. 1907 Ordination in Constantinople of Fr. Raphael Morgan, first African-American Orthodox priest, "PriestApostolic" to America and the West Indies.

 

1909 A group of mid-level Greek Army officers launches the Goudi coup, seeking wide-ranging reforms. 1914 A male servant of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright sets fire to the living quarters of the architect's Wisconsin home, Taliesin, murders seven people and burns the living quarters to the ground.

   

1914 The Panama Canal opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship Ancon. 1914 The First Russian Army, led by Pavel Rennenkampf, enters Eastern Prussia. 1920 Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw Poles defeat the Red Army. 1935 Will Rogers and Wiley Post are killed after their aircraft develops engine problems during takeoff in Barrow, Alaska.

 

1939 13 Stukas dive into the ground during a disastrous air-practice at Neuhammer. No survivors. 1940 An Italian submarine torpedoes and sinks the Greek cruiser Elli at Tinos harbour during peacetime, marking the most serious Italian provocation prior to the outbreak of theGreco-Italian War in October.

1941 Corporal Josef Jakobs is executed by firing squad at the Tower of London at 7:12am, making him the last person to be executed at the Tower for treason.

1942 World War II: Operation Pedestal The SS Ohio reaches the island of Malta barely afloat carrying vital fuel supplies for the island's defenses.

       

1944 World War II: Operation Dragoon Allied forces land in southern France. 1945 World War II: Victory over Japan Day Japan surrenders. 1945 World War II: Korean Liberation Day. 1947 India gains Independence from the British Indian Empire and joins the Commonwealth of Nations. 1947 Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah is sworn in as first Governor General of Pakistan in Karachi. 1948 The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north. 1950 Srikakulam district is formed in Andhra Pradesh, India. 1952 Devon, United Kingdom A flashflood drenches the town of Lynmouth, killing 34 people.

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1954 Alfredo Stroessner begins his dictatorship in Paraguay. 1960 Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) becomes independent from France. 1961 Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall. 1962 James Joseph Dresnok defects to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea after running across the Korean DMZ. Dresnok still resides in the capital, Pyongyang.

  

1963 Execution of Henry John Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland. 1963 President Fulbert Youlou is overthrown in the Republic of Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital. 1965 The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, in an event later seen as marking the birth of stadium rock.

 

1969 The Woodstock Music and Art Festival opens. 1971 President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.

  

1971 Bahrain gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1973 Vietnam War: The United States bombing of Cambodia ends. 1974 Yuk Young-soo, First Lady of South Korea, is killed during an apparent assassination attempt upon President of South Korea, Park Chung-hee.

1975 Bangladesh's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is killed along with most members of his family during a military coup.

1975 Miki Takeo makes the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II.

1977 The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.

 

1984 The PKK in Turkey starts a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish military 1995 In South Carolina, Shannon Faulkner becomes the first female cadet matriculated at The Citadel (she drops out less than a week later).

 

1998 Omagh bomb in Northern Ireland, the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles 1999 Beni Ounif massacre in Algeria; some 29 people are killed at a false roadblock near the Moroccan border, leading to temporary tensions with Morocco.

2007 An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastates Ica and various regions of Peru killing 514 and injuring 1,090.

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AUGUST 16

1513 Battle of Guinegate (Battle of the Spurs) King Henry VIII of England defeats French Forces who are then forced to retreat.

1777 American Revolutionary War: The Americans led by General John Stark rout British and Brunswick troops under Friedrich Baum at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.

1780 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Camden The British defeat the Americans near Camden, South Carolina.

1792 Maximilien Robespierre presents the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, which demanded the formation of arevolutionary tribunal.

 

1812 War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army. 1819 Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England.

1841 U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Partymembers riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.

1858 U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.

 

1859 The Tuscan National Assembly formally deposes the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. 1865 Restoration Day in the Dominican Republic: The Dominican Republic regains its independence after 4 years of fighting against the Spanish Annexation.

1868 Arica, Peru (now Chile) is devastated by a tsunami that follows a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in the PeruChile Trench off the coast. The earthquake and tsunami kill an estimated 25,000 people in Arica and perhaps 70,000 people in all.

1869 Battle of Acosta u: A Paraguayan battalion made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the War of the Triple Alliance.

 

1870 Franco-Prussian War: The Battle of Mars-La-Tour is fought, resulting in a Prussian victory. 1896 Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.

  

1913 T hoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day T hoku University) admits its first female students. 1913 Completion of the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary. 1914 World War I: Battle of Cer begins.

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1920 Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees, and dies early the next day. To date, Chapman is the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game, the first being Doc Powers in 1909.

 

1920 The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution. 1929 The 1929 Palestine riots break out in the British Mandate of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.

  

1930 The first color sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, is made by Ub Iwerks. 1940 World War II: The Communist Party is banned in German-occupied Norway. 1941 HMS Mercury, Royal Navy Signals School and Combined Signals School opens at Leydene, near Petersfield, Hampshire, England.

1942 World War II: The two-person crew of the U.S. naval blimp L-8 disappears without a trace on a routine antisubmarine patrol over the Pacific Ocean. The blimp drifts without her crew and crash-lands in Daly City, California.

     

1944 First flight of the Junkers Ju 287. 1945 An assassination attempt is made on Japan's prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki. 1945 Puyi, the last Chinese emperor and ruler of Manchukuo, is captured by Soviet troops. 1954 The first edition of Sports Illustrated is published. 1960 Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1960 Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that still stand today: High-altitude jump, free-fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.

1964 Vietnam War: A coup d'tat replaces Duong Van Minh with General Nguyen Khanh as President of South Vietnam. A new constitution is established with aid from the U.S. Embassy.

1966 Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested.

1972 In an unsuccessful coup d'tat attempt, the Royal Moroccan Air Force fires upon Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat.

1989 A solar flare from the Sun creates a geomagnetic storm that affects micro chips, leading to a halt of all trading on Toronto's stock market.

1992 In response to an appeal by President Fernando Collor de Mello to wear green and yellow as a way to show support for him, thousands of Brazilians take to the streets dressed in black.

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AUGUST 17

986 A Byzantine army is destroyed in the pass of Trajan's Gate by the Bulgarians under the Comitopuli Samuel and Aron. The Byzantine emperorBasil II narrowly escaped.

1807 Robert Fulton's first American steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

1862 Indian Wars: The Dakota War of 1862 begins in Minnesota as Lakota warriors attack white settlements along the Minnesota River.

1862 American Civil War: Major General J.E.B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

1863 American Civil War: In Charleston, South Carolina, Union batteries and ships bombard Confederateheld Fort Sumter.

    

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Gainesville Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Gainesville, Florida. 1883 The first public performance of the Dominican Republic's national anthem, Himno Nacional. 1907 Pike Place Market, the longest continuously-running public farmers market in the US, opened in Seattle. 1908 Fantasmagorie, the first animated cartoon, realized by mile Cohl, is shown in Paris. 1914 World War I: Battle of Stalluponen The German army of General Hermann von Franois defeats the Russian force commanded by Pavel Rennenkampf near modern-day Nesterov, Russia.

1915 Jewish American Leo Frank is lynched for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl in Marietta, Georgia, United States.

  

1918 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Moisei Uritsky is assassinated. 1942 U.S. Marines raid the Japanese-held Pacific island of Makin (Butaritari). 1942 World War II: The U.S. Eighth Air Force begins regular combat operations in Europe with an attack on the marshalling yards at Rouen-Sotteville.

 

1943 The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. 1943 World War II: The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field MarshalBernard L. Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.

1943 World War II: First Qubec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King begins.

   

1945 Indonesian Declaration of Independence. 1947 The Radcliffe Line, the border between Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan is revealed. 1950 Hill 303 massacre: American POWs were massacred by Notrh Korean Army. 1953 Addiction: First meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Southern California.

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1959 Quake Lake: Quake Lake is formed by the magnitude 7.5 1959 Yellowstone earthquake near Hebgen Lake in Montana.

1959 Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the much acclaimed and highly influential best selling jazz recording of all time, is released.

 

1960 Decolonization: Gabon gains independence from France. 1962 East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin becoming one of the first victims of the wall.

1969 Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage.

1970 Venera Program: Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus).

1978 Double Eagle II becomes first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it lands in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.

 

1979 Two Soviet Aeroflot jetliners collide in mid-air over Ukraine, killing 156 1980 Azaria Chamberlain disappears, probably taken by a dingo, leading to what was then the most publicised trial in Australian history.

 

1982 The first Compact Discs (CDs) are released to the public in Germany. 1988 Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed in a plane crash.

1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship.

 

1999 A 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes zmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 and injuring 44,000. 2004 The National Assembly of Serbia unanimously adopts new state symbols for Serbia: Boze Pravde becomes the new anthem and the coat of arms is adopted for the whole country.

  

2005 The first forced evacuation of settlers, as part of the Israel unilateral disengagement plan, starts. 2005 Over 500 bombs are set off by terrorists at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh 2008 Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals in one Olympic Games.

AUGUST 18
 
293 BC The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is founded, starting the institution of Vinalia Rustica. 1201 The city of Riga is founded.

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1572 Marriage in Paris of the future Huguenot King Henry IV of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants andCatholics.

1587 Virginia Dare, granddaughter of governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, becomes the first English child born in the Americas.

1590 John White, the governor of the Colony of Roanoke, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted.

   

1634 Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France. 1636 The Covenant of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts is first signed. 1783 A huge fireball meteor is seen across the United Kingdom as it passes over the east coast. 1838 The Wilkes Expedition, which would explore the Puget Sound and Antarctica, weighs anchor at Hampton Roads in 1838

1848 Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking theWilmington and Weldon Railroad.

    

1868 French astronomer Pierre Jules Csar Janssen discovers helium. 1870 Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Gravelotte is fought. 1877 Asaph Hall discovers Martian moon Phobos. 1891 Major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead. 1903 German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright Brothers.

1909 Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River.

  

1917 A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless. 1920 The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. 1938 The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York State, United States with Ontario, Canada over the St. Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1941 Adolf Hitler orders a temporary halt to Nazi Germany's systematic T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests.

1948 The Australian cricket team completed a 40 Ashes series win over England during their undefeated Invincibles tour.

 

1950 Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium is assassinated by far-right elements. 1958 Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States.

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1963 American civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1965 Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the first major American ground battle of the war.

1966 Vietnam War: the Battle of Long Tan occurs, when a patrol of 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment encounter the Viet Cong.

 

1971 Vietnam War: Australia and New Zealand decide to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. 1976 In the Korean Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjeom, the Axe Murder Incident results in the death of two US soldiers.

1977 Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He would later die of the injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies.

 

1982 Japanese election law is amended to allow for proportional representation. 1983 Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 22 people and causing over USD $1 billion in damage (1983 dollars).

  

1989 Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galn is assassinated near Bogot in Colombia. 1992 Wang Laboratories files for bankruptcy. 2000 A Federal jury finds the US EPA guilty of discrimination against Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later inspiring passage of the No FEAR Act.

  

2005 Dennis Rader is sentenced to 175 years in prison for the BTK serial killings. 2005 Massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people. 2008 President Of Pakistan Pervez Musharaf resigns due to pressure from opposition.

AUGUST 19
   
43 BC Octavian, later known as Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul. 1504 Battle of Knockdoe. 1561 An 18-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland after spending 13 years in France. 1612 The "Samlesbury witches", three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, England, are put on trial, accused for practicing witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in English history.

1666 Second Anglo-Dutch War: Rear Admiral Robert Holmes leads a raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships, an act later known as "Holmes's Bonfire".

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1692 Salem witch trials: in Salem, Massachusetts, Province of Massachusetts Bay five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.

1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart raises his standard in Glenfinnan the start of the Second Jacobite Rebellion, known as "the 45".

  

1759 Battle of Lagos Naval battle during the Seven Year's War between Britain and France. 1768 Saint Isaac's Cathedral is founded in Saint Petersburg, Russia. 1772 Gustavus III of Sweden stages a Coup d'tat, in which he assumes power and enacts a new constitution that divides power between the Riksdag and the King.

1782 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Blue Licks the last major engagement of the war, almost ten months after the surrender of the Britishcommander Lord Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown.

1812 War of 1812: American frigate USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada earning her nickname "Old Ironsides".

   

1813 Gervasio Antonio de Posadas joins Argentina's second triumvirate. 1821 Greek rebels massacre all the population of Navarino. 1839 Presentation of Jacque Daguerre's new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences. 1848 California Gold Rush: the New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States of the gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).

 

1861 First ascent of Weisshorn, fifth highest summit in the Alps. 1862 Indian Wars: during an uprising in Minnesota, Lakota warriors decide not to attack heavily-defended Fort Ridgely and instead turn to the settlement of New Ulm, killing white settlers along the way.

1895 American frontier murderer and outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, is killed by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas.

 

1919 Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom. 1927 Metropolitan Sergius proclaims the declaration of loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union.

   

1934 The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio. 1934 The creation of the position Fhrer is approved by the German electorate with 89.9% of the popular vote. 1940 First flight of the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. 1942 World War II: Operation Jubilee the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division leads an amphibious assault by allied forces on Dieppe, France and fails, many Canadians are killed or captured. The operation was doomed to fail, and was intended to develop and try new amphibious landing tactics for the coming full invasion in Normandy.

 

1944 World War II: Liberation of Paris Paris rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops. 1945 Vietnam War: Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh take power in Hanoi, Vietnam.

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1953 Cold War: the CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

 

1955 In the Northeast United States, severe flooding caused by Hurricane Diane, claims 200 lives. 1960 Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.

1960 Sputnik program: Sputnik 5 the Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants.

1965 Japanese primeminister Eisaku Sato becomes the first post-World War II sitting prime minister to visit Okinawa.

1980 Saudia Flight 163, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar burns after making an emergency landing at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 301 people.

1981 Gulf of Sidra Incident: United States fighters intercept and shoot down two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets over the Gulf of Sidra.

1987 Hungerford Massacre: in the United Kingdom, Michael Ryan kills sixteen people with an assault rifle and then commits suicide.

1989 Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the first noncommunist Prime Minister in 42 years.

 

1989 Raid on offshore pirate station, Radio Caroline in North Sea by British and Dutch governments. 1989 Several hundred East Germans cross the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events which began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea.

1999 In Belgrade, tens of thousands of Serbians rally to demand the resignation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milo evi .

2002 A Russian Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops is hit by a Chechen missile outside of Grozny, killing 118 soldiers.

2003 A car-bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Iraq kills the agency's top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other employees.

2003 A Hamas planned suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem kills 23 Israelis, 7 of them children in the Jerusalem bus 2 massacr.

 

2005 The first-ever joint military exercise between Russia and China, called Peace Mission 2005 begins. 2005 A series of strong storms lashes Southern Ontario spawning several tornadoes as well as creating extreme flash flooding within the city of Toronto and its surrounding communities. In Toronto, it is also dubbed as the Toronto Supercell.

476

 

2009 A series of bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kills 101 and injures 565 others. 2010 Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, with the last of the United States brigade combat teams crossing the border to Kuwait.

AUGUST 20

636 Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine away from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.

    

917 Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army. 1000 The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen. Today celebrated as a National Day in Hungary. 1083 Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric. 1391 Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order. 1672 Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.

 

1775 The Spanish establish a presidio (fort) in the town that became Tucson, Arizona. 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers American troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, andPotawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat.

1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition: the "Corps of Discovery", exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis.

1858 Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

   

1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over. 1882 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow. 1888 Mutineers imprison Emin Pasha at Dufile. 1910 The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) occurred in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 3 million acres (12,000 km2).

    

1914 World War I: German forces occupy Brussels. 1920 The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan. 1920 The National Football League, (NFL), is founded in the United States. 1926 Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon H s Ky kai (NHK) is established. 1938 Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam a record that still stands.

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1940 In Mexico City exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader. He dies the next day.

1944 WWII: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being "terror fliers", arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.

  

1944 WWII: the Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet offensive. 1953 The Soviet Union publicly acknowledges that it had tested a hydrogen bomb. 1955 In Morocco, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals.

   

1960 Senegal breaks from the Mali federation, declaring its independence. 1975 Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars. 1977 Voyager Program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft. 1979 The East Coast Main Line rail route between England and Scotland is restored when the Penmanshiel Diversion opens.

1982 Lebanese Civil War: a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from Lebanon.

1986 In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.

   

1988 "Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park 1988 Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. 1988 IranIraq War: a cease-fire is agreed after almost eight years of war. 1988 The Troubles: Eight British Army soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by a Provisional Irish Republican Army roadside bomb in Northern Ireland (seeBallygawley bus bombing).

  

1989 The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision, 51 people are killed. 1989 The O-Bahn in Adelaide, the world's longest guided busway, opens. 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose PresidentMikhail Gorbachev.

1991 Estonia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of historical continuity of her pre-World War II statehood.

1993 After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.

 

1997 Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped. 1998 The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

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1998 U.S. embassy bombings: the United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2002 A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.

2008 Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. 146 people are killed in the crash, and 8 more die later. Only 18 people survive.

AUGUST 21

1192 Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Sh gun and the de facto ruler of Japan. (Traditional Japanese date: July 12, 1192)

  

1680 Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt. 1689 The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland. 1760 The church (later cathedral) of "Our Lady of Candlemas of Mayagez (Puerto Rico)" is founded, establishing the basis for the founding of the city.

 

1770 James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales. 1772 King Gustav III completes his coup d'tat by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing himself as an enlightened despot.

1808 Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junotnear the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.

1810 Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France, is elected Crown Prince of Sweden by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates.

     

1821 Jarvis Island is discovered by the crew of the ship, Eliza Frances. 1831 Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion. 1852 Tlingit Indians destroy Fort Selkirk, Yukon Territory. 1863 Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill's Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre. 1878 The American Bar Association is founded. 1879 1879 - The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appears to the people of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland.

  

1888 The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs. 1911 The Mona Lisa is stolen by a Louvre employee. 1918 World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.

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1928 WRNY began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York City. 1942 World War II: a Nazi flag is installed atop the Mount Elbrus. 1942 World War II: the Guadalcanal campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.

 

1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins. 1945 Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day

1963 Xa Loi Pagoda raids: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalises Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.

1968 Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring; on the same day, Nicolae Ceau escu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet maneuver, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.

1968 James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

 

1969 An Australian, Michael Dennis Rohan, sets the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire 1971 A bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally in Plaza Miranda, Manila, Philippines with several anti-Marcos political candidates injured.

 

1976 Operation Paul Bunyan at Panmunjeom, Korea. 1983 Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport).

1986 Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20kilometer range.

     

1991 Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union. 1991 Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses. 1992 Ruby Ridge Standoff in Idaho 1993 NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft. 2001 NATO decides to send a peace-keeping force to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 2001 The Red Cross announces that a famine is striking Tajikistan, and calls for international financial aid for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

2007 Hurricane Dean makes its first landfall in Costa Maya, Mexico with winds at 165 mph (266 km/h). Dean is the first storm since Hurricane Andrew to make landfall as a Category 5.

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AUGUST 22
       
392 Arbogast has Eugenius elected Western Roman Emperor. 476 Odoacer is named Rex italiae by his troops. 565 St. Columba reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland. 851 Erispoe defeats Charles the Bald near the Breton town of Jengland. 1138 Battle of the Standard between Scotland and England. 1485 The Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of Richard III and the end of the House of Plantagenet. 1559 Bartolom Carranza, Spanish archbishop, is arrested for heresy. 1639 Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company on a sliver of land bought from local Nayak rulers.

    

1642 Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors. The English Civil War begins. 1654 Jacob Barsimson arrives in New Amsterdam. He is the first known Jewish immigrant to America. 1717 Spanish troops land on Sardinia. 1770 James Cook's expedition lands on the east coast of Australia. 1780 James Cook's ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).

 

1791 Beginning of the Haitian Slave Revolution in Saint-Domingue. 1798 French troops land in Kilcummin harbour, County Mayo, Ireland to aid Wolfe Tone's United Irishmen's Irish Rebellion.

 

1827 Jos de La Mar becomes President of Peru. 1831 Nat Turner's slave rebellion commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who are killed in retaliation for the uprising.

    

1848 The United States annexes New Mexico. 1849 The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice. 1851 The first America's Cup is won by the yacht America. 1864 12 nations sign the First Geneva Convention. The Red Cross is formed. 1875 The Treaty of Saint Petersburg between Japan and Russia is ratified, providing for the exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands.

  

1902 Cadillac Motor Company is founded. 1902 Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to ride in an automobile. 1910 Korea is annexed by Japan with the signing of the JapanKorea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.

1911 Mona Lisa is stolen.

481

 

1914 World War I: in Belgium, British and German troops clash for the first time in the war. 1922 Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an AntiTreaty ambush at Bal na mBlth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.

             

1926 Gold is discovered in Johannesburg, South Africa. 1932 The BBC first experiments with television broadcasting. (See also Timeline of the BBC.) 1934 Bill Woodfull of Australia becomes the only cricket captain to twice regain The Ashes. 1941 World War II: German troops reach Leningrad, leading to the siege of Leningrad. 1942 World War II: Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy. 1944 World War II: Romania is captured by the Soviet Union. 1944 World War II: Holocaust of Kedros in Crete by German forces 1949 Queen Charlotte earthquake: Canada's largest earthquake since the 1700 Cascadia earthquake 1950 Althea Gibson becomes the first black competitor in international tennis. 1952 The penal colony on Devil's Island is permanently closed. 1962 An attempt to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle fails. 1962 The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship, completes its maiden voyage. 1963 American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km (66 mi). 1966 Labor movements NFWA and AWOC merge to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), predecessor of the United Farm Workers.

    

1968 Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogot, Colombia. It is the first visit of a pope to Latin America. 1971 J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28. 1972 Rhodesia is expelled by the IOC for its racist policies. 1978 The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion or FSLN occupies national palace in Nicaragua. 1985 Manchester Air Disaster sees 55 people killed when a fire breaks out on a commercial aircraft at Manchester Airport.

 

1989 The first ring of Neptune is discovered. 1989 Nolan Ryan strikes out Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.

1992 FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

 

1996 Bill Clinton signs welfare reform into law, representing major shift in US welfare policy 2003 Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

2004 A version of The Scream and Madonna, two paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from a museum in Oslo, Norway.

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2006 Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 612 crashes near the Russian border over eastern Ukraine, killing all 170 people on board.

2007 The Texas Rangers rout the Baltimore Orioles 30-3, the most runs scored by a team in modern MLB history.

2007 The Storm botnet, a botnet created by the Storm Worm, sends out a record 57 million e-mails in one day

AUGUST 23
   
79 Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. 1305 William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is hung, drawn and quartered for high treason by Edward I of England. 1328 Battle of Cassel: French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers. 1514 Battle of Chaldiran ended with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, Safavids founder.

      

1541 French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada. 1555 Calvinists are granted rights in the Netherlands. 1572 Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. 1595 Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Calugareni. 1708 Meidingnu Pamheiba is crowned King of Manipur. 1775 King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion. 1784 Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it wasnt accepted into theUnited States, and only lasted for four years.

   

1793 French Revolution: a leve en masse is decreed by the National Convention. 1799 Napoleon leaves Egypt for France en route to seize power. 1813 At the Battle of Grossbeeren, the Prussians under Von Blow repulse the French army. 1839 The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.

1858 The Round Oak rail accident occurs in Brierley Hill in the Black Country, England. It is 'Arguably the worst disaster ever to occur on British railways'.

1864 The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico.

   

1866 Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague. 1873 Albert Bridge in Chelsea, London opened. 1896 First Cry of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila. 1904 The automobile tire chain is patented.

483

  

1914 World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China. 1914 World War I: the Battle of Mons; the British Army begins withdrawal. 1921 British airship R-38 experiences structural failure over Hull in England and crashes in the Humber estuary. Of her 49 British and American training crew, only 4 survive.

1923 Capt. Lowell Smith and Lt. John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.

 

1927 Sacco and Vanzetti are executed. 1929 Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.

1938 English cricketer Len Hutton sets a world record for the highest individual Test innings of 364, during a Test match against Australia.

1939 World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.

   

1942 World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad. 1943 World War II: Kharkov liberated as a result of the Battle of Kursk. 1944 World War II: Marseille liberated. 1944 World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies (seeKing Michael's Coup)

1944 Freckleton Air Disaster A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.

1946 Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Land (state) of SchleswigHolstein.

  

1948 World Council of Churches is formed. 1954 First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. 1958 Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.

 

1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon. 1970 Organized by Mexican American union leader Csar Chvez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.

   

1975 Successful Communist coup in Laos. 1977 The Gossamer Condor wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight. 1979 Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States. 1982 Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.

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1985 Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany. 1989 Hungary: the last communist government opens the Iron curtain and causes the exodus of thousands of Eastern Germans to West Germany via Hungary (September 11).

1989 Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the VilniusTallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).

1989 1,645 Australian domestic airline pilots resign after the airlines threaten to fire them and sue them over a dispute.

1990 Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.

  

1990 Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union. 1990 West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3. 1994 Eugene Bullard, The only black pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

1996 Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'

 

2000 Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143. 2006 Natascha Kampusch, who is abducted at the age of 10, managed to escape from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, after 8 years of captivity.

AUGUST 24

49 BC Julius Caesar's general Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio commits suicide to avoid capture.

79 Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash (note: this traditional date has been challenged, and many scholars believe that the event occurred on October 24).

 

410 The Visigoths under Alaric begin to pillage Rome. 1200 King John of England, signee of the first Magna Carta, marries Isabella of Angouleme in Bordeaux Cathedral.

     

1215 Pope Innocent III declares Magna Carta invalid. 1349 Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague. 1391 Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca. 1456 The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed. 1511 Afonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquers Malacca, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca. 1561 Willem of Orange marries duchess Anna of Saxony.

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1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: On the orders of king Charles IX of France, a massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants) begins.

    

1608 The first official English representative to India lands in Surat. 1662 The Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer. 1682 William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania. 1690 Calcutta, India is founded. 1812 Peninsula War: A coalition of Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces succeed in lifting the two-and-a-halfyear-long Siege of Cdiz.

    

1814 British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings. 1815 The modern Constitution of the Netherlands is signed. 1816 The Treaty of St. Louis is signed in St. Louis, Missouri. 1820 Constitutionalist insurrection at Oporto, Portugal. 1821 The Treaty of Crdoba is signed in Crdoba, now in Veracruz, Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.

     

1831 Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle. 1857 The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history. 1870 The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion. 1875 Captain Matthew Webb became first person to swim the English Channel 1891 Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera. 1898 Count Muravyov, Foreign Minister of Russia presents a rescript that convoked the First Hague Peace Conference.

    

1902 A statue of Joan of Arc is unveiled in Saint-Pierre-le-Motier. 1909 Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal. 1912 Alaska becomes a United States territory. 1914 World War I: German troops capture Namur. 1929 Second day of two-day Hebron massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attacks on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, result in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.

 

1931 France and the Soviet Union sign a neutrality/no attack treaty. 1931 Resignation of the United Kingdom's Second Labour Government. Formation of the UK National Government.

1932 Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).

486

1933 The Crescent Limited train derails in Washington, D.C., after the bridge it is crossing is washed out by the 1933 ChesapeakePotomac hurricane.

 

1936 The Australian Antarctic Territory is created. 1937 In the Spanish Civil War, the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoa Agreement.

1942 World War II: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese aircraft carrier Ry j is sunk and US carrier USS Enterprise heavily damaged.

     

1944 World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris. 1949 The treaty creating NATO goes into effect. 1950 Edith Sampson becomes the first black U.S. delegate to the United Nations. 1954 The Communist Control Act goes into effect. The American Communist Party is outlawed. 1954 Getlio Dornelles Vargas, president of Brazil, commits suicide and is succeeded by Joo Caf Filho. 1963 Buddhist crisis: As a result of the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, the US State Department cables the US Embassy in Saigon to encourage Army of the Republic of Vietnam generals tolaunch a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem if he did not remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.

1963 Don Schollander swims the 200-metre freestyle in less than 2 minutes for the first time, in a world record time of 1:58.

1967 Led by Abbie Hoffman, a group of hippies temporarily disrupt trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them.

   

1968 France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power. 1981 Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon. 1989 Colombian drug barons declare "total war" on the Colombian government. 1989 Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.

      

1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1991 Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union. 1992 Hurricane Andrew hits South Florida as a Category 5 Hurricane. 1994 Initial accord between Israel and the PLO about partial self-rule of the Palestinians on the West Bank. 1995 Computer software developer Microsoft releases its Windows 95 operating system. 1998 First RFID human implantation tested in the United Kingdom. 2001 Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean (en route to Lisbon from Toronto) and makes an emergency landing in the Azores.

487

2004 Eighty-nine passengers die after two airliners explode after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow. The explosions are caused by suicide bombers (reportedly female) from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.

2006 The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is now considered a Dwarf Planet.

AUGUST 25

357 Battle of Strasbourg: Julian, Caesar (deputy emperor) and supreme commander of the Roman army in Gaul, wins an important victory against theAlemanni at Strasbourg (Argentoratum).

1248 The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, the Archbishop of Utrecht.

1258 Regent George Mouzalon and his brothers are killed during a coup headed by the aristocratic faction under, paving the way for its leader, Michael VIII Palaiologos, to ultimately usurp the throne of the Empire of Nicaea.

1537 The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.

        

1580 Battle of Alcntara. Spain defeats Portugal. 1609 Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. 1758 Seven Years' War: Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Russian army at the Battle of Zorndorf. 1768 James Cook begins his first voyage. 1814 Washington, D.C. is burned and White House is destroyed by British forces during the War of 1812. 1825 Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil. 1830 The Belgian Revolution begins. 1835 The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax. 1894 Kitasato Shibasabur discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.

1898 700 Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British Consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mob in Heraklion, Greece.

 

1912 The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded. 1914 World War I The University Library of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.

 

1916 The United States National Park Service is created. 1920 Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, which began on August 13, ends. The Red Army is defeated.

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1921 The first skirmishes of the Battle of Blair Mountain occur. 1933 The Diexi earthquake strikes Mao County, Sichuan, China and kills 9,000 people. 1939 The United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion by a foreign power.

 

1942 World War II: Battle of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. 1942 World War II: second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. A Japanese naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal is turned-back by an Allied air attack, losing one destroyer and one transport sunk, and one light cruiser heavily damaged.

 

1944 World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies. 1945 Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China kill Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.

1948 The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

       

1950 President Harry Truman orders the US Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike. 1980 Zimbabwe joins the United Nations. 1981 Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn 1989 Tadeusz Mazowiecki is chosen as the first non-communist Prime Minister in Central and Eastern Europe. 1989 Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System. 1989 Mayumi Moriyama becomes Japan's first female cabinet secretary. 1991 Belarus declares its independence from the Soviet Union 1991 The Battle of Vukovar has begun. An 87-day siege of a Croatian city by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between AugustNovember 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence

 

1997 Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, is convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall. 2003 The Tli Cho land claims agreement is signed between the Dogrib First Nations and the Canadian federal government in Rae-Edzo (now called Behchoko).

AUGUST 26
 
1071 Battle of Manzikert: The Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantine Army at Manzikert. 1278 Ladislaus IV of Hungary and Rudolph I of Germany defeat Premysl Ottokar II of Bohemia in the Battle of Marchfield near Drnkrut in (then)Moravia.

1303 Ala ud din Khilji captures Chittorgarh.

489

1346 Hundred Years' War: the military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights is established at the Battle of Crcy.

  

1466 A conspiracy against Piero di Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, led by Luca Pitti, is discovered. 1498 Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Piet. 1748 The first Lutheran denomination in North America, the Pennsylvania Ministerium, is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  

1768 Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour. 1778 The first recorded ascent of Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia. 1789 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is approved by the National Constituent Assembly of France.

   

1858 First news dispatch by telegraph. 1862 American Civil War: the Second Battle of Bull Run begins. 1883 The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa begins its final, paroxysmal, stage. 1914 World War I: the British Expeditionary Force fights a rear-guard action at the Battle of Le Cateau that briefly checks the German advance.

1914 World War I: the German colony of Togoland is invaded by French and British forces, who take it after 5 days.

 

1920 The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote. 1939 The first Major League Baseball game is telecast, a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, in Brooklyn, New York.

1940 Chad becomes the first French colony to join the Allies under the administration of Flix bou, France's first black colonial governor.

1942 Holocaust in Chortkiav, western Ukraine: At 2.30 am the German Schutzpolizei starts driving Jews out of their houses, divides them into groups of 120, packs them in freight cars and deports 2000 to Belzec death camp. 500 of the sick and children are murdered on the spot.

 

1944 World War II: Charles de Gaulle enters Paris. 1957 The USSR announces the successful test of an ICBM a "super long distance intercontinental multistage ballistic rocket ... a few days ago," according to the Soviet news agency, ITAR-TASS.

     

1966 The Namibian War of Independence starts with the battle at Omugulugwombashe. 1970 The then new feminist movement, led by Betty Friedan, leads a nation-wide Women's Strike for Equality. 1971 The United States Congress declares August 26th as an annual Women's Equality Day. 1977 The Charter of the French Language is adopted by the National Assembly of Quebec 1978 Papal conclave, 1978 (August): Pope John Paul I is elected to the Papacy. 1978 Sigmund Jhn becomes first German cosmonaut, on board Soyuz 31.

490

     

1980 John Birges plants a bomb at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada. 1987 President Ronald Reagan proclaims September 11, 1987 as 9-1-1 Emergency Number Day. 1992 In Brno Vclav Klaus and Vladimr Me iar sign an agreement to divide Czechoslovakia. 1997 Beni-Ali massacre in Algeria; 60-100 people killed. 2003 The Columbia Accident Investigation Board releases its final reports on Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. 2008 Russia unilaterally recognizes the independence of the former Georgian breakaway republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

AUGUST 27

479 BC Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea.

  

410 The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ends after three days. 1172 Henry the Young King and Margaret of France are crowned as junior king and queen of England. 1232 The Formulary of Adjudications is promulgated by Regent H j Yasutoki. (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 1232)

 

1689 The Treaty of Nerchinsk is signed by Russia and the Qing empire. 1776 The Battle of Long Island: in what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under GeneralGeorge Washington.

1789 The French National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming that "men are born and remain free and equal in rights".

1793 French counter-revolution: the port of Toulon revolts and admits the British fleet, which lands troops and seizes the port leading to Siege of Toulon.

1798 Wolfe Tone's United Irish and French forces clash with the British Army in the Battle of Castlebar, part of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, resulting in the creation of the French puppet Republic of Connaught.

1810 Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeats the British Royal Navy, preventing them from taking the harbour of Grand Port on le de France.

1813 French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte defeats a larger force of Austrians, Russians, and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1828 Uruguay is formally proclaimed independent at preliminary peace talks brokered by Great Britain between Brazil and Argentina during the Argentina-Brazil War.

1859 Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well.

1861 Union forces attack Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

491

1896 Anglo-Zanzibar War: the shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45) between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

 

1916 Romania declares war against Austria-Hungary, entering World War I as one of the Allied nations. 1921 The British install the son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali (leader of the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Empire) as King Faisal I of Iraq.

 

1922 The Turkish army takes the Aegean city of Afyonkarahisar from the Greeks. 1928 The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war is signed by the first 15 nations to do so. Ultimately sixty-one nations will sign it.

    

1939 First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft. 1943 Japanese forces evacuate New Georgia Island in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. 1957 The Constitution of Malaysia comes into force. 1962 The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA. 1969 Israeli commando force penetrates deep into Egyptian territory to stage a mortar attack on regional Egyptian Army headquarters in the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt.

1971 An attempted coup fails in the African nation of Chad. The Government of Chad accuses Egypt of playing a role in the attempt and breaks off diplomatic relations.

1975 The Governor of Portuguese Timor abandons its capital, Dili, and flees to Atauro Island, leaving control to a rebel group.

1979 A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British World War II admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland (see Warrenpoint ambush).

1982 Turkish military diplomat Colonel Atilla Alt kat is shot and killed in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's capital. Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide claim responsibility, saying they are avenging the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

1985 The Nigerian government is peacefully overthrown by Army Chief of Staff Major General Ibrahim Babangida.

 

1990 Stevie Ray Vaughan dies in a helicopter crash. 1991 The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

   

1991 Moldova declares independence from the USSR. 1993 The Rainbow Bridge, connecting Tokyo's Shibaura and the island of Odaiba, is completed. 2000 540-metre (1,772 ft)-tall Ostankino Tower in Moscow catches fire, three people are killed. 2003 Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.

492

2006 Comair Flight 5191 crashes on takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky bound for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Of the passengers and crew, 49 of 50 are confirmed dead in the hours following the crash.

2007 The skeletal remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Anastasia are found near Yekaterinburg, Russia.

AUGUST 28
      
475 The Roman general Orestes forces western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos to flee his capital city, Ravenna. 489 Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths defeats Odoacer at the Battle of Isonzo, forcing his way into Italy. 1189 Third Crusade: the Crusaders begin the Siege of Acre under Guy of Lusignan 1349 6,000 Jews are killed in Mainz, accused of being the cause of the plague. 1511 The Portuguese conquer Malacca. 1521 The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade. 1542 Turkish-Portuguese War (1538-1557) Battle of Wofla: the Portuguese are scattered, their leader Christovo da Gama is captured and later executed.

  

1609 Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay. 1619 Ferdinand II is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 1640 Second Bishop's War: King Charles I's English army loses to a Scottish Covenanter force at the Battle of Newburn.

  

1789 William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn. 1810 Battle of Grand Port the French accept the surrender of a British Navy fleet. 1830 The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new Tom Thumb steam locomotive races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam's role in US railroading.

  

1845 The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published. 1849 After a month-long siege, Venice, which had declared itself independent, surrenders to Austria. 1859 A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as far away as Japan.

     

1862 American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas. 1867 The United States takes possession of the, at this point unoccupied, Midway Atoll. 1879 Cetshwayo, last king of the Zulus, is captured by the British. 1898 Caleb Bradham renames his carbonated soft drink "Pepsi-Cola". 1901 Silliman University is founded in the Philippines. The first American private school in the country. 1913 Queen Wilhelmina opens the Peace Palace in The Hague.

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1914 World War I: the Royal Navy defeats the German fleet in the Battle of Heligoland Bight. 1914 World War I: German troops conquer Namur. 1916 World War I: Germany declares war on Romania. 1916 World War I: Italy declares war on Germany. 1917 Ten Suffragettes are arrested while picketing the White House. 1924 The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union. 1931 France and Soviet Union sign a treaty of non-aggression. 1937 Toyota Motors becomes an independent company. 1943 World War II: in Denmark, a general strike against the Nazi occupation is started. 1944 World War II: Marseille and Toulon are liberated. 1953 Nippon Television broadcasts Japan's first television show, including its first TV advertisement. 1955 Black teenager Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.

1957 U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

  

1961 Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes. 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech 1963 Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie are murdered in their Manhattan flat, prompting the events that would lead to the passing of the Miranda Rights.

   

1964 The Philadelphia race riot begins. 1968 Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention. 1979 An IRA bomb explodes on the Grand Place in Brussels. 1981 The National Centers for Disease Control announce a high incidence of pneumocystis and Kaposi's sarcoma in gay men. These will soon be recognized as symptoms of animmune disorder, which will be called AIDS.

1986 United States Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth is sentenced to 365 years imprisonment for espionage for the Soviet Union.

1988 Ramstein airshow disaster: three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. 75 are killed and 346 seriously injured.

    

1990 Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province. 1990 The Plainfield Tornado: an F5 tornado hits in Plainfield, Illinois, and Joliet, Illinois, killing 28 people. 1991 Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union. 1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. 1996 Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorce.

494

1998 Pakistan's National Assembly passes a constitutional amendment to make the "Qur'an and Sunnah" the "supreme law" but the bill is defeated in the Senate.

2003 An electricity blackout cuts off power to around 500,000 people living in south east England and brings 60% of London's underground rail network to a halt.

2005 Hurricane Katrina begins to make landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi in the afternoon, and brings the most severe damage to Slidell and New Orleans.

AUGUST 29
 
708 Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708). 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 France and England. 1498 Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Portugal. 1521 The Ottoman Turks capture Nndorfehrvr, now known as Belgrade. 1526 Battle of Mohcs: 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. 1655 Warsaw falls without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during The Deluge.

  

1756 Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War. 1758 The first American Indian Reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey. 1786 Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

      

1825 Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil. 1831 Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. 1833 The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire. 1842 Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War. 1861 American Civil War: US Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina. 1869 The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first 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.

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1903 The Russian battleship Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, is launched. 1907 The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers. 1910 Japan changes Korea's name to Ch sen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony. 1911 Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.

       

1915 US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in accident. 1916 The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act. 1918 Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive 1922 Turkish forces set fire to Smyrna in Asia Minor. 1930 The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland. 1943 German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves the Danish government. 1944 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.

  

1958 United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 1966 The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Ruben Salazar.

1982 The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft fr 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 Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.

1996 Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.

 

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 mosquein Najaf.

2005 Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $80 billion in damage.

2007 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Baseto Barksdale Air Force Base.

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AUGUST 30

1363 Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.

   

1574 Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master. 1590 Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590) 1791 HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day. 1799 The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell[disambiguation needed] during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars.

  

1800 Gabriel Prosser leads a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia 1813 Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance. 1813 Creek War Fort Mims massacre: Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.

  

1835 Melbourne, Australia is founded. 1836 The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen 1862 American Civil War Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.

1873 Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Sea.

 

1897 The town of Ambiky is captured by France from Menabe in Madagascar. 1896 Eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramn Blanco y Erenas. These are Manila, Cavite, Bulacan, Pampanga,Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Laguna, and Batangas.

  

1909 Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 1914 The Battle of Tannenberg is fought. 1918 Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

     

1922 Battle of Dumlupinar: the final battle in the Greek-Turkish War ("Turkish War of Independence"). 1940 The Second Vienna Award re-assigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary. 1942 World War II: the Battle of Alam Halfa begins. 1945 Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces. 1945 The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base. 1956 The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens.

497

1962 Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.

 

1963 The Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation. 1967 Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

1974 A BelgradeDortmund express train derails at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers. 1974 A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. 8 are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.

 

1984 STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage. 1995 NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

AUGUST 31

1056 Byzantine Empress Theodora becomes ill, dying suddenly a few days later without children to succeed the throne, thus ending the Macedonian dynasty.

     

1218 Al-Kamil becomes Sultan of Egypt, Syria and northern Mesopotamia on the death of his father Al-Adil. 1314 King Hkon V Magnusson moves the capital of Norway from Bergen to Oslo. 1422 King Henry V of England dies of dysentery while in France. 1422 Henry VI becomes King of England at the age of 9 months. 1803 Lewis and Clark start their expedition to the west by leaving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at 11 in the morning. 1813 At the final stage of the Peninsular War, British-Portuguese troops capture the town of Donostia (now San Sebastin), resulting in a rampage and eventual destruction of the town.

1864 During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta, Georgia.

    

1876 Ottoman sultan Murat V is deposed and succeeded by his brother Abd-ul-Hamid II. 1886 An earthquake kills 100 in Charleston, South Carolina. 1888 Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims. 1897 Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector. 1907 Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the St. Petersburg Convention, which results in the Triple Entente alliance.

  

1920 Polish-Bolshevik War: a decisive Polish victory in the Battle of Komarw. 1920 The first radio news program is broadcast by 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. 1939 Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day thus starting World War II in Europe.

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1940 Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19 crashes near Lovettsville, Virginia. The CAB investigation of the accident is the first investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

  

1943 The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, is commissioned. 1945 The Liberal Party of Australia is founded by Robert Menzies. 1948 Actor Robert Mitchum is arrested in a Hollywood drug raid. He would later be found guilty of criminal conspiracy to possess marijuana and sentenced to 60 days in prison.

1949 The retreat of the Democratic Army of Greece in Albania after its defeat on Gramos mountain marks the end of the Greek Civil War.

 

1957 The Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1958 A parcel bomb sent by Ngo Dinh Nhu, younger brother and chief adviser of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, fails to kill King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

 

1962 Trinidad and Tobago becomes independent. 1963 Sarawak, North Borneo and Singapore achieve technical independence pending accession to the Federation of Malaysia

 

1965 The Aero Spacelines Super Guppy aircraft makes its first flight. 1978 William and Emily Harris, founders of the Symbionese Liberation Army, plead guilty to the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

 

1980 Zimbabwe establishes diplomatic relations with Algeria. 1986 Aeromxico Flight 498 collides with a Piper PA-28 over Cerritos, California, killing 67 in the air and 15 on the ground.

1986 The Soviet passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov sinks in the Black Sea after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev, killing 423.

       

1991 Kyrgyzstan declares its independence from the Soviet Union. 1992 Pascal Lissouba is inaugurated as the President of the Republic of the Congo . 1993 HMS Mercury closes after 52 years in commission. 1994 The Provisional Irish Republican Army declares a ceasefire. 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris. 1998 North Korea reportedly launches Kwangmy ngs ng-1, its first satellite. 1999 The first of a series of bombings in Moscow kills one person and wounds 40 others. 1999 A LAPA Boeing 737-200 crashes during takeoff from Jorge Newbury Airport in Buenos Aires, killing 65, including 2 on the ground.

 

2005 A stampede on Al-Aaimmah bridge in Baghdad kills 1,199 people. 2006 Stolen on August 22, 2004, Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream is recovered in a raid by Norwegian police.

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SEPTEMBER
SEPTEMBER 1
   
462 Possible start of first Byzantine indiction cycle. 1355 King Tvrtko I of Bosnia writes In castro nostro Vizoka vocatum from the old town of Visoki. 1532 Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fianc, King Henry VIII of England. 1604 Adi Granth, now known as Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of Sikhs, was first installed at Harmandir Sahib.

1644 Battle of Tippermuir: James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose defeats the Earl of Wemyss's Covenanters, reviving the Royalist cause.

    

1715 King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years the longest of any major European monarch. 1763 Catherine II of Russia endorses Ivan Betskoy's plans for a Foundling Home in Moscow 1772 The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is founded in San Luis Obispo, California. 1804 Juno, one of the largest main belt asteroids, is discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding. 1836 Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.

 

1859 Solar Superstorm 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Chantilly Confederate forces attack retreating Union troops in Chantilly, Virginia.

1864 American Civil War: Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuates Atlanta, Georgia after a four-month siege by General Sherman.

  

1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Battle of Sedan is fought, resulting in a decisive Prussian victory. 1873 Cetshwayo ascends to the throne as king of the Zulu nation following the death of his father Mpande. 1875 A murder conviction effectively forces the violent Pennsylvanian Irish anti-owner coal miners, the "Molly Maguires", to disband.

1878 Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she was recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.

 

1894 More than 400 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota. 1897 The Boston subway opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.

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1902 A Trip to the Moon, considered one of the first science fiction films, is released in France. 1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan join the Canadian confederation. 1906 The International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys is established. 1911 The armored cruiser Georgios Averof is commissioned into the Greek Navy. It now serves as a museum ship.

  

1914 St. Petersburg, Russia, changes its name to Petrograd. 1914 The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 1920 The Fountain of Time opens as a tribute to the 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain following the Treaty of Ghent.

     

1923 The Great Kant earthquake devastates Tokyo and Yokohama, killing about 105,000 people. 1928 Ahmet Zogu declares Albania to be a monarchy and proclaims himself king. 1934 SMJK Sam Tet is founded by Father Fourgs from the St. Michael Church, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. 1939 World War II: Nazi Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, beginning the war in Europe. 1939 George C. Marshall becomes Chief of Staff of the United States Army. 1939 The Wound Badge for Wehrmacht, SS, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe soldiers is instituted. The final version of the Iron Cross is also instituted on this date.

1939 Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss Army (an event that can happen only during war or mobilization).

  

1951 The United States, Australia and New Zealand sign a mutual defense pact, called the ANZUS Treaty. 1958 Iceland expands its fishing zone, putting it into conflict with the United Kingdom, beginning the Cod Wars. 1961 The Eritrean War of Independence officially begins with the shooting of the Ethiopian police by Hamid Idris Awate.

1969 A revolution in Libya brings Muammar al-Gaddafi to power, which is later transferred to the People's Committees.

  

1969 Tran Thien Khiem became Prime Minister of South Vietnam under President Nguyen Van Thieu. 1970 Attempted assassination of King Hussein of Jordan by Palestinian guerrillas, who attacked his motorcade. 1972 In Reykjavk, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky and becomes the world chess champion.

1974 The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds.

1979 The American space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 km.

1980 Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope ends in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

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1980 Major General Chun Doo-hwan becomes president of South Korea, following the resignation of Choi Kyuhah.

   

1981 A coup d'tat in the Central African Republic overthrows President David Dacko. 1982 Canada adopts the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of its Constitution. 1982 The United States Air Force Space Command is founded. 1983 Cold War: Korean Air Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board die, including CongressmanLawrence McDonald.

 

1985 A joint AmericanFrench expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. 1990 The Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist is founded, following a split from the Communist Labour Party of Turkey.

 

1991 Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis commences when armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia.

2006 Luxembourg becomes the first country to complete the move to all digital television broadcasting.

SEPTEMBER 2
 
44 BC Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. 44 BC Cicero launches the first of his Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. He will make 14 of them over the following months.

31 BC Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antonyand Cleopatra.

1649 The Italian city of Castro is completely destroyed by the forces of Pope Innocent X, ending the Wars of Castro.

1666 The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St Paul's Cathedral.

  

1752 Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe. 1789 The United States Department of the Treasury is founded. 1792 During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Churchbishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers.

1807 The Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon.

1833 Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio is founded by John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart.

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1856 The Tianjing Incident takes place in Nanjing, China. 1859 A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service. 1862 American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

 

1864 American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, Georgia, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city. 1867 Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Japan, marries Masako Ichij . The Empress consort is thereafter known as Lady Haruko. Since her death in 1914, she is called by the posthumous name Empress Sh ken.

1870 Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan Prussian forces take Napoleon III of France and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner.

1885 Rock Springs massacre: in Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack theirChinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing several hundred more out of town.

1898 Battle of Omdurman British and Egyptian troops defeat Sudanese tribesmen and establish British dominance in Sudan.

1901 Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.

  

1925 The U.S. Zeppelin USS Shenandoah crashes, killing 14. 1935 Labor Day Hurricane of 1935: a large hurricane hits the Florida Keys killing 423. 1939 World War II: following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the Free City of Danzig (now Gda sk, Poland) is annexed by Nazi Germany.

1945 World War II: Combat ends in the Pacific Theater: the Instrument of Surrender of Japan is signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

 

1945 Vietnam declares its independence, forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 1946 The Interim Government of India is formed with Jawaharlal Nehru as Vice President with the powers of a Prime Minister.

1957 President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam becomes the first foreign head of state to make a state visit to Australia.

1958 United States Air Force C-130A-II is shot down by fighters over Yerevan in Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a sigint mission. All crew members are killed.

1960 The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration, in history of Tibet. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.

1963 CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.

503

1970 NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19.

1990 Transnistria is unilaterally proclaimed a Soviet republic; the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declares the decision null and void.

   

1991 The United States recognize the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 1992 An earthquake in Nicaragua kills at least 116 people. 1998 Swissair Flight 111 crashes near Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board are killed. 1998 The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Jean Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.

SEPTEMBER 3

36 BC In the Battle of Naulochus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, admiral of Octavian, defeats Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey, thus ending Pompeian resistance to the Second Triumvirate.

301 San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, is founded by Saint Marinus.

   

590 Consecration of Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great). 863 Major Byzantine victory at the Battle of Lalakaon against an Arab raid. 1189 Richard I of England (a.k.a. Richard "the Lionheart") is crowned at Westminster. 1260 The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.

1650 Third English Civil War: in the Battle of Dunbar, English Parliamentarian forces led by Oliver Cromwell defeat an army loyal to King Charles II of England and led by David Leslie, Lord Newark.

1651 Third English Civil War: Battle of Worcester Charles II of England is defeated in the last main battle of the war.

  

1658 Richard Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England 1666 The Royal Exchange burns down in the Great Fire of London 1777 American Revolutionary War: during the Battle of Cooch's Bridge, the Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time.

1783 American Revolutionary War: the war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain.

  

1798 The week long battle of St. George's Caye begins between Spain and Britain off the coast of Belize. 1802 William Wordsworth composes the sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802. 1803 English scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.

504

 

1812 24 settlers are killed in the Pigeon Roost Massacre in Indiana. 1838 Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.

1855 Indian Wars: in Nebraska, 700 soldiers under United States General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village and killing 100 between men, women and children.

1861 American Civil War: Confederate General Leonidas Polk invades neutral Kentucky, prompting the state legislature to ask for Union assistance.

 

1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Metz begins, resulting in a decisive Prussian victory on October 23. 1874 The congress of the state of Mxico elevates Naucalpan to the category of Villa, with the title of "Villa de Jurez".

 

1875 The first official game of Polo is played in Argentina after being introduced by British Ranchers". 1878 Over 640 die when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collides with the Bywell Castle in the River Thames.

 

1914 William, Prince of Albania leaves the country after just six months due to opposition to his rule. 1925 USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), the United States' first American-built rigid airship, was destroyed in a squall line over Noble County, Ohio. Fourteen of her 42-man crew perished, including her commander, Zachary Lansdowne.

1933 Yevgeniy Abalakov is the first man to reach the highest point in the Soviet Union, Communism Peak (now called Ismoil Somoni Peak and situated in Tajikistan) (7495 m).

1935 Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches a speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph

1939 World War II: France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allies.

1941 The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs.

1942 World War II: In response to news of its coming liquidation, Dov Lopatyn leads an uprising in the Ghetto of Lakhva, in present-day Belarus.

1944 Holocaust: diarist Anne Frank and her family are placed on the last transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz, arriving three days later.

  

1945 Three-day celebration was held in China, following the Victory over Japan Day on September 2. 1950 "Nino" Farina becomes the first Formula One Drivers' champion after winning the 1950 Italian Grand Prix. 1951 The first long-running American television soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, airs its first episode on the CBS network.

1954 The People's Liberation Army begins shelling the Republic of China-controlled islands of Quemoy.

505

1954 The German U-Boat U-505 begins its move from a specially constructed dock to its final site at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

    

1967 Dagen H in Sweden: traffic changes from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight. 1971 Qatar becomes an independent state 1976 Viking program: The American Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars. 1987 In a coup d'tat in Burundi, President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza is deposed by Major Pierre Buyoya. 1994 Sino-Soviet Split: Russia and the People's Republic of China agree to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.

 

1997 A Vietnam Airlines Tupolev TU-134 crashes on approach into Phnom Penh airport, killing 64. 1999 An 87-automobile pile-up happens on Highway 401 freeway just East of Windsor, Ontario, Canada after an unusually thick fog from Lake St. Clair.

2004 Beslan school hostage crisis day 3: the Beslan hostage crisis ends with the deaths of over 300 people, more than half of which are children.

SEPTEMBER 4

476 Romulus Augustus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself King of Italy, thus endingWestern Roman Empire.

626 Li Shimin, posthumously known as Emperor Taizong of Tang, assumes the throne over the Tang Dynasty of China.

1260 The Sienese Ghibellines, supported by the forces of King Manfred of Sicily, defeat the Florentine Guelphs at Montaperti.

 

1666 In London, England, the most destructive damage from the Great Fire occurs. 1781 Los Angeles, California, is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Seora La Reina de los ngeles de Porcincula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola) by 44 Spanish settlers.

  

1797 Coup of 18 fructidor an V in France. 1812 War of 1812: The Siege of Fort Harrison begins when the fort is set on fire. 1862 Civil War Maryland Campaign: General Robert E. Lee takes the Army of Northern Virginia, and the war, into the North.

  

1870 Emperor Napoleon III of France is deposed and the Third Republic is declared. 1884 The United Kingdom ends its policy of penal transportation to New South Wales in Australia. 1886 Indian Wars: after almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo, with his remaining warriors, surrenders to General Nelson Miles inArizona.

1888 George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak and receives a patent for his camera that uses roll film.

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1894 In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions. 1919 Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, who founded the Republic of Turkey, gathers a congress in Sivas to make decisions as to the future of Anatolia and Thrace.

 

1923 Maiden flight of the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah. 1939 World War II: a Bristol Blenheim is the first British aircraft to cross the German coast following the declaration of war and German ships are bombed.

       

1941 World War II: a German submarine makes the first attack against a United States ship, the USS Greer. 1944 World War II: the British 11th Armoured Division liberates the Belgian city of Antwerp. 1948 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons. 1949 Maiden flight of the Bristol Brabazon. 1949 The Peekskill Riots erupt after a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York. 1950 First appearance of the "Beetle Bailey" comic strip. 1950 Darlington Raceway is the site of the inaugural Southern 500, the first 500-mile NASCAR race. 1951 The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

 

1956 The IBM RAMAC 305 is introduced, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage. 1957 American Civil Rights Movement: Little Rock Crisis Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling inCentral High School.

   

1957 The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel. 1963 Swissair Flight 306 crashes near Drrensch, Switzerland, killing all 80 people on board. 1964 Scotland's Forth Road Bridge near Edinburgh officially opens. 1967 Vietnam War: Operation Swift begins: U.S. Marines engage the North Vietnamese in battle in the Que Son Valley.

     

1971 Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashes near Juneau, Alaska, killing all 111 people on board. 1972 Mark Spitz becomes the first competitor to win seven medals at a single Olympic Games. 1975 The Sinai Interim Agreement relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict is signed. 1977 The Golden Dragon Massacre took place in San Francisco, California. 1985 The discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, the first fullerene molecule of carbon. 1996 War on Drugs: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) attack a military base in Guaviare, starting three weeks of guerrilla warfare in which at least 130 Colombiansare killed.

 

1998 Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University. 2010 Canterbury earthquake: a 7.1 magnitude earthquake which struck the South Island of New Zealand at 4:35 am causing widespread damage and several power outages.

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SEPTEMBER 5
 
1590 Alexander Farnese's army forces Henry IV of France to raise the siege of Paris. 1661 Fall of Nicolas Fouquet: Louis XIV Superintendent of Finances is arrested in Nantes by D'Artagnan, captain of the king's musketeers.

1666 Great Fire of London ends: 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral are destroyed, but only 16 people are known to have died.

1698 In an effort to Westernize his nobility, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards for all men except the clergy and peasantry.

      

1725 Wedding of Louis XV and Maria Leszczy ska. 1774 First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake in the American Revolutionary War. 1793 French Revolution the French National Convention initiates the Reign of Terror. 1798 Conscription is made mandatory in France by the Jourdan law. 1800 Napoleon surrenders Malta to Great Britain. 1812 War of 1812: The Siege of Fort Wayne begins when Chief Winamac's forces attack two soldiers returning from the fort's outhouses.

     

1816 Louis XVIII has to dissolve the Chambre introuvable ("Unobtainable Chamber"). 1836 Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas. 1839 The First Opium War begins in China. 1840 Premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's Un giorno di regno at La Scala of Milan. 1862 American Civil War: the Potomac River is crossed at White's Ford in the Maryland Campaign. 1862 James Glaisher, pioneering meteorologist and Henry Tracey Coxwell break world record for altitude whilst collecting data in their balloon.

 

1864 Achille Franois Bazaine becomes Marshall of France. 1877 Indian Wars: Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is bayoneted by a United States soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska.

  

1882 The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City. 1887 Fire at Theatre Royal in Exeter, England killed 186 1905 Russo-Japanese War: In New Hampshire, USA, the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt, ends the war.

1906 The first legal forward pass in American football is thrown by Bradbury Robinson of St. Louis University to teammate Jack Schneider in a 220 victory over Carroll College (Wisconsin).

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1914 World War I: First Battle of the Marne begins. Northeast of Paris, the French attack and defeat German forces who are advancing on the capital.

  

1915 The pacifist Zimmerwald Conference begins. 1918 Decree "On Red Terror" is published in Russia 1927 The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, Trolley Troubles, produced by Walt Disney, is released by Universal Pictures.

  

1932 The French Upper Volta is broken apart between Ivory Coast, French Sudan, and Niger. 1937 Spanish Civil War: Llanes falls. 1938 Chile: A group of youths affiliated with the fascist National Socialist Movement of Chile are assassinated in the Seguro Obrero massacre.

1942 World War II: Japanese high command orders withdrawal at Milne Bay, first Japanese defeat in the Pacific War.

1943 World War II: The 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment lands and occupies Nazdab, near Lae in the Salamaua-Lae campaign.

 

1944 Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg constitute Benelux. 1945 Cold War: Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Union embassy clerk, defects to Canada, exposing Soviet espionage in North America, signalling the beginning of the Cold War.

1945 Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist Tokyo Rose, is arrested in Yokohama.

1948 In France, Robert Schuman becomes President of the Council while being Foreign minister, As such, he is the negotiator of the major treaties of the end of World War II.

  

1957 Cuba: Fulgencio Batista bombs the revolt in Cienfuegos. 1960 The poet Lopold Sdar Senghor is elected as the first President of Senegal. 1960 The boxer Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) is awarded the gold medal for his first place in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympic Games in Rome.

 

1961 The first conference of the Non Aligned Countries is held in Belgrade. 1969 My Lai Massacre: U.S. Army Lt. William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

1970 Vietnam War: Operation Jefferson Glenn begins: the United States 101st Airborne Division and the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division initiate a new operation in Th a Thin-Hu Province.

1972 Munich Massacre: A Palestinian terrorist group called "Black September" attack and take hostage 11 Israel athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. 2 die in the attack and 9 die the following day.

1975 Sacramento, California: Lynette Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford.

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1977 Hanns Martin Schleyer, is kidnapped in Cologne, West Germany by the Red Army Faction and is later murdered.

  

1977 Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay. 1978 Camp David Accords: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat begin peace process at Camp David, Maryland. 1980 The St. Gotthard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles (16.224 km) stretching from Goschenen to Airolo.

   

1984 STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage. 1984 Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment. 1986 Pan Am Flight 73 with 358 people on board is hijacked at Karachi International Airport. 1990 Eastern University massacre, massacre of 158 Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan army at the Eastern University in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.

1991 The current international treaty defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, came into force.

  

2000 The HaverstrawOssining Ferry makes its maiden voyage. 2000 Tuvalu joins the United Nations. 2005 Mandala Airlines Flight 091 crashes into a heavily populated residential of Sumatra, Indonesia, killing 104 people on board and at least 39 persons on ground.

2007 Three terrorists suspected to be a part of Al-Qaeda are arrested in Germany after allegedly planning attacks on both the Frankfurt International airport and US military installations.

SEPTEMBER 6

3114 BC According to the proleptic Julian calendar the current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar started. (Non-standard interpretation)

394 Battle of the Frigidus: The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills the pagan usurper Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum Arbogast.

1492 Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic for the first time.

1522 The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, returns to Sanlcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship tocircumnavigate the world.

1620 The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America. (Old Style date; September 16 per New Style date.)

1628 Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

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1634 Thirty Years' War: In the Battle of Nrdlingen the Catholic Imperial army defeats Protestant armies of Sweden and Germany.

  

1669 The siege of Candia ends with the Venetian fortress surrendering to the Ottomans. 1781 The Battle of Groton Heights takes place, resulting a British victory. 1847 Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts.

1861 American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, which gives the Union control of the mouth of the Tennessee River.

 

1863 American Civil War: Confederates evacuate Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina. 1870 Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.

 

1885 Eastern Rumelia declares its union with Bulgaria. The Unification of Bulgaria is accomplished. 1888 Charles Turner becomes the first bowler to take 250 wickets in an English season a feat since accomplished only by Tom Richardson (twice), J.T. Hearne, Wilfred Rhodes(twice) and Tich Freeman (six times).

1901 Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

     

1930 Democratically elected Argentine president Hiplito Yrigoyen is deposed in a military coup. 1937 Spanish Civil War: The start of the Battle of El Mazuco. 1939 World War II: The Battle of Barking Creek. 1939 World War II: South Africa declares war on Germany. 1940 King Carol II of Romania abdicates and is succeeded by his son Michael. 1943 The Monterrey Institute of Technology, one of the largest and most influential private universities in Latin America, is founded in Monterrey, Mexico.

   

1944 World War II: The city of Ypres, Belgium is liberated by allied forces. 1948 Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands. 1949 Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control. 1949 A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, with a souvenir Luger to become the first U.S. single-episode mass murderer.

 

1952 Canada's first television station, CBFT-TV, opens in Montreal. 1955 Istanbul Pogrom: Istanbul's Greek and Armenian minority are the target of a governmentsponsored pogrom.

 

1963 The Centre for International Industrial Property Studies (CEIPI) is founded. 1965 War of 1965: India retaliates following Pakistan's failed Operation Grand Slam which resulted in the IndoPakistani War of 1965 that is ended following the signing of theTashkent Declaration.

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1966 In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.

 

1968 Swaziland becomes independent. 1970 Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP and taken to Dawson's Field in Jordan.

1972 Munich Massacre: 9 Israel athletes taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games by the Palestinian "Black September" terrorist group died (as did a German policeman) at the hands of the kidnappers during a failed rescue attempt. 2 other Israeli athletes are slain in the initial attack the previous day.

1976 Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaid in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.

1983 The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

1985 Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9 crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.

1986 In Istanbul, two terrorists from Abu Nidal's organization kill 22 and wound six inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Shabbat services.

 

1991 The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 1991 The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.

1992 Hunters discover the emaciated body of Christopher Johnson McCandless at his camp 20 miles (32 km) west of the town of Healy, Alaska.

1995 Cal Ripken Jr of the Baltimore Orioles plays in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking a record that stood for 56 years.

1997 Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales takes place in London. Over a million people lined the streets and 2.5 billion watched around the world on television.

2008 Turkish President Abdullah Gl attends an association football match in Armenia after an invitation by Armenian President Serzh Sarkisyan; he is the first Turkish head of state to visit the country.

SEPTEMBER 7
  
70 A Roman army under Titus occupies and plunders Jerusalem. 1191 Third Crusade: Battle of Arsuf Richard I of England defeats Saladin at Arsuf. 1228 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II landed in Acre, Palestine and started the Sixth Crusade, which resulted in a peaceful restitution of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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1652 Around 15,000 Han farmers and militia rebel against Dutch rule on Taiwan. 1776 World's first submarine attack: the American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor.

1812 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Borodino Napoleon wins a Pyrrhic victory over the Russian army of Alexander I near the village of Borodino.

 

1818 Carl III of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway, in Trondheim. 1821 The Republic of Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of present day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) is established, withSimn Bolvar as the founding President and Francisco de Paula Santander as vice president.

   

1822 Dom Pedro I declares Brazil independent from Portugal on the shores of the Ipiranga creek in So Paulo. 1860 Steamship Lady Elgin sinks on Lake Michigan, with the loss of around 400 lives. 1864 American Civil War: Atlanta, Georgia, is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. 1876 In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are driven off by armed citizens.

1893 The Genoa Cricket & Athletic Club, to become the first Italian football club, is established by British expats.

1895 The first game of what would become known as rugby league football is played, in England, starting the 189596 Northern Rugby Football Union season.

   

1901 The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol. 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his 14-bis aircraft at Bagatelle, France for the first time successfully. 1907 Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City. 1909 Eugene Lefebvre (18781909), while test piloting a new French-built Wright biplane, crashes at Juvisy, France when his controls jam. Lefebvre dies, becoming the first 'pilot' in the world to lose his life in a powered heavier-than-air craft.

1911 French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.

1916 Federal employees win the right to Workers' compensation by Federal Employers Liability Act (39 Stat. 742; 5 U.S.C. 751)

1920 Two newly purchased Savoia flying boats crash in the Swiss Alps en-route to Finland where they would serve with the Suomen Ilmavoimat, killing both crews.

   

1921 In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the first Miss America Pageant, a two-day event, is held. 1922 In Aydin, Turkey, independence of Aydin, from Greek occupation. 1927 The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth. 1929 Steamer Kuru capsizes and sinks on Lake Nsijrvi near Tampere in Finland. 136 lives are lost.

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1936 The last surviving member of the thylacine species, Benjamin, dies alone in her cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.

1940 World War II: The Blitz Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing.

    

1940 Treaty of Craiova: Romania loses Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria. 1942 Holocaust: 8,700 Jews of Kolomyia (western Ukraine) sent by German Gestapo to death camp in Belzec. 1942 First flight of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator. 1943 A fire at the Gulf Hotel in Houston, Texas, kills 55 people. 1943 World War II: The German 17th Army begins its evacuation of the Kuban River bridgehead (Taman Peninsula) in southern Russia and moves across the Strait of Kerch to theCrimea.

    

1945 Japanese forces on Wake Island, which they had held since December of 1941, surrender to U.S. Marines. 1953 Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1963 The Pro Football Hall of Fame opens in Canton, Ohio with 17 charter members. 1965 China announces that it will reinforce its troops on the Indian border. 1965 Vietnam War: In a follow-up to August's Operation Starlight, United States Marines and South Vietnamese forces initiate Operation Piranha on the Batangan Peninsula.

  

1970 Fighting between Arab guerrillas and government forces in Amman, Jordan. 1970 Bill Shoemaker sets record for most lifetime wins as a jockey (passing Johnny Longden). 1977 The Torrijos-Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The United States agrees to transfer control of the canal toPanama at the end of the 20th century.

1978 While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricinpellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.

    

1979 The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, better known as ESPN, makes its debut. 1979 The Chrysler Corporation asks the United States government for USD $1.5 billion to avoid bankruptcy. 1986 Desmond Tutu becomes the first black man to lead the Anglican Church in South Africa. 1986 Gen. Augusto Pinochet, president of Chile, escapes attempted assassination. 1988 Abdul Ahad Mohmand, the first Afghan in space, returns aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-5 after 9 days on the Mir space station.

1996 American Hip-Hop star Tupac Shakur is fatally shot four times on the Las Vegas strip after leaving the Tyson-Seldon boxing match.

1999 A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocks Athens, rupturing a previously unknown fault, killing 143, injuring more than 500, and leaving 50,000 people homeless.

2004 Hurricane Ivan, a Category 5 hurricane hits Grenada, killing 39 and damaging 90% of its buildings.

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2005 First presidential election is held in Egypt. 2008 The US Government takes control of the two largest mortgage financing companies in the US, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

SEPTEMBER 8
 
70 Roman forces under Titus sack Jerusalem. 1264 The Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din jurisdiction over Jewish matters, is promulgated byBoleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland.

    

1331 Stephen Uro IV Du an declares himself king of Serbia 1380 Battle of Kulikovo Russian forces defeat a mixed army of Tatars and Mongols, stopping their advance. 1449 Battle of Tumu Fortress Mongolians capture the Chinese emperor. 1504 Michelangelo's David is unveiled in Florence. 1514 Battle of Orsha in one of the biggest battles of the century, Lithuanians and Poles defeat the Russian army.

   

1551 The foundation day in Vitria, Brazil 1565 Pedro Menndez de Avils settles St. Augustine, Florida. 1565 The Knights of Malta lift the Turkish siege of Malta that began on May 18. 1727 A barn fire during a puppet show in the village of Burwell in Cambridgeshire, England kills 78 people, many of whom are children.

    

1755 French and Indian War: Battle of Lake George. 1756 French and Indian War: Kittanning Expedition. 1761 Marriage of King George III of the United Kingdom to Duchess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 1793 French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Hondschoote. 1796 French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Bassano French forces defeat Austrian troops at Bassano del Grappa.

1810 The Tonquin sets sail from New York Harbor with 33 employees of John Jacob Astor's newly created Pacific Fur Company on board. After a six-month journey around the tip ofSouth America, the ship arrives at the mouth of the Columbia River and Astor's men establish the fur-trading town of Astoria, Oregon.

1831 William IV and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1863 American Civil War: Second Battle of Sabine Pass on the Texas-Louisiana border at the mouth of the Sabine River, a small Confederate force thwarts a Union invasion ofTexas.

1888 In London, the body of Jack the Ripper's second murder victim, Annie Chapman, is found.

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1888 In England the first six Football League matches are played. 1892 The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited. 1900 Galveston Hurricane of 1900: a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people. 1914 World War I: Private Thomas Highgate becomes the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during the war.

1921 16-year-old Margaret Gorman wins the Atlantic City Pageant's Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.

1923 Honda Point Disaster: nine US Navy destroyers run aground off the California coast. Seven are lost, and twenty-three sailors killed.

   

1926 Germany is admitted to the League of Nations. 1930 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape. 1934 Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner SS Morro Castle kills 135 people. 1935 US Senator from Louisiana, Huey Long, nicknamed "Kingfish", is fatally shot in the Louisiana capitol building.

1941 World War II: Siege of Leningrad begins. German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union's secondlargest city, Leningrad.

1943 World War II: The O.B.S. (German General Headquarters for the Mediterranean zone) in Frascati is bombed by USAAF.

1943 World War II: United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly announces the Allied armistice with Italy.

  

1944 World War II: London is hit by a V2 rocket for the first time. 1944 World War II: Menton is liberated from Germany. 1945 Cold War: United States troops arrive to partition the southern part of Korea in response to Soviet troops occupying the northern part of the peninsula a month earlier.

1951 Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with Japan in formal recognition of the end of the Pacific War.

  

1954 The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is established. 1959 The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) is established. 1960 In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).

 

1962 Newly independent Algeria, by referendum, adopts a Constitution. 1962 Last run of the famous Pines Express over the Somerset and Dorset Railway line (UK) fittingly using the last steam locomotive built by British Railways, 9F locomotive 92220Evening Star.

1966 The Severn Bridge is officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

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1966 The first Star Trek series premieres on NBC. 1967 The formal end of steam traction in the North East of England by British Railways. 1968 The Beatles perform their last live TV performance on the David Frost show. They perform their new hit "Hey Jude".

1970 Hijacking (and subsequent destruction) of three airliners to Jordan by Palestinians; the events to follow would later become known as Black September

1971 In Washington, D.C., the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is inaugurated, with the opening feature being the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.

1974 Watergate Scandal: US President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.

1975 Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "I Am A Homosexual". He is later given a general discharge.

 

1991 The Republic of Macedonia becomes independent. 1994 USAir Flight 427, on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, suddenly crashes in clear weather killing all 132 aboard; resulting in the most extensive aviation investigation in world history and altering manufacturing practices in the industry.

 

2004 NASA's unmanned spacecraft Genesis crash-lands when its parachute fails to open. 2005 Two EMERCOM Il-76 aircraft land at a disaster aid staging area at Little Rock Air Force Base; the first time Russia has flown such a mission to North America.

SEPTEMBER 9

9 Arminius' alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushes and annihilates three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

337 Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans I succeed their father Constantine I as co-emperors. The Roman Emperor is divided between the three Augusti.

 

1000 Battle of Svolder, Viking Age. 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, splitting the Austrian Habsburg lands between the Habsburg Dukes Albert III and Leopold III.

1493 Battle of Krbava field, a decisive defeat of Croats in Croatian struggle against the invasion by the Ottoman Empire.

1513 James IV of Scotland is defeated and dies in the Battle of Flodden Field, ending Scotland's involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.

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1543 Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned "Queen of Scots" in the central Scottish town of Stirling. 1739 Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in Britain's mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution, erupts nearCharleston, South Carolina.

     

1776 The Continental Congress officially names its new union of sovereign states the United States. 1791 Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington. 1801 Alexander I of Russia confirms the privileges of Baltic provinces. 1839 John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph. 1850 California is admitted as the thirty-first U.S. state. 1850 The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas's claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas's pre-annexation debt.

  

1863 American Civil War: The Union Army enters Chattanooga, Tennessee. 1886 The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is finalized. 1914 World War I: The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army.

       

1922 Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 ends with Turkish victory over the Greeks. 1923 Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, founds the Republican People's Party. 1924 Hanapepe Massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii. 1926 The U.S. National Broadcasting Company is formed. 1940 George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer. 1942 World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops an incendiary bomb on Oregon. 1943 World War II: The Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. 1944 World War II: The Fatherland Front takes power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the country. A new pro-Soviet government is established.

 

1945 Second Sino-Japanese War: Japan formally surrenders to China. 1947 First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.

   

1948 Republic Day of Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 1956 Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. 1965 The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established. 1965 Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($1012 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to top $1 billion in unadjusted damages.

 

1966 The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. 1969 Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 DC-9 collides in flight with a Piper PA-28 and crashes near Fairland, Indiana.

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1969 In Canada, the Official Languages Act comes into force, making the French language equal to the English language throughout the Federal government.

1970 A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson's Field in Jordan.

1971 The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, which eventually results in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison.

1990 1990 Batticaloa massacre, massacre of 184 minority Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan Army in the eastern Batticaloa District of Sri Lanka.

  

1991 Tajikstan gains independence from the Soviet Union. 1993 The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state. 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview.

 

2001 Prnu methanol tragedy occurs in Prnu County, Estonia. 2004 2004 Australian embassy bombing: A bomb explodes outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, killing 10 people.

SEPTEMBER 10
  
490 BC The Battle of Marathon takes places between the forces of the Persian Empire and those of Athens 506 The bishops of Visigothic Gaul meet in the Council of Agde. 1419 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy is assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France.

 

1509 An earthquake known as "The Lesser Judgment Day" hits Istanbul. 1547 The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, the last full scale military confrontation between England and Scotland, resulting in a decisive victory for the forces of Edward VI.

1561 Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima Takeda Shingen defeats Uesugi Kenshin in the climax of their ongoing conflicts.

      

1608 John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Nathan Hale volunteers to spy for the Continental Army. 1798 At the Battle of St. George's Caye, British Honduras defeats Spain. 1813 The United States defeats the British Fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. 1823 Simn Bolvar is named President of Peru. 1846 Elias Howe is granted a patent for the sewing machine. 1858 George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.

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1897 Lattimer massacre: A sheriff's posse kills 20 unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania, United States. 1898 Empress Elizabeth of Austria is assassinated by Luigi Lucheni. 1919 Austria and the Allies sign the Treaty of Saint-Germain recognizing the independence of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

 

1932 The New York City Subway's third competing subway system, the municipally-owned IND, is opened. 1939 World War II: The submarine HMS Oxley is mistakenly sunk by the submarine HMS Triton near Norway and becomes the Royal Navy's first loss.

1939 World War II: Canada declares war on Nazi Germany, joining the Allies France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

1942 World War II: The British Army carries out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to re-launch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign.

 

1943 World War II: German forces begin their occupation of Rome. 1961 Italian Grand Prix, a crash causes the death of German Formula One driver Wolfgang von Trips and 13 spectators who are hit by his Ferrari.

  

1963 20 African-American students enter public schools in Alabama. 1967 The people of Gibraltar vote to remain a British dependency rather than becoming part of Spain. 1972 The United States suffers its first loss of an international basketball game in a disputed match against the Soviet Union at Munich, Germany.

 

1974 Guinea-Bissau gains independence from Portugal. 1976 A British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing 176.

1977 Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of torture and murder, is the last person to be executed by guillotine in France.

1990 The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Cte d'Ivoire the largest church in Africa is consecrated by Pope John Paul II.

2001 Charles Ingram cheats his way into winning one million pounds on a British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

  

2002 Switzerland, traditionally a neutral country, joins the United Nations. 2003 Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden, is fatally stabbed while shopping, and dies the following day. 2007 Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan after seven years in exile, following a military coup in October 1999.

2008 The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.

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SEPTEMBER 11
  
9 The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends. 506 The bishops of Visigothic Gaul meet in the Council of Agde. 1185 Isaac II Angelus kills Stephanus Hagiochristophorites and then appeals to the people, resulting in the revolt that deposes Andronicus I Comnenus and places Isaac on the throne of the Byzantine Empire.

1226 The Roman Catholic practice of public adoration of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass spreads from monasteries to parishes.

   

1297 Battle of Stirling Bridge: Scots jointly-led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeat the English. 1390 Lithuanian Civil War (13891392): the Teutonic Knights begin a five-week siege of Vilnius. 1541 Santiago, Chile, is destroyed by indigenous warriors, led by Michimalonko. 1609 Expulsion order announced against the Moriscos of Valencia; beginning of the expulsion of all Spain's Moriscos.

 

1609 Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there. 1649 Siege of Drogheda ends: Oliver Cromwell's English Parliamentarian troops take the town and execute its garrison.

 

1697 Battle of Zenta. 1708 Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War. The army is defeated nine months later in the Battle of Poltava, and the Swedish empire ceases to be a major power.

 

1709 Battle of Malplaquet: Great Britain, Netherlands and Austria fight against France. 1714 Siege of Barcelona: Barcelona, capital city of Catalonia, surrenders to Spanish and French Bourbon armies in the War of the Spanish Succession.

   

1758 Battle of Saint Cast: France repels British invasion during the Seven Years' War. 1775 Benedict Arnold's expedition to Quebec leaves Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1776 British-American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop nascent American Revolutionary War. 1777 American Revolution: Battle of Brandywine The British celebrate a major victory in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

  

1786 The Beginning of the Annapolis Convention. 1789 Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. 1792 The Hope Diamond is stolen along with other French crown jewels when six men break into the house used to store them.

 

1802 France annexes the Kingdom of Piedmont. 1813 War of 1812: British troops arrive in Mount Vernon and prepare to march to and invade Washington D.C..

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1814 War of 1812: The climax of the Battle of Plattsburgh, a major United States victory in the war. 1829 Surrender of the expedition led by Isidro Barradas at Tampico, sent by the Spanish crown in order to retake Mexico, This was the final consummation of Mexican independence.

 

1847 Stephen Foster's well-known song, Oh! Susanna, is first performed at a saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1857 The Mountain Meadows Massacre: Mormon settlers and Paiutes massacre 120 pioneers at Mountain Meadows, Utah.

1897 After months of pursuit, generals of Menelik II of Ethiopia capture Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom.

1903 The first race at The Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisconsin is held. It is the oldest major speedway in the world.

 

1914 Australia invades New Britain, defeating a German contingent at the Battle of Bita Paka. 1916 The Quebec Bridge's central span collapses, killing 11 men. The bridge initially collapsed in toto on August 29, 1907.

 

1919 U.S. Marines invade Honduras. 1921 Nahalal, the first moshav in Palestine, is settled as part of a Zionist plan to colonize Palestine and creating a Jewish state, later to be Israel.

    

1922 The British Mandate of Palestine begins. 1922 The Treaty of Kars is ratified in Yerevan, Armenia. 1922 One of the Herald Sun of Melbourne, Australia's predecessor papers The Sun News-Pictorial is founded. 1931 Salvatore Maranzano is murdered by Charles Luciano's hitmen. 1932 Franciszek wirko and Stanis aw Wigura, Polish Challenge 1932 winners, are killed when their RWD 6 airplane crashes during a storm.

  

1940 George Stibitz performs the first remote operation of a computer. 1941 Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon. 1941 Charles Lindbergh's Des Moines Speech accusing the British, Jews and the Roosevelt administration of pressing for war with Germany.

    

1943 World War II: German troops occupy Corsica and Kosovo-Metohija. 1943 World War II: Start of the liquidation of the Ghettos in Minsk and Lida by the Nazis. 1944 World War II: The first Allied troops of the U.S. Army cross the western border of Germany. 1944 World War II: RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt and the following firestorm kill 11,500. 1945 World War II: Australian 9th Division forces liberate the Japanese-run Batu Lintang camp, a POW and civilian internment camp on the island of Borneo.

1961 Foundation of the World Wildlife Fund.

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1961 Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state.

 

1968 Air France Flight 1611 crashes off Nice, France, killing 89 passengers and 6 crew. 1970 The Dawson's Field hijackers release 88 of their hostages. The remaining hostages, mostly Jews and Israeli citizens, are held until September 25.

  

1971 The Egyptian Constitution becomes official. 1972 The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system has its opening day of passenger service. 1973 A coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet topples the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Pinochet remains in power for almost 17 years.

 

1974 Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 crashes in Charlotte, North Carolina, killing 69 passengers and two crew. 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel meet at Camp David and agree on the Camp David Accords a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

 

1980 Voters approve the present Constitution of Chile. 1982 The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel's 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

  

1985 Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb's baseball record for most career hits with his 4,192nd hit 1988 The St Jean Bosco massacre takes place in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 1989 The Iron Curtain opens between the communist Hungary and Austria. From Hungary thousands of East Germans throng to Austria and West Germany.

1992 Hurricane Iniki, one of the most damaging hurricanes in United States history, devastates the Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Oahu.

 

1997 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars. 1997 After a nationwide referendum, Scotland votes to establish a devolved parliament, within the United Kingdom.

 

1997 14 Estonian soldiers die in the Kurkse tragedy, drowning in the Baltic Sea 1998 Opening ceremony for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysia is the first Asian country to host the games.

2001 The September 11 attacks take place in the United States. Airplane hijackings result in the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City, damage to The Pentagon inArlington, Virginia, and the crashing of a passenger airliner near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

2004 All passengers are killed when a helicopter crashes in the Aegean Sea. Passengers include Patriarch Peter VII of Alexandria and 16 others (including journalists and bishops of the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria).

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2007 Russia tests the largest conventional weapon ever, the Father of all bombs.

SEPTEMBER 12

490 BC Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.

372 Sixteen Kingdoms: Jin Xiaowudi, age 10, succeeds his father Jin Jianwendi as Emperor of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

1213 Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.

1229 The Aragonese army under the command of James I of Aragon disembarks at Santa Pona, Majorca, with the purpose of conquering the island.

  

1609 Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Halve Maen. 1683 Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire. 1814 Battle of North Point: an American detachment halts the British land advance to Baltimore in the War of 1812.

   

1846 Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning. 1847 Mexican-American War: the Battle of Chapultepec begins. 1848 Switzerland becomes a Federal state. 1857 The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 1315 tons of gold from the San Francisco Gold Rush.

     

1874 The District of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada is founded. 1885 Arbroath 360 Bon Accord, a world record scoreline in professional football. 1890 Salisbury, Rhodesia, is founded. 1897 Tirah Campaign: Battle of Saragarhi. 1906 The Newport Transporter Bridge is opened in Newport, South Wales by Viscount Tredegar. 1910 Premiere performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players. Mahler's rehearsal assistant conductorwas Bruno Walter)

 

1919 Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers Party. 1930 Wilfred Rhodes ends his 1110-game first-class career by taking 5 for 95 for H.D.G. Leveson Gower's XI against the Australians.

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1933 Le Szilrd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

1938 Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

 

1940 Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France. 1940 An explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey kills 51 people and injures over 200.

1942 World War II: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks with a heavy loss of life.

1942 World War II: First day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal campaign. U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field on Guadalcanal are attacked by Imperial Japanese Army forces.

1943 World War II: Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, is rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi, by German commando forces led by Otto Skorzeny.

1944 World War II: The liberation of Serbia from Nazi Germany and the Chetniks continues. Bajina Ba ta in western Serbia is among those liberated cities. Near Trier, American troops enter Germany for the first time.

      

1948 Invasion of the State of Hyderabad by the Indian Army on the day after the Pakistani leader Jinnah's death. 1952 Strange occurrences, including a monster sighting, take place in Flatwoods, West Virginia. 1958 Jack Kilby demonstrates the first integrated circuit. 1959 Premiere of Bonanza, the first regularly-scheduled TV program presented in color. 1959 The Soviet Union launches a large rocket, Lunik II, at the moon. 1964 Canyonlands National Park is designated as a National Park. 1966 Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA's Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder (except for the Apollo lunar missions)

1970 Palestinian terrorists blow up three hijacked airliners in Jordan, continuing to hold the passengers hostage in various undisclosed locations in Amman.

1974 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, 'Messiah' of the Rastafari movement, is deposed following a military coup by the Derg, ending a reign of 58 years.

    

1974 Juventude Africana Amilcar Cabral is founded in Guinea-Bissau. 1977 South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko is killed in police custody. 1979 Indonesia is hit with an earthquake that measures 8.1 on the Richter scale. 1980 Military coup in Turkey. 1983 A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros.

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1983 The USSR vetoes a UN Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet shooting down of a Korean civilian jetliner on September 1.

1984 Dwight Gooden sets the baseball record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 246, previously set by Herb Score in 1954. Gooden's 276 strikeouts that season, pitched in 218 innings, set the current record.

1988 Hurricane Gilbert devastates Jamaica; it turns towards Mexico's Yucatn Peninsula 2 days later, causing an estimated $5 billion in damage.

1990 The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German re-unification.

1992 NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space,Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.

1992 Abimael Guzmn, leader of the Shining Path, is captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well.

1994 Frank Eugene Corder crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House's south lawn, striking the West wing and killing himself.

 

1999 Indonesia announces it will allow international peace-keepers into East Timor. 2001 Ansett Australia, Australia's first commercial interstate airline, collapses due to increased strain on the international airline industry, leaving 10,000 people unemployed.

2003 The United Nations lifts sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

   

2003 In Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers. 2005 Hong Kong Disneyland opens in Penny's Bay, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. 2007 Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada is convicted of the crime of plunder. 2008 The 2008 Chatsworth train collision in Los Angeles between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train kills 25 people.

SEPTEMBER 13

585 BC Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia.

  

509 BC The temple of Jupiter on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 122 Construction of Hadrian's Wall begins. 335 Emperor Constantine the Great consecrated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

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533 General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium, near Carthage, North Africa.

  

1213 End of Battle of Muret, during the Albigensian Crusade to destroy the Cathar heresy. 1229 gedei Khan is proclaimed Qaghan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1440 Gilles de Rais is finally taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.

 

1501 Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David. 1504 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built.

1541 After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva, beginning 23 years of Calvinist rule of Switzerland.

   

1584 San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished. 1609 Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him the Hudson River. 1743 Great Britain, Austria and Savoy-Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham: British defeat French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War.

1788 The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital.

 

1791 King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Dbeln beat the Russians, making von Dbeln a Swedish war hero.

  

1812 War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore, Maryland. 1847 Mexican-American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Nios Hroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American General Winfield Scottcaptures Mexico City in the MexicanAmerican War.

1848 Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot (0.91 m)-plus iron rod being driven through his head; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions.

 

1850 First ascent of Piz Bernina, the highest summit of the eastern Alps. 1862 American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam.

 

1882 The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. 1898 Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

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1899 Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya.

1900 Filipino resistance fighters defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine-American War.

 

1906 First flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 World War I: South African troops open hostilities in German south-west Africa (Namibia) with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station.

       

1914 World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 The temperature (in the shade) at Al 'Aziziyah, Libya reaches a world record 57.8 C (136.0 F). 1922 The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1935 Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ends the International Railway (New York Ontario). 1940 World War II: German bombs damage Buckingham Palace. 1942 World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army with heavy losses for the Japanese forces.

  

1943 Chiang Kai-shek elected President of the Republic of China. 1943 The Municipal Theatre of Corfu is destroyed during an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe. 1948 Margaret Chase Smith is elected senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

   

1953 Nikita Khrushchev is appointed secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. 1956 IBM introduces the first computer disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305. 1964 South Vietnamese Generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyen Khanh.

  

1968 Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to end a prison revolt. 1971 People's Republic of China: Chairman Mao Zedong's second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees the country via plane after the failure of alleged coup against Mao. The plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard.

 

1979 South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognised outside South Africa). 1987 Goinia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goinia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning.

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1988 Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure).

  

1989 Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu. 1993 Public unveiling of the Oslo Accords, an Israeli-Palestinian agreement initiated by Norway. 1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

    

1994 Ulysses probe passes the Sun's south pole. 2001 Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks. 2005 A glitch in the MMORPG World of Warcraft results in a plague affecting thousands of players. 2007 The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2008 Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas.

SEPTEMBER 14
 
81 Domitian becomes Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his brother Titus. 786 "Night of the three Caliphs": Harun al-Rashid becomes the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother alHadi. Birth of Harun's son al-Ma'mun.

    

1180 Battle of Ishibashiyama in Japan. 1607 Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland. 1682 Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest schools in Wales, is founded. 1741 George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah 1752 The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).

1812 Napoleonic Wars: French grenadiers enter Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.

1814 The poem Defence of Fort McHenry is written by Francis Scott Key. The poem is later used as the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner.

   

1829 The Ottoman Empire signs the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia, thus ending the Russo-Turkish War. 1847 Mexican-American War: Winfield Scott captures Mexico City. 1862 American Civil War: The Battle of South Mountain, part of the Maryland Campaign, is fought. 1901 President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

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1917 Russia is officially proclaimed a republic. 1923 Miguel Primo de Rivera becomes dictator of Spain. 1944 World War II: Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces. 1948 Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City. 1958 The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere.

         

1959 The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it. 1960 The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded. 1969 The US Selective Service selects September 14th as the First Draft Lottery Date. 1975 The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI. 1982 President-elect of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, is assassinated. 1984 Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a hot air balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean. 1987 The Toronto Blue Jays set a record for the most home runs in a single game, hitting 10 of them. 1994 The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike. 1995 Body Worlds opens in Tokyo, Japan 1998 Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.

 

1999 Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations. 2001 Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital.

2003 In a referendum, Estonia approves joining the European Union.

SEPTEMBER 15
       
668 Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy. 921 At Tetin Saint Ludmila is murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law. 994 Major Fatimid victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of the Orontes. 1556 Departing from Vlissingen, ex-Holy Roman Emperor Charles V returns to Spain. 1616 The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy. 1762 Seven Years War: Battle of Signal Hill. 1776 American Revolutionary War: British forces land at Kip's Bay during the New York Campaign. 1789 The United States Department of State is established (formerly known as the "Department of Foreign Affairs").

530

               

1812 The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow. 1812 War of 1812: A second supply train sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1816 HMS Whiting ran aground on the Doom Bar 1820 Constitutionalist revolution in Lisbon, Portugal. 1821 Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica jointly declare independence from Spain. 1830 The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens. 1831 The locomotive John Bull operates for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad. 1835 HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galpagos Islands. 1851 Saint Joseph's University is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1862 American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia. 1873 Franco-Prussian War: The last German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity. 1894 First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats China in the Battle of Pyongyang. 1916 World War I: Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme. 1935 The Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship. 1935 Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag with the swastika. 1940 World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shoots down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.

 

1942 World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp is torpedoed at Guadalcanal. 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1944 Battle of Peleliu begins as the United States Marine Corps' 1st Marine Division and the United States Army's 81st Infantry Division hit White and Orange beaches under heavy fire from Japanese infantry and artillery.

      

1945 A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroys 366 planes and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond. 1947 RCA releases the 12AX7 vacuum tube. 1947 Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077. 1948 The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h). 1950 Korean War: United States forces land at Inchon 1952 United Nations gives Eritrea to Ethiopia. 1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58.

  

1959 Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. 1961 Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour. 1962 The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.

531

1963 The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four children killed at an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun controllegislation.

1968 The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

1972 A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight from Gothenburg to Stockholm is hijacked and flown to Malm-Bulltofta Airport.

 

1974 Air Vietnam flight 727 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board. 1975 The French dpartement of Corse (the entire island of Corsica) is divided into two: Haute-Corse and Corsedu-Sud.

1981 The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1981 The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.

  

1981 Vanuatu becomes a member of the United Nations. 1983 Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns. 1987 United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sign a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

  

1990 France announces it will send 4,000 troops to the Persian Gulf 1993 Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II disbands Parliament 1998 With the landmark merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications completed the day prior, the new MCI WorldCom opens its doors for business.

2004 National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.

2008 Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

SEPTEMBER 16

307 Severus II is captured and imprisoned at Tres Tabernae. He is later executed (or forced to commit suicide) after Emperor Galeriusunsuccessfully invades Italy.

 

1400 Owain Glynd r is declared Prince of Wales by his followers. 1620 The Mayflower starts her voyage to North America

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1701 James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the "Old Pretender", becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England andScotland.

 

1776 American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Harlem Heights is fought. 1795 The first occupation by United Kingdom of Cape Colony, South Africa with the Battle of Hout Bay, after successive victories at the Battle of Muizenberg and Wynberg, after William V requested protection against revolutionary France's occupation of the Netherlands.

  

1810 With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain. 1812 The Fire of Moscow (1812) begins shortly after midnight and destroys three quarters of the city days later. 1863 Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.

1880 The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, N.Y.. The Sun is the nation's oldest, continuouslyindependent college daily in the United States.

   

1893 Settlers race in Oklahoma for prime land in the Cherokee Strip. 1908 The General Motors Corporation is founded. 1919 The American Legion is incorporated. 1920 The Wall Street bombing: a bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City 38 are killed and 400 injured.

1941 World War II: concerned that Reza Pahlavi the Shah of Persia is about to ally his petroleum-rich empire with Nazi Germany during World War II, the United Kingdom and theSoviet Union invade Iran in late August and force the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1945 World War II: The surrender of the Japanese troops in Hong Kong. The surrender is accepted by the Royal Navy Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt.

  

1947 Typhoon Kathleen hits Saitama, Tokyo and Tone River area, at least 1,930 killed. 1955 Juan Pern is deposed as the ruler of Argentina. 1963 Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. However, Singapore soon leaves this new country,

1966 The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra.

1970 King Hussein of Jordan declares military rule following the hijacking of four civilian airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This results in the formation of the Black September Palestinian paramilitary unit.

  

1975 Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia. 1975 The Cape Verde Islands, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe join the United Nations. 1975 The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.

533

 

1976 Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from the trolleybus that had fallen into Erevan reservoir. 1978 An earthquake measuring 7.5 to 7.9 on the Richter scale hits the city of Tabas, Iran killing about 25,000 people.

   

1980 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines join the United Nations. 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon. 1987 The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion. 1990 The railroad between the People's Republic of China and Kazakhstan becomes complete at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.

 

1991 The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega begins in the United States. 1992 Black Wednesday: the Pound Sterling is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.

2005 The Camorra organized crime boss Paolo Di Lauro gets arrested in Naples, Italy.

 2007 One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people. [edit]

SEPTEMBER 17

480 BC The Battle of Thermopylae, fought between 300 Spartans, led by their king, Leonidas, and the Achaemenid Empire begins

1111 Highest Galician nobility led by Pedro Frilaz de Traba and the bishop Diego Gelmrez crown Alfonso VII as "King of Galicia".

    

1176 The Battle of Myriokephalon is fought. 1462 The Battle of wiecino (also known as the Battle of arnowiec) is fought during Thirteen Years' War.

1577 The Peace of Bergerac is signed between Henry III of France and the Huguenots. 1630 The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded. 1631 Sweden wins a major victory at the Battle of Breitenfeld against the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War.

1683 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society describing "animalcules": the first known description of protozoa.

 

1776 The Presidio of San Francisco is founded in New Spain. 1778 The Treaty of Fort Pitt is signed. It is the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native American tribe (the Lenape or Delaware Indians).

 

1787 The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1809 Peace between Sweden and Russia in the Finnish War. The territory to become Finland is ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Fredrikshamn.

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1814 Francis Scott Key finishes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", later to be the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner".

 

1859 Joshua A. Norton declares himself "Emperor Norton I" of the United States. 1862 American Civil War: George B. McClellan halts the northward drive of Robert E. Lee's Confederate army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history.

1862 American Civil War: The Allegheny Arsenal explosion results in the single largest civilian disaster during the war.

 

1894 The Battle of Yalu River, the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War. 1900 Philippine-American War: Filipinos under Juan Cailles defeat Americans under Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham at Mabitac.

1908 The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality.

 

1914 Andrew Fisher becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the third time. 1916 World War I: Manfred von Richthofen ("The Red Baron"), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkrfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1920 The American Professional Football Association (later renamed National Football League) is organized in Canton, Ohio, United States.

1924 The Border Defence Corps is established in the Second Polish Republic for the defence of the eastern border against armed Soviet raids and local bandits.

1928 The Okeechobee Hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing upwards of 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

1939 World War II: The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland during the Polish Defensive War of 1939.

  

1939 World War II: A German U-boat U 29 sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. 1939 Taisto Mki becomes the first man to run the 10,000 metres in under 30 minutes, in a time of 29:52.6 1940 World War II: Following the German defeat in the Battle of Britain, Hitler postpones Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.

1941 World War II: A decree of the Soviet State Committee of Defense, restoring Vsevobuch in the face of the Great Patriotic War, is issued

 

1943 World War II: The Russian city of Bryansk is liberated from Nazis. 1944 World War II: Allied Airborne troops parachute into the Netherlands as the "Market" half of Operation Market Garden.

1947 James V. Forrestal is sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense of United States.

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1948 The Lehi (also known as the Stern gang) assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arab nations and Israel.

        

1948 The Nizam of Hyderabad surrenders his sovereignty over the Hyderabad State and joins the Indian Union. 1949 The Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto Harbour with the loss of over 118 lives. 1956 Television is first broadcast in Australia. 1957 Malaysia joins the United Nations. 1961 The world's first retractable-dome stadium, the Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh. 1974 Bangladesh, Grenada and Guinea-Bissau join the United Nations. 1976 The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, is unveiled by NASA. 1978 The Camp David Accords are signed by Israel and Egypt. 1980 After weeks of strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gda sk, Poland, the nationwide independent trade union Solidarity is established.

  

1980 Former Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle is killed in Asuncin, Paraguay. 1983 Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America. 1991 Estonia, North Korea, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia join the United Nations.

   

1991 The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet. 1992 An Iranian Kurdish leader and his two joiners are assassinated by political militants in Berlin, Germany. 1993 Last Russian troops leave Poland. 2001 The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 Attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.

2006 Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years.

2007 AOL, once the largest ISP in the U.S., officially announces plans to refocus the company as an advertising business and to relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York, New York.

SEPTEMBER 18
 
96 Nerva is proclaimed Roman Emperor after Domitian is assassinated. 324 Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine's sole control over the Roman Empire.

 

1180 Philip Augustus becomes king of France. 1454 In the Battle of Chojnice, the Polish army is defeated by the Teutonic army during the Thirteen Years' War.

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1502 Christopher Columbus lands at Costa Rica on his fourth, and final, voyage. 1635 Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria declares war on France. 1679 New Hampshire becomes a county of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1739 The Treaty of Belgrade is signed, ceding Belgrade to the Ottoman Empire. 1759 The British capture Quebec City. 1793 The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington. 1809 The Royal Opera House in London opens. 1810 First Government Junta in Chile. Though supposed to rule only in the absence of the king, it is in fact the first step towards independence from Spain, and is commemorated as such.

1812 The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to theMoscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.

1837 Tiffany and Co. (first named Tiffany & Young) is founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young in New York City. The store is called a "stationery and fancy goods emporium".

   

1838 The Anti-Corn Law League is established by Richard Cobden. 1850 The U.S. Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. 1851 First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times. 1870 Old Faithful Geyser is observed and named by Henry D. Washburn during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone.

              

1872 King Oscar II accedes to the throne of Sweden-Norway. 1873 The Panic of 1873 begins. 1879 The Blackpool Illuminations are switched on for the first time. 1882 The Pacific Stock Exchange opens. 1885 Riots break out in Montreal to protest against compulsory smallpox vaccination. 1895 Booker T. Washington delivers the "Atlanta Compromise" address. 1895 Daniel David Palmer gives the first chiropractic adjustment. 1898 Fashoda Incident Lord Kitchener's ships reach Fashoda, Sudan. 1906 A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong. 1910 In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage. 1911 Russian Premier Peter Stolypin is shot at the Kiev Opera House. 1914 The Irish Home Rule Act becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I. 1914 World War I: South African troops land in German South West Africa. 1919 The Netherlands gives women the right to vote. 1919 Fritz Pollard becomes the first African-American to play professional football for a major team, the Akron Pros.

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1922 Hungary is admitted to League of Nations. 1927 The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air. 1928 Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro crossing of the English Channel. 1931 The Mukden Incident gives Japan the pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria. 1932 Ibn Saud unites several kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, creating a new nation that he calls Saudi Arabia.

           

1932 Actress Peg Entwistle commits suicide by jumping from the letter "H" in the Hollywood sign. 1934 The USSR is admitted to League of Nations. 1939 World War II: Polish government of Ignacy Mo cicki flees to Romania. 1939 William Joyce makes his first Nazi propaganda broadcast. 1940 World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani. 1942 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is authorized. 1943 World War II: The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibr. 1943 World War II: Adolf Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews. 1944 World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Juny Maru, 5,600 killed. 1945 General Douglas MacArthur moves his command headquarters to Tokyo. 1947 The United States Air Force becomes an independent branch of the United States armed forces. 1947 The National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established in the United States under the National Security Act.

 

1948 Communist Madiun uprising in Dutch Indies. 1948 Margaret Chase Smith of Maine becomes the first woman elected to the US Senate without completing another senator's term, when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten.

  

1959 Vanguard 3 is launched into Earth orbit. 1960 Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. 1961 U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjld dies in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the war-torn Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

       

1962 Burundi, Jamaica, Rwanda and Trinidad and Tobago are admitted to the United Nations. 1964 Constantine II of Greece marries Danish princess Anne-Marie. 1964 North Vietnamese Army begins infiltration of South Vietnam. 1973 The Bahamas, East Germany and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations. 1974 Hurricane Fifi strikes Honduras with 110 mph winds, killing 5,000 people. 1975 Patty Hearst is arrested after a year on the FBI Most Wanted List. 1977 Voyager I takes first photograph of the Earth and the Moon together. 1978 Leaders of Israel and Egypt reach a settlement for the Middle East at Camp David.

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1980 Soyuz 38 carries 2 cosmonauts (including 1 Cuban) to Salyut 6 space station. 1981 Assemble Nationale votes to abolish capital punishment in France. 1982 Christian militia begin killing six-hundred Palestinians in Lebanon. 1984 Joe Kittinger completes the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic. 1988 End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup by the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Thousands, mostly monks and civilians (primarily students) are killed by the Tatmadaw.

      

1990 Liechtenstein becomes a member of the United Nations. 1991 Yugoslavia begins a naval blockade of 7 Adriatic port cities. 1992 An explosion rocks Giant Mine at the height of a labor dispute, killing 9 replacement workers. 1997 United States media magnate Ted Turner donates USD 1 billion to the United Nations. 1998 ICANN is formed. 2001 First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks. 2006 Right wing protesters riot the building of the Hungarian Television in Budapest, Hungary, one day after an audio tape is made public, in which Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsnyadmitted he and his party lied during the 2006 general elections.

2007 Pervez Musharraf announces that he will step down as army chief and restore civilian rule to Pakistan, but only after he is re-elected president.

2007 Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some called the Saffron Revolution.

2009 The 72 year run of the soap opera The Guiding Light ends as its final episode is broadcast.

SEPTEMBER 19
 
335 Flavius Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle Constantine I. 1356 Battle of Poitiers: an English army under the command of Edward, the Black Prince defeats a French army and captures the French king,John II.

     

1676 Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion. 1692 Giles Corey is pressed to death after refusing to plead in the Salem witch trials. 1777 First Battle of Saratoga/Battle of Freeman's Farm/Battle of Bemis Heights. 1778 The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States. 1796 George Washington's farewell address is printed across America as an open letter to the public. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Iuka Union troops under General William Rosecrans defeat a Confederate force commanded by GeneralSterling Price.

539

 

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Chickamauga. 1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris begins, which will result on January 28, 1871 in the surrender of Paris and a decisive Prussianvictory.

1870 Having invaded the Papal States a week earlier, the Italian Army lays siege to Rome, entering the city the next day, after which the Pope described himself as a Prisoner in the Vatican.

 

1881 U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting. 1893 Women's suffrage: in New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.

 

1934 Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnap and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.. 1940 Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance.

         

1944 Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union is signed. (End of the Continuation War). 1944 Battle of Hrtgen Forest between United States and Nazi Germany begins. 1945 Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) is sentenced to death in London. 1946 The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich. 1952 The United States bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England. 1957 First American underground nuclear bomb test. 1959 Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland. 1961 Betty and Barney Hill claim that they saw a mysterious craft in the sky and that it tried to abduct them. 1970 The first Glastonbury Festival is held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, United Kingdom. 1970 Kostas Georgakis, a Greek student of Geology, sets himself ablaze in Matteotti Square in Genoa, Italy as a protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos.

1971 Montagnard troops of South Vietnam revolt against the rule of Nguyen Khanh, killing 70 ethnic Vietnamese soldiers.

  

1972 A parcel bomb sent to Israeli Embassy in London kills one diplomat. 1973 King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has his investiture. 1976 Turkish Airlines Boeing 727 hits the Taurus Mountains, outskirt of Karatepe, Osmaniye, Turkey, killing all 155 passengers and crew.

 

1978 The Solomon Islands join the United Nations. 1982 Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System.

 

1983 Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence. 1985 A strong earthquake kills thousands and destroys about 400 buildings in Mexico City.

540

1985 Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.

    

1989 A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tnr Desert, Niger, killing 171. 1991 tzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists. 1995 The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto. 1997 Guelb El-Kebir massacre in Algeria; 53 killed. 2006 The Thai military stages a coup in Bangkok. The Constitution is revoked and martial law is declared.

SEPTEMBER 20

451 The Battle of Chlons takes place in North Eastern France. Flavius Aetius's victory over Attila the Hun in a day of combat, is considered to be the largest battle in the ancient world.

  

1187 Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem. 1260 the Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights. 1378 Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the Butcher of Cesena, is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.

1498 A tsunami washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at K toku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.

1519 Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.

 

1596 Diego de Montemayor founds the city of Monterrey in New Spain. 1633 Galileo Galilei is tried before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun.

1697 The Treaty of Rijswijk is signed by France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic ending the Nine Years' War(168897).

1737 The finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km ) of LenapeDelaware tribal land to thePennsylvania Colony.

     

1792 French troops stop allied invasion of France, during the War of the First Coalition at Valmy. 1835 Farroupilha's Revolution begins in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. 1848 The American Association for the Advancement of Science is created. 1854 Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in the Crimea. 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 ends with the recapture of Delhi by troops loyal to the East India Company. 1860 The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of the United Kingdom) visits the United States.

541

  

1863 American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga ends. 1870 Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy. 1871 Bishop John Coleridge Patteson is martyred on the island of Nukapu, a Polynesian outlier island now in the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. He is the first bishop ofMelanesia.

1881 Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States following the assassination of James Garfield.

 

1891 The first gasoline-powered car debuts in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. 1906 Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

     

1920 Foundation of the Spanish Legion. 1930 Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is formed by Archbishop Mar Ivanios. 1942 Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews. 1946 The first Cannes Film Festival is held. 1962 James Meredith, an African-American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi. 1967 RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland. It is operated by the Cunard Line.

 

1970 Syrian tanks roll into Jordan in response to continued fighting between Jordan and the fedayeen. 1973 Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in The Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

     

1977 The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations. 1979 A coup d'tat in the Central African Empire overthrows Emperor Bokasa I. 1982 The National Football League players begin a 57-day strike. 1984 A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people. 1990 South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia. 2000 The British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by a Russian-built Mark 22 anti-tank missile.

2001 In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "war on terror".

 

2002 The Kolka-Karmadon rock/ice slide. 2003 Maldives civil unrest: the death of prisoner Hassan Evan Naseem sparks a day of rioting in Mal.

542

SEPTEMBER 21

1217 Livonian Crusade: The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo are killed in Battle of St. Matthew's Day.

1435 An agreement between Charles VII of France and Philip the Good ends the partnership between the English and Burgundy in Hundred Years' War.

1745 Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of PrinceCharles Edward Stuart

  

1780 American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point. 1792 The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy. 1827 Joseph Smith, Jr. is reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Smith has translated intoThe Book of Mormon.

       

1860 In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Baliqiao. 1896 British force under Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan. 1897 The "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial is published in the New York Sun. 1898 Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China. 1921 A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, explodes, killing 500-600 people. 1934 A large typhoon hits western Honsh , Japan, killing 3,036 people. 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published. 1938 The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people.

1939 Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu is assassinated by ultranationalist members of the Iron Guard.

1942 On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp.

1942 In Poland, at the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently evacuate Konstantynw and move to the Ghetto in Bia a Podlaska, established to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns, including Janw Podlaski, Rossosz and Terespol.

    

1942 In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews. 1942 The B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight. 1953 LT No Kum-Sok a North Korean pilot defected to South Korea and is associated with Operation Moolah. 1961 Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter. 1964 Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

543

1964 The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's first Mach 3 bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.

  

1965 Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations. 1971 Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations. 1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.

1976 Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet.

  

1976 Seychelles joins the United Nations. 1981 Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom. 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.

   

1984 Brunei joins the United Nations. 1989 Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in the U.S. state of South Carolina. 1991 Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union. 1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament and scraps the then-functioning constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.

   

1999 Chi-Chi earthquake occurs in central Taiwan, leaving about 2,400 people dead. 2001 Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly. 2001 AZF chemical plant explodes in Toulouse, France, killing 31 people 2001 America: A Tribute to Heroes is broadcast by over 35 network and cable channels, raising over $200 million for the September 11 attack victims.

2003 Galileo mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.

SEPTEMBER 22
     
66 Emperor Nero creates the Legion I Italica. 1236 The Lithuanians and Semigallians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule. 1499 Treaty of Basel: Switzerland becomes an independent state. 1586 Battle of Zutphen: Spanish victory over England and Dutch. 1598 Ben Jonson is indicted for manslaughter. 1692 Last people hanged for witchcraft in Britain's North American colonies.

544

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 American Revolution. 1784 Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska. 1789 The office of United States Postmaster General is established. 1789 Battle of Rymnik establishes Alexander Suvorov as a pre-eminent Russian military commander after his allied army defeat superior Ottoman Empire forces.

 

1792 Primidi Vendmiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar. 1823 Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.

       

1851 The city of Des Moines, Iowa is incorporated as Fort Des Moines. 1862 Slavery in the United States: a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released. 1866 Battle of Curupaity in the War of the Triple Alliance. 1869 Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premieres in Munich. 1885 Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to Home Rule. 1888 The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published. 1893 The first American-made automobile, built by the Duryea Brothers, is displayed. 1896 Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.

 

1908 The independence of Bulgaria is proclaimed. 1910 The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain.

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.

    

1927 Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney. 1934 An explosion takes place at Gresford Colliery in Wales, leading to the deaths of 266 miners and rescuers. 1937 Spanish Civil War: Pea Blanca is taken; the end of the Battle of El Mazuco. 1939 Joint victory parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland. 1941 World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.

  

1944 World War II: the Red Army enters Tallinn. 1955 In the United Kingdom, the television channel ITV goes live for the first time. 1960 The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.

545

1965 The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 (also known as the Second Kashmir War) between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire.

 

1975 Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple. 1979 The Vela Incident (also known as the South Atlantic Flash) is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.

  

1980 Iraq invades Iran. 1991 The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library. 1993 A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, causing the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history. 47 passengers are killed.

 

1993 A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia. 1994 the Nordhordland Bridge was opened across the Salhusfjorden between Klauvaneset and Flaty in Hordaland, Norway. It has no lateral anchorage because of the depth of Salhusfjorden.

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 Nagerkovil school bombing, is carried out by Sri Lankan Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil school children.

2003 David Hempleman-Adams becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open-air, wickerbasket hot air balloon.

SEPTEMBER 23
  
1122 Concordat of Worms. 1409 Battle of Kherlen, the second significant victory over Ming China by the Mongols since 1368. 1459 Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is fought at Blore Heath in Staffordshire.

  

1641 The Merchant Royal, carrying a treasure worth over a billion US dollars, is lost at sea off Land's End. 1642 First commencement exercises occur at Harvard College. 1779 American Revolution: a squadron commanded by John Paul Jones on board the USS Bonhomme Richard wins the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the coast of England, against two British warships.

1780 American Revolution: British Major John Andr is arrested as a spy by American soldiers exposing Benedict Arnold's change of sides.

1803 Second Anglo-Maratha War: Battle of Assaye between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India.

546

  

1806 Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States. 1821 Tripolitsa, Greece, falls and 30,000 Turks are massacred. 1845 The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, is founded in New York.

1846 Neptune is discovered by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams; the discovery is verified by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.

1857 The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.

 

1868 Grito de Lares ("Lares Revolt") occurs in Puerto Rico against Spanish rule. 1889 Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.

  

1905 Norway and Sweden sign the "Karlstad treaty", peacefully dissolving the Union between the two countries. 1908 University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada, is founded. 1909 The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantme de l'Opra), a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, is first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.

1922 In Washington D. C., Charles Evans Hughes signs the Hughes-Peynado agreement, that ends the occupation of Dominican Republic by the United States.

   

1932 The Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd is renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 1938 Mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in response to the Munich Crisis. 1941 World War II: The first gas chamber experiments are conducted at Auschwitz. 1942 World War II: First day of the September Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps forces attack Imperial Japanese Army units along the Matanikau River.

   

1943 World War II: The so-called Sal Republic is born. 1952 Richard Nixon makes his "Checkers speech". 1959 Iowa farmer and corn breeder Roswell Garst hosts Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. 1959 The MS Princess of Tasmania, Australias first passenger roll-on/roll-off diesel ferry, makes her maiden voyage across Bass Strait.

1962 The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City opens with the completion of the first building, the Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) home of the New York Philharmonic.

 

1969 The Chicago Eight trial opens in Chicago. 1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos announces over television and radio the implementation of martial law.

 

1973 Juan Pern returns to power in Argentina. 1983 Saint Kitts and Nevis joins the United Nations.

547

  

1983 Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion. 1983 Gulf Air Flight 771 is bombed, killing all 117 people on board. 1986 Jim Deshaies of the Houston Astros sets the major-league record by striking out the first eight batters of the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

    

1988 Jos Canseco of the Oakland Athletics becomes the first member of the 40-40 club. 1992 A large Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb destroys forensic laboratories in Belfast. 1999 Celebrate Bisexuality Day was first observed in the United States. 1999 NASA announces that it has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter. 1999 Qantas Flight 1 overruns the runway in Bangkok during a storm. Although some passengers only receive minor injuries, it is still the worst crash in Qantas's history since 1960.

  

2002 The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released. 2004 Hurricane Jeanne: At least 1,070 in Haiti are reported to have been killed by floods. 2008 Kauhajoki school shooting, Matti Saari kills 10 people before committing suicide.

SEPTEMBER 24
 
622 Prophet Muhammad completes his hijra from Mecca to Medina. 1180 Manuel I Komnenos, last Emperor of the Komnenian restoration dies. The Byzantine Empire slips into terminal decline.

1645 Battle of Rowton Heath, Parliamentarian victory over a Royalist army commanded in person by King Charles

  

1664 The Dutch Republic surrenders New Amsterdam to England. 1674 Second Tantrik Coronation of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. 1780 Benedict Arnold flees to British Army lines when the arrest of British Major John Andr exposes Arnold's plot to surrender West Point.

1789 The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act which creates the office of the United States Attorney General and the federal judiciary system, and orders the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

1841 The Sultan of Brunei cedes Sarawak to the United Kingdom. 1852 The first airship powered by (a steam) engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.

1869 "Black Friday": Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.

 

1877 Battle of Shiroyama, decisive victory of the Imperial Japanese Army over the Satsuma Rebellion 1890 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.

548

1906 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument.

1935 Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom produce the first rodeo ever held outdoors under electric lights at Columbia, Mississippi

  

1946 Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong. 1948 The Honda Motor Company is founded. 1950 Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada and New England. A blue moon (in the astronomical sense) is seen as far away as Europe.

 

1957 Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona. 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.

    

1962 United States court of appeals orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith. 1968 60 Minutes debuts on CBS. 1968 Swaziland joins the United Nations. 1973 Guinea-Bissau declares its independence from Portugal. 1979 Compu-Serve launches the first consumer internet service, which features the first public electronic mail service.

1988 National League for Democracy is formed by Aung San Suu Kyi and various others to help fight against dictatorship in Myanmar.

  

1990 Periodic Great White Spot is observed on Saturn. 1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations. 2005 Hurricane Rita makes landfall in the United States, devastating Beaumont, Texas and portions of southwestern Louisiana.

 

2007 The Indian Cricket Team wins the Twenty20 World Cup in the final against Pakistan. 2008 The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level.

2009 The G20 summit begins in Pittsburgh with 30 global leaders in attendance. It marks the first use of LRAD in U.S. history.

SEPTEMBER 25
 
275 In Rome, (after the assassination of Aurelian), the Senate proclaims Marcus Claudius Tacitus Emperor. 303 On a voyage preaching the gospel, Saint Fermin of Pamplona is beheaded in Amiens, France.

549

    

1066 The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England. 1396 Ottoman Emperor Bayezid I defeats a Christian army at the Battle of Nicopolis. 1513 Spanish explorer Vasco Nez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean. 1555 The Peace of Augsburg is signed in Augsburg by Charles V and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League. 1690 Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time.

1775 Ethan Allen surrenders to British forces after attempting to capture Montreal during the Battle of LonguePointe. At the same time, Benedict Arnold and his expeditionary company set off from Fort Western, bound for Quebec City (Invasion of Canada (1775)).

1789 The U.S. Congress passes twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.

1804 The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for moving further upriver.

 

1846 U.S. forces led by Zachary Taylor capture the Mexican city of Monterrey. 1868 The Imperial Russian steam frigate Alexander Neuski is shipwrecked off Jutland while carrying Grand Duke Alexei of Russia.

 

1890 The U.S. Congress establishes Sequoia National Park. 1906 In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.

   

1911 Ground is broken for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. 1912 Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York, New York. 1915 World War I: The Second Battle of Champagne begins. 1929 Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.

1942 World War II: Swiss Police Instruction of September 25, 1942 this instruction denied entry into Switzerland to Jewish refugees.

1944 World War II: Surviving elements of the British 1st Airborne Division withdraw from Arnhem in the Netherlands, thus ending the Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden.

  

1955 The Royal Jordanian Air Force is founded. 1956 TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, is inaugurated. 1957 Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops.

550

1959 Solomon Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is mortally wounded by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama, and dies the next day.

1962 The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.

1970 Cease-fire between Jordan and the Fedayeen ends fighting triggered by four hijackings on September 6 and 9.

  

1972 In a referendum, the people of Norway reject membership of the European Community. 1977 About 4,200 people take part in the first running of the Chicago Marathon. 1978 PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727-214, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 and crashes in San Diego, California, resulting in the deaths of 144 people.

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the 102nd person sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and the first woman to hold the office.

 

1981 Belize joins the United Nations. 1983 Maze Prison escape: 38 republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison. It is the largest prison escape since WWII and in British history.

1992 NASA launched a $511 million probe to Mars in the first U.S. mission to the planet in 17 years. Eleven months later, the probe would fail.

    

1996 The last of the Magdalene Asylums closes in Ireland. 2002 The Vitim event, a possible bolide impact in Siberia, Russia. 2003 A magnitude-8.0 earthquake strikes just offshore Hokkaid , Japan. 2008 China launches the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a joint TV appearance for a G-20 summit, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility.

2010 Mahmoud Abbas speaks at United Nations General Assembly to request that Israel is to cease its policy of building settlements in the West Bank.

SEPTEMBER 26

46 BC Julius Caesar dedicates a temple to his mythical ancestor Venus Genetrix in accordance with a vow he made at the battle of Pharsalus.

  

715 Ragenfrid defeats Theudoald at the Battle of Compigne. 1212 Golden Bull of Sicily is certified as an hereditary royal title in Bohemia for the P emyslid dynasty. 1580 Sir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth.

551

1687 The Parthenon in Athens is partially destroyed by an explosion caused by the bombing from Venetian forces led by Morosini who are besieging the Ottoman Turks stationed in Athens.

1687 The city council of Amsterdam votes to support William of Orange's invasion of England, which became the Glorious Revolution.

  

1777 British troops occupy Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution. 1783 The first battle of Shays' Rebellion begins. 1789 Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first United States Secretary of State, John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States,Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph is appointed the first United States Attorney General.

 

1792 Marc-David Lasource begins accusing Maximilien Robespierre of wanting a dictatorship for France. 1810 A new Act of Succession is adopted by the Riksdag of the Estates and Jean Baptiste Bernadotte becomes heir to the Swedish throne.

1820 Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved tomatoes weren't poisonous by eating several on the steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey.

  

1872 The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) is established in New York City. 1907 New Zealand and Newfoundland each become dominions within the British Empire. 1908 Ed Reulbach becomes the first and only pitcher to throw two shutouts in one day against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

     

1914 The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established by the Federal Trade Commission Act. 1918 World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, begins. 1923 Gustav Stresemann resumes the Weimar Republic's payment of reparations. 1934 Steamship RMS Queen Mary is launched. 1944 World War II: Operation Market Garden fails. 1944 World War II: On the central front of the Gothic Line Brazilian troops control the Serchio valley region after ten days of fighting.

   

1950 United Nations troops recapture Seoul from the North Koreans. 1950 Indonesia is admitted to the United Nations. 1954 Japanese rail ferry Toya Maru sinks during a typhoon in the Tsugaru Strait, Japan killing 1,172. 1960 In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

   

1960 Fidel Castro announces Cuba's support for the U.S.S.R. 1962 The Yemen Arab Republic is proclaimed. 1970 The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, California, burning 175,425 acres (710 km ). 1973 Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time.

552

 

1981 Baseball: Nolan Ryan sets a Major League record by throwing his fifth no-hitter. 1983 Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike.

  

1984 The United Kingdom agrees to the handover of Hong Kong 1997 A Garuda Indonesia Airbus A-300 crashes near Medan, Indonesia, airport, killing 234. 1997 An earthquake strikes the Italian regions of Umbria and the Marche, causing part of the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi to collapse.

2000 Anti-globalization protests in Prague (some 20,000 protesters) turn violent during the IMF and World Bank summits.

  

2000 The MS Express Samina sinks off Paros in the Agean sea killing 80 passengers. 2002 The overcrowded Senegalese ferry MV Joola capsizes off the coast of Gambia killing more than 1,000. 2008 Swiss pilot and inventor Yves Rossy becomes first person to fly a jet engine-powered wing across the English Channel.

2009 Typhoon Ketsana (2009) hit the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, causing 700 fatalities.

SEPTEMBER 27
 
489 Odoacer attacks Theodoric at the Battle of Verona, and is defeated again. 1066 William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the Somme River, beginning the Norman Conquest of England.

 

1331 The Battle of P owce between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order is fought. 1422 after the brief Gollub War the Teutonic Knights sign the Treaty of Melno with the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania

  

1529 The Siege of Vienna begins when Suleiman I attacks the city. 1540 The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) receives its charter from Pope Paul III. 1590 Pope Urban VII dies 13 days after being chosen as the Pope, making his reign the shortest papacy in history.

 

1605 The armies of Sweden are defeated by the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in the Battle of Kircholm. 1669 The Venetians surrender the fortress of Candia to the Ottomans, thus ending the 21-year long Siege of Candia.

  

1777 Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States, for one day. 1821 Mexico gains its independence from Spain. 1822 Jean-Franois Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta stone.

553

1825 The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens, and begins operation of the world's first service of locomotivehauled passenger trains.

1854 The steamship SS Arctic sinks with 300 people on board. This marks the first great disaster in the Atlantic Ocean.

 

1903 Wreck of the Old 97, a train crash made famous by the song of the same name. 1905 The physics journal Annalen der Physik published Albert Einstein's paper "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", introducing the equation E=mc.

    

1908 The first production of the Ford Model T automobile was built at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan. 1916 Iyasu is proclaimed deposed as ruler of Ethiopia in a palace coup in favor of his aunt Zauditu. 1922 King Constantine I of Greece abdicates his throne in favor of his eldest son, King George II. 1928 The Republic of China is recognised by the United States. 1930 Bobby Jones wins the U.S. Amateur Championship to complete the Grand Slam of golf. The old structure of the grand slam was the U.S. Open, British Open, U.S. Amateur, and British Amateur.

    

1937 Balinese Tiger declared extinct. 1938 Ocean liner Queen Elizabeth launched in Glasgow. 1940 World War II: The Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin by Germany, Japan and Italy. 1941 The SS Patrick Henry is launched becoming the first of more than 2,700 Liberty ships. 1942 Last day of the September Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps troops barely escape after being surrounded by Japanese forces near theMatanikau River.

 

1944 The Kassel Mission results in the largest loss by a USAAF group on any mission in World War II. 1949 The first Plenary Session of the National People's Congress approves the design of the Flag of the People's Republic of China.

 

1954 The nationwide debut of Tonight! (The Tonight Show) hosted by Steve Allen on NBC. 1956 USAF Captain Milburn G. Apt becomes the first man to exceed Mach 3 while flying the Bell X-2. Shortly thereafter, the craft goes out of control and Captain Apt is killed.

  

1959 Nearly 5000 people die on the main Japanese island of Honsh 1961 Sierra Leone joins the United Nations.

as the result of a typhoon.

1964 The Warren Commission releases its report, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

 

1964 The British TSR-2 aircraft XR219 makes its maiden flight from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. 1968 The stage musical Hair opens at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, where it played 1,998 performances until its closure was forced by the roof collapsing in July 1973.

1977 The 300 metre tall CKVR-TV transmission tower in Barrie, Ontario, Canada is hit by a light aircraft in a fog, causing it to collapse. All aboard the aircraft are killed.

554

1979 The United States Department of Education receives final approval from the U.S. Congress to become the 13th US Cabinet agency.

  

1983 Richard Stallman announces the GNU project to develop a free Unix-like operating system. 1993 The Sukhumi massacre takes place in Abkhazia. 1995 The Government of the United States unveils the first of its redesigned bank notes with the $100 bill featuring a larger portrait of Benjamin Franklin slightly off-center.

1996 In Afghanistan, the Taliban capture the capital city Kabul after driving out President Burhanuddin Rabbani and executing former leader Mohammad Najibullah.

1996 The Julie N. tanker ship crashes into the Million Dollar Bridge in Portland, Maine spilling thousands of gallons of oil.

    

1997 Communications are suddenly lost with the Mars Pathfinder space probe. 2001 Zug massacre: In Zug, Switzerland, Friedrich Leibacher shoots 18 citizens, killing 14 and then kills himself. 2002 Timor-Leste (East Timor) joins the United Nations. 2003 Smart 1 satellite is launched. 2008 CNSA astronaut Zhai Zhigang becomes the first Chinese person to perform a spacewalk while flying on Shenzhou 7.

SEPTEMBER 28
   
48 BC Pompey the Great is assassinated on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt. 235 Pope Pontian resigns. He and Hippolytus, church leader of Rome, are exiled to the mines of Sardinia. 351 Battle of Mursa Major: the Roman Emperor Constantius II defeats the usurper Magnentius. 365 Roman usurper Procopius bribes two legions passing by Constantinople, and proclaims himself Roman emperor.

 

935 Saint Wenceslas is murdered by his brother, Boleslaus I of Bohemia. 995 Members of Slavnk's dynasty Spytimr, Pobraslav, Po ej and son, Boleslaus II the Pious. slav are murdered by Boleslaus's

     

1066 William the Bastard (as he was known at the time) invades England beginning the Norman Conquest. 1106 The Battle of Tinchebrai Henry I of England defeats his brother, Robert Curthose. 1238 Muslim Valencia surrenders to the besieging King James I of Aragon the Conqueror. 1322 Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor defeats Frederick I of Austria in the Battle of Mhldorf. 1448 Christian I is crowned king of Denmark. 1542 Navigator Joo Rodrigues Cabrilho of Portugal arrives at what is now San Diego, California, United States.

555

 

1708 Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya. 1779 American Revolution: Samuel Huntington is elected President of the Continental Congress, succeeding John Jay.

1781 American forces backed by a French fleet begin the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, during the American Revolutionary War.

1787 The newly completed United States Constitution is voted on by the U.S. Congress to be sent to the state legislatures for approval.

     

1791 France becomes the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population. 1844 Oscar I of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden. 1867 Toronto becomes the capital of Ontario. 1867 The United States takes control of Midway Island. 1868 Battle of Alcolea causes Queen Isabella II of Spain to flee to France. 1889 The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.

 

1928 The U.K. Parliament passes the Dangerous Drugs Act outlawing cannabis. 1928 Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.

    

1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion during World War II. 1939 Warsaw surrenders to Nazi Germany during World War II. 1944 Soviet Army troops liberate Klooga concentration camp in Klooga, Estonia. 1950 Indonesia joins the United Nations. 1951 CBS makes the first color televisions available for sale to the general public, but the product is discontinued less than month later.

1958 France ratifies a new Constitution of France; the French Fifth Republic is then formed upon the formal adoption of the new constitution on October 4. Guinea rejects the newconstitution, voting for independence instead.

 

1960 Mali and Senegal join the United Nations. 1961 A military coup in Damascus effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.

 

1962 The Paddington tram depot fire destroys 65 trams in Brisbane, Australia. 1971 The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 banning the medicinal use of cannabis.

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1973 The ITT Building in New York City is bombed in protest at ITT's alleged involvement in the September 11 1973 coup d'tat in Chile.

 

1975 The Spaghetti House siege, in which nine people are taken hostage, takes place in London. 1987 The beginning of the Palestinian civil disobedience uprising, "The First Intifada" against the Israeli occupation.

    

1994 The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in Baltic Sea, killing 852 people. 1995 Bob Denard and a group of mercenaries take the islands of Comoros in a coup. 2000 Al-Aqsa Intifada: Ariel Sharon visits Al Aqsa Mosque known to Jews as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 2008 SpaceX launches the first ever private spacecraft, the Falcon 1 into orbit. 2009 The military junta leading Guinea, headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, sexually assaulted, killed and wounded protesters during a protest rally in a stadium calledStade du 28 Septembre.

SEPTEMBER 29
  
522 BC Darius I of Persia kills the Magian usurper Gaumta, securing his hold as king of the Persian Empire. 480 BC Battle of Salamis: The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeats the Persian fleet under Xerxes I. 61 BC Pompey the Great celebrates his third triumph for victories over the pirates and the end of the Mithridatic Wars on his 45th birthday.

1227 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades.

   

1364 Battle of Auray: English forces defeat the French in Brittany; end of the Breton War of Succession. 1567 At a dinner, the Duke of Alba arrests the Count of Egmont and the Count of Hoorn for treason. 1650 Henry Robinson opens his Office of Addresses and Encounters in Threadneedle Street, London. 1717 An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city's architecture and making authorities consider moving the capital to a different city.

1789 The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

  

1789 The 1st United States Congress adjourns. 1829 The Metropolitan Police of London, later also known as the Met, is founded. 1848 Battle of Pkozd: Hungarian forces defeat Croats at Pkozd; the first battle of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

 

1850 The Roman Catholic hierarchy is re-established in England and Wales by Pope Pius IX. 1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Chaffin's Farm is fought.

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1885 The first practical public electric tramway in the world is opened in Blackpool, England. 1907 The cornerstone is laid at Washington National Cathedral in the U.S. capital. 1911 Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire. 1916 John D. Rockefeller becomes the second billionaire. 1918 World War I: The Hindenburg Line is broken by Allied forces. Bulgaria signs an armistice. 1932 Chaco War: Last day of the Battle of Boquern between Paraguay and Bolivia. 1941 World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C begins the Babi Yar massacre, according to the Einsatzgruppen operational situation report.

1943 World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign an armistice aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta.

 

1949 The Communist Party of China writes the Common Programme for the future People's Republic of China. 1951 The first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast in the United States, a college football game between Duke and the University of Pittsburgh, is televised on NBC.

 

1954 The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed. 1957 20 MCi (740 petabecquerels) of radioactive material is released in an explosion at the Soviet Mayak nuclear plant at Chelyabinsk.

1960 Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.

      

1962 Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite, is launched. 1963 The second period of the Second Vatican Council opens. 1963 The University of East Anglia is established in Norwich, England. 1964 The Argentine comic strip Mafalda is published for the first time. 1966 The Chevrolet Camaro, originally named Panther, is introduced. 1971 Oman joins the Arab League. 1972 Sino-Japanese relations: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China after breaking official ties with the Republic of China.

 

1975 WGPR in Detroit, Michigan, becomes the world's first black-owned-and-operated television station. 1979 Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to set foot on Irish soil with his pastoral visit to the Republic of Ireland.

 

1982 The 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders begin when the first of seven individuals dies in metropolitan Chicago. 1988 Space Shuttle: NASA launches STS-26, the return to flight mission, after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

 

1990 Construction of the Washington National Cathedral is completed. 1990 The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time.

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1991 Military coup in Haiti (1991 Haitian coup d'tat).

1992 Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello resigns. 1995 The United States Navy disbands Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84), nicknamed the "Jolly Rogers". 2001 The Syracuse Herald-Journal, a U.S. newspaper dating back to 1839, ceases publication. 2004 The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth. 2004 The Burt Rutan Ansari X Prize entry SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the prize.

  

2005 United States Senate confirms John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States. 2006 US Representative Mark Foley resigns after allegations of inappropriate emails. 2006 Gol Transportes Areos Flight 1907 collides in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet near Peixoto de Azevedo, Mato Grosso, Brazil, killing 154 total people, and triggering a Brazilian aviation crisis.

 

2007 Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear power station, is demolished in a controlled explosion. 2008 Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.

2009 An 8.0 magnitude earthquake near the Samoan Islands causes a tsunami.

SEPTEMBER 30
  
1399 Henry IV is proclaimed King of England. 1744 France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo. 1791 The Magic Flute, the last opera composed by Mozart, receives its premiere performance at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna,Austria.

1791 The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jrme Ption as "incorruptible patriots".

  

1813 Battle of Brbula: Simn Bolvar defeats Santiago Bobadilla. 1860 Britain's first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside. 1882 The world's first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River inAppleton, Wisconsin, United States.

   

1888 Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. 1895 Madagascar becomes a French protectorate. 1901 Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner. 1903 The new Gresham's School is officially opened by Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood.

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1906 The Real Academia Galega, Galician language's biggest linguistic authority, starts working in Havana. 1907 McKinley National Memorial, final resting place of assassinated U.S. President William McKinley and his family, dedicated in Canton, Ohio.

   

1927 Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season. 1931 Start of "Die Voortrekkers" youth movement for Afrikaners in Bloemfontein, South Africa. 1935 The Hoover Dam, astride the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated. 1938 At 2:00 am, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

           

1938 The League of Nations unanimously outlaws "intentional bombings of civilian populations". 1939 General W adys aw Sikorski becomes commander-in-chief of the Polish Government in exile. 1941 World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C complete Babi Yar massacre. 1945 The Bourne End rail crash, in Hertfordshire, England, kills 43 1947 The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Yemen join the United Nations. 1947 The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time. 1949 The Berlin Airlift ends. 1954 The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world's first nuclear reactor powered vessel. 1955 Film star James Dean dies in a road accident aged 24. 1962 Mexican-American labor leader Csar Chvez founds the United Farm Workers. 1962 James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation. 1965 General Suharto rises to power after an alleged coup by the Communist Party of Indonesia. In response, Suharto and his army massacre over a million Indonesians suspected of being communists.

 

1965 The Lockheed L-100, the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, is introduced. 1966 The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana. Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.

1967 BBC Radio 1 is launched and Tony Blackburn presents its first show; the BBC's other national radio stations also adopt numeric names.

 

1968 The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory. 1970 Jordan makes a deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson's Field hijackings.

  

1972 Roberto Clemente records the 3,000th and final hit of his career. 1975 The Hughes (later McDonnell-Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight. 1977 Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program's ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down.

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1979 The Hong Kong MTR commences service with the opening of its Modified Initial System (aka. Kwun Tong Line).

  

1980 Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation. 1982 Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago area. Seven are killed in all. 1986 Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel's covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy by the Israeli Mossad.

  

1990 The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights in Canada's capital city of Ottawa. 1991 President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office. 1993 An earthquake hits India's Latur and Osmanabad district of Marathwada (Aurangabad division) in Maharashtra state leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

1994 Aldwych tube station (originally Strand Station) of the London Underground closes after eighty-eight years of service.

1999 Japan's second worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing facility in T kai-mura, northeast of Tokyo.

 

2004 The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat are taken 600 miles south of Tokyo. 2004 The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat is retired.

2005 The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

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OCTOBER
OCTOBER 1
         
331 BC Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela. 959 Edgar the Peaceable becomes king of all England. 1189 Gerard de Ridefort, grandmaster of the Knights Templar since 1184, is killed in the Siege of Acre. 1553 Coronation of Queen Mary I of England 1787 Russians under Alexander Suvorov defeat the Turks at Kinburn. 1791 First session of the French Legislative Assembly. 1795 Belgium is conquered by France. 1800 Spain cedes Louisiana to France via the Treaty of San Ildefonso. 1811 The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orlans, Louisiana. 1814 Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw Europe's political map after the defeat of Napolon the previous spring.

1827 The Russian army under Ivan Paskevich storms Yerevan, ending a millennium of Muslim domination in Armenia.

1829 South African College is founded in Cape Town, South Africa; it will later separate into the University of Cape Town and the South African College Schools.

  

1843 The News of the World tabloid begins publication in London. 1847 German inventor and industrialist Werner von Siemens founds Siemens AG & Halske. 1854 The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American system of watch manufacturing.

    

1869 Austria issues the world's first postcards. 1880 John Philip Sousa becomes leader of the United States Marine Band. 1880 First electric lamp factory is opened by Thomas Edison. 1887 Balochistan is conquered by the British Empire. 1890 The Yosemite National Park and the Yellowstone National Park are established by the U.S. Congress.

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1891 In the U.S. state of California, Stanford University opens its doors. 1898 Czar Nikolay II expels Jews from major Russian cities. 1898 The Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is founded under the name k.u.k. Exportakademie.

 

1903 Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series. 1905 Franti ek Pavlk is killed in a demonstration in Prague, inspiring Leo Jan ek to the piano composition 1. X. 1905.

 

1908 Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825. 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing: A large bomb destroys the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles, California, killing 21.

                      

1918 World War I: Arab forces under T. E. Lawrence (a/k/a "Lawrence of Arabia") capture Damascus. 1920 Sir Percy Cox lands in Basra to assume his responsibilities as high commissioner in Iraq. 1928 The Soviet Union introduces its First Five-Year Plan. 1931 The George Washington Bridge linking New Jersey and New York opens. 1936 Francisco Franco is named head of the Nationalist government of Spain. 1937 The Japanese city Handa is founded in Aichi Prefecture. 1938 Germany annexes the Sudetenland. 1939 After a one-month Siege of Warsaw, hostile forces enter the city. 1940 The Pennsylvania Turnpike, often considered the first superhighway in the United States, opens to traffic. 1942 USS Grouper torpedoes Lisbon Maru not knowing she is carrying British PoWs from Hong Kong 1942 First flight of the Bell XP-59 "Aircomet". 1943 World War II: Naples falls to Allied soldiers. 1946 Nazi leaders are sentenced at Nuremberg Trials. 1946 Mensa International is founded in the United Kingdom. 1947 The F-86 Sabre flies for the first time. 1949 The People's Republic of China is established and declared by Mao Zedong. 1957 First appearance of In God We Trust on U.S. paper currency. 1958 NASA is created to replace NACA. 1960 Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1961 East and West Cameroon merge to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. 1962 First broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 1964 The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. 1964 Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") begin high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka.

563

1965 Apostasia of 1965, a political move in Greece designed to overthrow the Prime Minister, George Papandreou.

 

1965 General Suharto crushes an attempted coup in Indonesia. 1966 West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with eighteen fatalities and no survivors 5.5 miles south of Wemme, Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9.

   

1968 The Guyanese government takes over the British Guiana Broadcasting Service (BGBS). 1969 Concorde breaks the sound barrier for the first time. 1971 Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida, United States. 1975 The Seychelles gain internal self-government. The Ellice Islands split from Gilbert Islands and take the name Tuvalu.

    

1975 Thrilla in Manila: Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines. 1978 Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1978 The Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party is founded. 1979 The United States returns sovereignty of the Panama canal to Panama. 1982 Helmut Kohl replaces Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor of Germany through a Constructive Vote of No Confidence.

      

1982 EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States. 1982 Sony launches the first consumer compact disc player (model CDP-101). 1985 The Israeli air force bombs PLO Headquarters in Tunis. 1987 The Whittier Narrows earthquake shakes the San Gabriel Valley, registering as magnitude 5.9. 1989 Denmark introduces the world's first legal modern same-sex civil union called "registered partnership". 1991 New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 comes into force. 1992 Turkish destroyer TCG Muavenet is crippled causing 27 deaths and injuries, by missiles negligently launched by U.S. aircraft carrier USS Saratoga.

1994 Palau gains independence from the United Nations (trusteeship administered by the United States of America).

 

1998 Vladimir Putin becomes a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. 2009 The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over the judicial functions of the House of Lords.

OCTOBER 2
  
1187 Siege of Jerusalem: Saladin captures Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule. 1263 The battle of Largs is fought between Norwegians and Scots. 1535 Jacques Cartier discovers Montreal, Quebec.

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1552 Conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. 1780 John Andr, British Army officer of the American Revolutionary War, is hanged as a spy by American forces.

1789 George Washington sends the proposed Constitutional amendments (The United States Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.

1814 Battle of Rancagua: Spanish Royalists troops under Mariano Osorio defeated rebel Chilean forces of Bernardo O'Higgins and Jose Miguel Carrera.

1835 The Texas Revolution begins with the Battle of Gonzales: Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, Texas, but encounter stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Saltville Union forces attack Saltville, Virginia, but are defeated by Confederate troops.

1889 In Colorado, Nicholas Creede strikes it rich in silver during the last great silver boom of the American Old West.

   

1919 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed. 1924 The Geneva Protocol is adopted as a means to strengthen the League of Nations. 1925 John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system. 1928 The "Prelature of the Holy Cross and the Work of God", commonly known as Opus Dei, is founded by Saint Josemara Escriv.

       

1941 World War II: In Operation Typhoon, Germany begins an all-out offensive against Moscow. 1944 World War II: Nazi troops end the Warsaw Uprising. 1950 Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published 1958 Guinea declares its independence from France. 1959 The anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS television. 1967 Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of United States Supreme Court. 1968 A peaceful student demonstration in Mexico City culminates in the Tlatelolco massacre. 1970 A plane carrying the Wichita State University football team, administrators, and supporters crashes in Colorado killing 31 people.

1990 Xiamen Airlines Flight 8301 is hijacked; after landing at Guangzhou, it crashes into two airliners on the ground, killing 132 people.

  

1992 The Carandiru Massacre takes place after a riot in the Carandiru Penitentiary in So Paulo, Brazil. 1996 The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton. 1996 Aeroper Flight 603, a Boeing 757, crashes into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Lima, Peru, killing 70.

2001 NATO backs U.S. military strikes following 9/11.

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2001 Swissair liquidates and the airline is replaced by SWISS. 2002 The Beltway sniper attacks begin, extending over three weeks. 2005 Ethan Allen Boating Accident: The Ethan Allen tour boat capsizes on Lake George in Upstate New York, killing twenty people.

2006 Five school girls are murdered by Charles Carl Roberts in a shooting at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before Roberts commits suicide.

2007 President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea walks across the Military Demarcation Line into North Korea on his way to the second Inter-Korean Summit with North Korean leaderKim Jong Il.

OCTOBER 3

52 BC Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia.

42 BC First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a decisive battle with Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius.

1283 Dafydd ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd in Wales, becomes the first person executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered.

 

1574 The Siege of Leiden is lifted by the Watergeuzen. 1683 The Qing Dynasty naval commander Shi Lang reaches Taiwan (under the Kingdom of Tungning) to receive the formal surrender of Zheng Keshuang and Liu Guoxuan after the Battle of Penghu.

 

1712 The Duke of Montrose issues a warrant for the arrest of Rob Roy MacGregor. 1739 The Treaty of Nissa is signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the finish of the Russian-Turkish War, 17361739.

 

1778 British Captain James Cook anchors in Alaska. 1795 General Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence being named to defend the French National Convention against armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the three year old revolutionary government.

 

1835 The Staedtler Company is founded in Nuremberg, Germany. 1849 American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.

1863 The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by President Abraham Lincoln as are Thursdays, November 30, 1865 and November 29, 1866.

 

1873 Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War. 1908 The Pravda newspaper is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.

1918 King Boris III of Bulgaria accedes to the throne.

566

1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, "Land of the South Slavs".

  

1932 Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1935 Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italy invades Ethiopia under General de Bono. 1942 Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemnde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.

1950 Korean War: The First Battle of Maryang San, primarily pitting Australian and British forces against communist China, begins.

1951 The "Shot Heard 'Round the World", one of the greatest moments in Major League Baseball history, occurs when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hits a game winninghome run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.

   

1952 The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon. 1955 The Mickey Mouse Club debuts on ABC. 1957 Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems is ruled not obscene. 1962 Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a sixorbit, nine-hour flight.

 

1964 First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. 1981 The Hunger Strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after seven months and ten deaths.

  

1985 The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J) 1986 TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened. 1990 Re-unification of Germany. The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day.

1993 Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.

 

1995 O J Simpson acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. 2003 Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show's tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.

2008 The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the US financial system is signed by President Bush.

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OCTOBER 4

610 Heraclius arrives by ship from Africa at Constantinople, overthrows Byzantine Emperor Phocas and becomes Emperor.

   

663 The battle of Baekgang begins. (Traditional Chinese date: August 28, 663). 1209 Otto IV is crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Innocent III. 1227 Assassination of Caliph al-Adil. 1363 End of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the Chinese rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang defeat that of his rival, Chen Youliang, in one of the largest naval battles in history.

1511 Formation of the Holy League of Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Papal States and the Republic of Venice against France.

1535 The first complete English-language Bible (the Coverdale Bible) is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.

1582 Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.

   

1636 The Swedish Army defeats the armies of Saxony and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Wittstock. 1693 Battle of Marsaglia: Piedmontese troops are defeated by the French. 1725 Foundation of Rosario in Argentina. 1777 Battle of Germantown: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under Sir William Howe.

 

1779 The Fort Wilson Riot takes place. 1795 Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence with a "Whiff of Grapeshot", using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).

   

1824 Mexico adopts a new constitution and becomes a federal republic. 1830 Creation of the state of Belgium after separation from The Netherlands. 1853 Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia. 1876 Texas A&M University opens as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, becoming the first public institution of higher education in Texas.

  

1883 First run of the Orient Express. 1883 First meeting of the Boys' Brigade in Glasgow, Scotland. 1895 The first U.S. Open Men's Golf Championship administered by the United States Golf Association is played at the Newport Country Club in Newport, Rhode Island.

568

1918 An explosion kills more than 100 and destroys the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant in Sayreville, New Jersey. Fires and explosions continue for three days forcing massive evacuations and spreading ordnance over a wide area, pieces of which were still being found in 2007.

       

1927 Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore. 1940 Meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at the Brenner Pass. 1941 Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis character debuts on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. 1943 World War II: U.S. captures Solomon Islands. 1957 Space Race: Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. 1957 Avro Arrow roll-out ceremony at Avro Canada plant in Malton, Ontario. 1958 Fifth Republic of France is established. 1960 Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 of 72 on board.

1965 Becoming the first Pope to ever visit the United States of America and the Western hemisphere, Pope Paul VI arrives in New York.

   

1966 Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho. 1967 Omar Ali Saifuddin III of Brunei abdicates in favour of his son, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. 1976 Official launch of the Intercity 125 High Speed Train (HST). 1983 Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 mph (1,019 km/h), driving Thrust 2 at the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

    

1985 Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, United States. 1988 U.S. televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted for fraud. 1991 The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature. 1992 The Rome General Peace Accords ends a 16 year civil war in Mozambique. 1992 El Al Flight 1862: an El Al Boeing 747-258F crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground.

1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis: In Moscow, tanks bombard the White House, a government building that housed the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against PresidentBoris Yeltsin rally outside.

1997 The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs at the Charlotte, North Carolina office of Loomis, Fargo and Company. An FBI investigation eventually results in 24 convictions and the recovery of approximately 95% of the $17.3 million in cash which had been taken.

 

2001 NATO confirms invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. 2001 Siberia Airlines Flight 1812: a Sibir Airlines Tupolev TU-154 crashes into the Black Sea after being struck by an errant Ukrainian S-200 missile. 78 people are killed.

569

2003 Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel: 21 Israelis, Jews and Arabs, are killed, and 51 others wounded.

2004 SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, by being the first private craft to fly into space.

OCTOBER 5
 
610 Coronation of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius 869 The Fourth Council of Constantinople is convened to decide about what to do about Patriarch Photius of Constantinople.

  

1143 King Alfonso VII of Len recognises Portugal as a Kingdom. 1550 Foundation of Concepcin, city in Chile. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

 

1665 The University of Kiel is founded. 1789 French Revolution: Women of Paris march to Versailles in the March on Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread, and have the King and his court moved to Paris.

   

1793 French Revolution: Christianity is disestablished in France. 1857 The City of Anaheim is founded. 1864 The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die. 1869 The Saxby Gale devastates the Bay of Fundy region of Maritime Canada. The storm had been predicted over a year before by a British naval officer.

  

1877 Chief Joseph surrenders his Nez Perce band to General Nelson A. Miles. 1895 The first individual time trial for racing cyclists is held on a 50-mile course north of London. 1903 Sir Samuel Griffith is appointed the first Chief Justice of Australia and Sir Edmund Barton and Richard O'Connor are appointed as foundation justices.

1905 Wilbur Wright pilots Wright Flyer III in a flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes, a world record that stood until 1908.

     

1910 In a revolution in Portugal the monarchy is overthrown and a republic is declared . 1914 World War I: first aerial combat resulting in a kill. 1915 Bulgaria enters World War I as one of the Central Powers. 1921 Baseball: The World Series is broadcast on the radio for the first time. 1930 British Airship R101 crashes in France en-route to India on its maiden voyage. 1936 The Jarrow March sets off for London.

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1944 Royal Canadian Air Force pilots shoot down the first German jet fighter over France. 1944 Suffrage is extended to women in France. 1945 Hollywood Black Friday: A six-month strike by Hollywood set decorators turns into a bloody riot at the gates of Warner Brothers' studios.

    

1947 The first televised White House address is given by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. 1948 The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000. 1953 The first documented recovery meeting of Narcotics Anonymous is held. 1962 Dr. No, the first in the James Bond film series, is released. 1966 Near Detroit, Michigan, there is a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor.

1968 Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland considered to mark the beginning of The Troubles.

  

1969 The first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus airs on BBC. 1970 The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is founded. 1970 Montreal, Quebec: British Trade Commissioner James Cross is kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group, triggering the October Crisis.

 

1973 Signature of the European Patent Convention. 1974 Guildford pub bombings: bombs planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) kill four British soldiers and one civilian.

 

1981 Raoul Wallenberg becomes an honorary U.S. citizen. 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders: Johnson & Johnson initiates a nationwide product recall in the United States for all products in its Tylenol brand after several bottles in Chicago are found to have been laced with cyanide, resulting in seven deaths.

 

1984 Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. 1986 Israeli secret nuclear weapons are revealed. The British newspaper The Sunday Times runs Mordechai Vanunu's story on its front page under the headline: "Revealed the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal".

1988 The Chilean opposition coalition Concertacin (center-left) defeats Augusto Pinochet in his re-election attempt and a general election is called the following year.

1990 After one hundred and fifty years The Herald broadsheet newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, is published for the last time as a separate newspaper.

  

1991 An Indonesian military transport crashes after takeoff from Jakarta killing 137. 1991 The first official version of the Linux kernel, version 0.02, is released. 1999 The Ladbroke Grove rail crash in west London kills 31 people.

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2000 Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milo evi . These demonstrations are often called the Bulldozer Revolution.

2001 Robert Stevens becomes the first victim in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

OCTOBER 6
 
105 BC Battle of Arausio: The Cimbri inflict the heaviest defeat on the Roman army of Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. 69 BC Battle of Tigranocerta: Forces of the Roman Republic defeat the army of the Kingdom of Armenia led by King Tigranes the Great.

 

68 BC Battle of Artaxata: Lucullus averts the bad omen of this day by defeating Tigranes the Great of Armenia. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day is skipped in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1600 Jacopo Peri's Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, receives its premire performance in Florence, signifying the beginning of the Baroque Period

1683 William Penn brings 13 German immigrant families to the colony of Pennsylvania, marking the first major immigration of German people toAmerica.

1762 Seven Years' War: conclusion of the Battle of Manila between Britain and Spain, which resulted in the British occupation of Manila for the rest of the war.

1789 French Revolution: Louis XVI returns to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women on 5 October

 

1849 The execution of the 13 Martyrs of Arad after the Hungarian war of independence. 1854 The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead starts shortly after midnight, leading to 53 deaths and hundreds injured.

       

1884 The Naval War College of the United States Navy is founded in Newport, Rhode Island. 1889 Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture. 1908 Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1923 The great powers of World War I withdraw from Istanbul 1927 Opening of The Jazz Singer, the first prominent talking movie. 1928 Chiang Kai-Shek becomes Chairman of the Republic of China. 1939 World War II: The last Polish army is defeated. 1945 Baseball: Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat are ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series (see Curse of the Billy Goat).

1973 Egypt launches a coordinated attack with Syria against Israel leading to the Yom Kippur War.

572

1976 Cubana Flight 455 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados after two bombs, placed on board by terrorists with connections to theCIA, exploded. All 73 people on board are killed.

1976 New Premier Hua Guofeng orders the arrest of the Gang of Four and associates and ends the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China.

1976 Massacre of students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of exdictator Thanom, by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.

1977 In Alicante, Spain, fascists attack a group of MCPV militants and sympathizers, and one MCPV sympathizer is killed.

    

1977 The first prototype of the MiG-29, designated 9-01, makes its maiden flight. 1979 Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House. 1985 PC Keith Blakelock is murdered as riots erupt in the Broadwater Farm suburb of London. 1987 Fiji becomes a republic. 1995 51 Pegasi is discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it.

   

2000 Yugoslav president Slobodan Milo evi resigns. 2000 Argentine vice president Carlos lvarez resigns. 2002 The French oil tanker Limburg is bombed off Yemen. 2007 Jason Lewis completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe.

OCTOBER 7
    
3761 BC The epoch (origin) of the modern Hebrew calendar (Proleptic Julian calendar). 1513 Battle of La Motta: Spanish troops under Ramn de Cardona defeat the Venetians. 1542 Explorer Cabrillo discovers Santa Catalina Island off the California coast. 1571 The Battle of Lepanto is fought, and the Holy League (Spain and Italy) destroys the Turkish fleet. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day is skipped in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1763 George III of Great Britain issues British Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlements.

 

1776 Crown Prince Paul of Russia marries Sophie Marie Dorothea of Wrttemberg. 1777 American Revolutionary War: The Americans defeat the British in the Second Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights.

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1780 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Kings Mountain American Patriot militia defeat Loyalist irregulars led by British colonel Patrick Ferguson inSouth Carolina.

1800 French corsair Robert Surcouf, commander of the 18-gun ship La Confiance, captures the British 38gun Kent inspiring the traditional French song Le Trente-et-un du mois d'aot.

 

1826 The Granite Railway begins operations as the first chartered railway in the U.S. 1828 The city of Patras, Greece, is liberated by the French expeditionary force in the Peloponnese under General Maison.

 

1840 Willem II becomes King of the Netherlands. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Darbytown Road: the Confederate forces' attempt to regain ground that had been lost around Richmond is thwarted.

1864 American Civil War: USS Wachusett captures the CSS Florida Confederate raider while in port in Bahia, Brazil.

1868 Cornell University holds opening day ceremonies; initial student enrollment is 412, the highest at any American university to that date.

   

1870 Franco-Prussian War Siege of Paris: Leon Gambetta flees Paris in a balloon. 1879 Germany and Austria-Hungary sign the "Twofold Covenant" and create the Dual Alliance. 1912 The Helsinki Stock Exchange sees its first transaction. 1916 Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222-0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history.

1919 KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, is founded. It is the oldest airline still operating under its original name.

 

1933 Air France is inaugurated, after being formed by a merger of 5 French airlines. 1940 World War II: the McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.

1942 World War II: The October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins as United States Marine Corps forces attack Imperial Japanese Army units along the Matanikau River.

  

1944 World War II: Uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down the crematoria. 1949 The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed. 1958 President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza, with the support of General Ayub Khan and the army, suspends the 1956 constitution, imposes martial law, and cancels the elections scheduled for January 1959.

  

1958 The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury. 1959 U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon. 1960 Nigeria joins the United Nations.

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1963 John F. Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. 1971 Oman joins the United Nations. 1977 The adoption of the Fourth Soviet Constitution. 1982 Cats opens on Broadway and runs for nearly 18 years before closing on September 10, 2000. 1985 The Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestine Liberation Organization. 1985 The Mameyes landslide kills close to 300 in the worst landslide in North American history. 1991 Bombing of Banski dvori in Zagreb. 1993 The Great Flood of 1993 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage.

1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming.

 

2001 The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground. 2004 King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicates.

OCTOBER 8

314 Roman Emperor Licinius is defeated by his colleague Constantine I at the Battle of Cibalae, and loses his European territories.

451 At Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, the first session of the Council of Chalcedon begins (ends on November 1).

  

1075 Dmitar Zvonimir is crowned King of Croatia. 1200 Isabella of Angoulme is crowned Queen consort of England. 1480 Great standing on the Ugra river, a standoff between the forces of Akhmat Khan, Khan of the Great Horde, and the Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia, which results in the retreat of the Tataro-Mongols and the eventual disintegration of the Horde.

 

1573 End of the Spanish siege of Alkmaar, the first Dutch victory in Eighty Years War. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

 

1600 San Marino adopts its written constitution. 1806 Napoleonic Wars: Forces of the British Empire lay siege to the port of Boulogne in France by using Congreve rockets, invented by Sir William Congreve.

 

1813 The Treaty of Ried is signed between Bayern and Austria. 1821 The government of general Jos de San Martn establishes the Peruvian Navy.

575

 

1829 Rail transport: Stephenson's The Rocket wins The Rainhill Trials. 1856 The Second Opium War between several western powers and China begins with the Arrow Incident on the Pearl River.

 

1860 Telegraph line between Los Angeles and San Francisco opens. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Perryville Union forces under General Don Carlos Buell halt the Confederate invasion of Kentucky by defeating troops led by General Braxton Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky.

1871 Four major fires break out on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, Holland, Michigan, and Manistee, Michigan including the Great Chicago Fire, and the much deadlier Peshtigo Fire.

1879 War of the Pacific: the Chilean Navy defeats the Peruvian Navy in the Battle of Angamos, Peruvian Admiral Miguel Grau is killed in the encounter.

1895 Eulmi incident- Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, is assassinated and her corpse burnt by the Japanese in Gyeongbok Palace.

 

1912 First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against Turkey. 1918 World War I: In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack that kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.

    

1921 KDKA in Pittsburgh's Forbes Field conducts the first live broadcast of a football game. 1928 Joseph Szigeti gives the first performance of Alfredo Casella's Violin Concerto. 1932 The Indian Air Force is established. 1939 World War II: Germany annexes Western Poland. 1941 World War II: In their invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany reaches the Sea of Azov with the capture of Mariupol.

1944 World War II: The Battle of Crucifix Hill occurs on Crucifix Hill just outside Aachen. Capt. Bobbie Brown receives a Medal of Honor for his heroics in this battle.

 

1952 The Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash kills 112 people. 1956 New York Yankees's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series; one of only 20 perfect games in MLB history.

1962 Spiegel scandal: Der Spiegel publishes the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("Conditionally prepared for defense") about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62", which uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east at the time. The magazine is soon accused of treason.

  

1962 Algeria joins the United Nations. 1967 Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia. 1968 Vietnam War: Operation Sealords United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.

576

 

1969 The opening rally of the Days of Rage occurs, organized by the Weather Underground in Chicago, Illinois. 1970 Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion".

1973 Yom Kippur War: Gabi Amir's armored brigade attacks Egyptian occupied positions on the Israeli side of the Suez Canal, in hope of driving them away. The attack fails, and over 150 Israeli tanks are destroyed.

1974 Franklin National Bank collapses due to fraud and mismanagement; at the time it is the largest bank failure in the history of the United States.

1978 Australia's Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 317.60mph at Blowering Dam, Australia.

 

1982 Poland bans Solidarity and all trade unions. 1990 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: In Jerusalem, Israeli police kill 17 Palestinians and wound over 100 near the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount.

  

1991 Croatia votes to sever constitutional relations with Yugoslavia, making the country fully independent 1998 Oslo's Gardermoen airport opens after the close down of Fornebu airport. 2001 A twin engine Cessna and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) jetliner collide in heavy fog during takeoff from Milan, Italy killing 118.

 

2001 U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security. 2005 2005 Kashmir earthquake: Thousands of people are killed by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

OCTOBER 9
      
768 Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks. 1238 James I of Aragon conquers Valencia and founds the Kingdom of Valencia. 1264 The Kingdom of Castile conquers the city of Jerez that was under Muslim occupation since 711. 1446 The hangul alphabet is published in Korea. 1514 Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor. 1558 Mrida is founded in Venezuela. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

  

1595 The Spanish army captures Cambrai. 1604 Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way. 1635 Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.

577

1701 The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

      

1760 Seven Years' War: Russian forces occupy Berlin. 1771 The Dutch merchant ship Vrouw Maria sinks near the coast of Finland. 1776 Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California. 1799 Sinking of HMS Lutine, with the loss of 240 men and a cargo worth 1,200,000. 1804 Hobart, capital of Tasmania, is founded. 1806 Prussia declares war on France. 1812 War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships: HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.

       

1820 Guayaquil declares independence from Spain. 1824 Slavery is abolished in Costa Rica. 1831 Capo d'Istria is assassinated. 1834 Opening of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, the first public railway on the island of Ireland. 1835 The Royal College, Colombo in Sri Lanka is established with the name Hillstreet Academy. 1845 The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, is received into the Roman Catholic Church. 1854 Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins. 1861 American Civil War: Battle of Santa Rosa Island Union troops repel a Confederate attempt to capture Fort Pickens.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Tom's Brook Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeat Confederate forces at Tom's Brook, Virginia.

        

1873 A meeting at the U.S. Naval Academy establishes the U.S. Naval Institute. 1874 General Postal Union is created as a result of the Treaty of Berne. 1888 The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public. 1907 Las Cruces, New Mexico is incorporated. 1911 An accidental bomb explosion in Hankou, Wuhan, China leads to the ultimate fall of the Qing Empire 1913 Steamship SS Volturno catches fire in the mid-Atlantic. 1914 World War I: Siege of Antwerp Antwerp, Belgium falls to German troops. 1919 Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series. 1934 Regicide at Marseille: The assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, Foreign Minister of France.

1936 Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.

578

1940 World War II: Battle of Britain During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul's Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.

  

1941 A coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president. 1942 Statute of Westminster 1931 formalises Australian autonomy. 1942 The last day of the October Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps forces withdraw back across the Matanikau River after destroying most of theImperial Japanese Army's 4th Infantry Regiment.

  

1945 Parade in NYC for Fleet Admiral Nimitz and 13 USN/USMC Medal of Honor recipients 1962 Uganda becomes an independent Commonwealth realm. 1963 In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people are killed when a large landslide behind the Vajont Dam causes a giant wave of water to overtop it.

  

1966 Vietnam War:Binh Tai massacre 1966 Vietnam War:Dien Nien-Phuoc Binh massacre 1967 A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.

1969 In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the "Chicago Eight" that began onSeptember 24.

  

1970 The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia. 1981 Abolition of capital punishment in France. 1983 Rangoon bombing: attempted assassination of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during an official visit to Rangoon, Burma. Chun survives but the blast kills 17 of his entourage, including four cabinet ministers, and injures 17 others. Four Burmese officials also die in the blast.

  

1986 The musical The Phantom of the Opera has its first performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. 1989 An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh. 1989 In Leipzig, East Germany, 70,000 protesters demand the legalisation of opposition groups and democratic reforms.

 

1991 Ecuador becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. 1992 A 13 kilogram (est.) fragment of the Peekskill meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu

   

1995 An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona. 1999 The last flight of the SR-71. 2001 Second mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attack. 2006 North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.

579

2009 First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotic Program.

OCTOBER 10

680 Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Muslims as Aashurah.

732 Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, the leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslimsfrom spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.

1471 Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with the help of farmers and miners, repels an attack byChristian I, King of Denmark.

1575 Battle of Dormans: Roman Catholic forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeat the Protestants, capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.

1580 After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dn an ir, Ireland.

1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

  

1631 A Saxon army takes over Prague. 1780 The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean. 1845 In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

 

1860 The original cornerstone of the University of the South is laid in Sewanee, Tennessee. 1868 Carlos Cspedes issues the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba's independence

1911 The Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.

 

1911 The KCR East Rail commences service between Kowloon and Canton. 1913 President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.

 

1920 The Carinthian Plebiscite determines that the larger part of Carinthia should remain part of Austria. 1933 United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.

580

1935 A coup d'tat by the royalist leadership of the Greek Armed Forces takes place in Athens. It overthrows the government of Panagis Tsaldaris and establishes a regency underGeorgios Kondylis, effectively ending the Second Hellenic Republic.

    

1938 The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. 1942 The Soviet Union establishes diplomatic relations with Australia. 1943 Double Tenth Incident in Japanese controlled Singapore 1944 Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp. 1945 The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China. Later, the pact is commonly referred to as the Double-Ten Agreement.

1957 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he is refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.

  

1957 The Windscale fire in Cumbria, U.K. is the world's first major nuclear accident. 1963 France cedes control of the Bizerte naval base to Tunisia. 1964 The opening ceremony at The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, is broadcast live in the first Olympic telecast relayed by geostationary communication satellite.

  

1967 The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force. 1970 Fiji becomes independent. 1970 In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

 

1971 Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. 1972 The 1972 Chicago commuter rail crash, killing 48, occurs due to foggy conditions, the accident push for changes in Chicago commuter rail, such as brightly colored ends on the cars.

1973 Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.

 

1975 Papua New Guinea joins the United Nations. 1985 United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.

1986 An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.

 

1997 An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74. 1998 A Lignes Ariennes Congolaises Boeing 727 is shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 41 people.

 

2006 The Greek city of Volos floods in one of the prefecture's worst recorded floods. 2008 The 10 October 2008 Orakzai bombing kills 110 and injures 200 more.

581

2009 After having closed borders for about two hundred years, Armenia and Turkey sign protocols in Zurich, Switzerland to open their borders.

2010 The Netherlands Antilles are dissolved.

OCTOBER 11
  
1138 A massive earthquake struck Aleppo, Syria. 1531 Huldrych Zwingli is killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland. 1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1614 Adriaen Block and 12 Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the New Netherland colony.

1634 The Burchardi flood "the second Grote Mandrenke" killed around 15,000 men in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.

1649 Sack of Wexford: After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops (under Oliver Cromwell) stormed the town of Wexford, killing over 2,000Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians.

 

1727 George II and Caroline of Ansbach are crowned King and Queen of Great Britain. 1776 American Revolution: Battle of Valcour Island On Lake Champlain 15 American gunboats are defeated but give Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.

1797 Battle of Camperdown: Naval battle between Royal Navy and Royal Netherlands Navy during the French Revolutionary Wars. The outcome of the battle was a decisive British victory.

1809 Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder's Stand.

1811 Inventor John Stevens' boat, the Juliana, begins operation as the first steam-powered ferry (service between New York, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey).

1833 A big demonstration at the gates of the legislature of Buenos Aires forces the ousting of governor Juan Ramn Balcarce and his replacement with Juan Jos Viamonte.

 

1852 The University of Sydney, Australia's oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney. 1862 American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.

 

1864 Campina Grande, Brazil is established as a city. 1865 Paul Bogle led hundreds of black men and women in a march in Jamaica, starting the Morant Bay rebellion.

1890 In Washington, DC, the Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.

582

1899 Second Boer War begins: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State erupts.

 

1899 The Western League is renamed the American League. 1906 San Francisco public school board sparks United States diplomatic crisis with Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.

1910 Former President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey in a plane built by the Wright Brothers at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri.

1929 JC Penney opens store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 U.S. states.

 

1941 Beginning of the National Liberation War of Macedonia. 1942 World War II: Battle of Cape Esperance On the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, United States Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.

 

1944 Tuvinian People's Republic or formerly Tannu Tuva is annexed by the U.S.S.R 1950 Television: CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

   

1954 First Indochina War: The Viet Minh take control of North Vietnam. 1957 Space Race: M.I.T. scientists calculate Sputnik I's booster rocket's orbit. 1958 Pioneer program: NASA launches the lunar probe Pioneer 1 (the probe falls back to Earth and burns up). 1962 Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.

1968 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.

1972 A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.

1975 The NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the host and Andy Kaufman, Janis Ian and Billy Preston as guests.

1976 George Washington's appointment, posthumously, to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States by congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 is approved by President Gerald R. Ford.

1982 The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth.

1984 Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

583

1986 Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavk, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.

1987 Start of Operation Pawan by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka that killed few thousand ethnic Tamil civilians, several hundred Tamil Tigers and few hundred Indian Army soldiers.

  

1996 Pala accident: a wood lorry and school bus collide in Jgeva county, Estonia, killing eight children. 2000 NASA launches STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission, using Space Shuttle Discovery. 2001 The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.

OCTOBER 12
 
539 BC The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon. 1216 King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge

 

1279 Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon 1398 The Treaty of Salynas is signed between Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Teutonic Knights, who received Samogitia.

1492 Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached South Asia

1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

    

1654 The Delft Explosion devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100 people. 1692 The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips. 1773 America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia 1792 First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York 1793 The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina

1810 First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

  

1822 Peter I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Brazil 1823 Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat. 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals.Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India.

1892 The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.

584

 

1901 President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House. 1915 World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium

1917 World War I: The First Battle of Passchendaele takes place resulting in the largest single day loss of life in New Zealand history.

  

1918 A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota. 1928 An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston 1933 The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice

1942 World War II: Japanese ships retreat after their defeat in the Battle of Cape Esperance with the Japanese commander, Aritomo Got dying from wounds suffered in the battle and two Japanese destroyers sunk by Allied air attack.

  

1945 World War II: Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor. 1953 "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York 1959 At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party. They will later form APRA Rebelde.

1960 Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe

1960 Inejiro Asanuma, Chair of the Japanese Socialist Party, is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The cameras were rolling at the time, so the moment was caught on film.

1962 Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages

1964 The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits

1967 Vietnam War: US Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives are futile because of North Vietnam's opposition

 

1968 Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain 1970 Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas

1972 En route to the Gulf of Tonkin, a racial brawl involving more than 100 sailors breaks out aboard the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk

1976 The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Zedong as chairman of Communist Party of China.

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1979 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams is published.

1979 The lowest recorded non-tornadic atmospheric pressure, 87.0 kPa (870 mbar or 25.69 inHg), occurred in the Western Pacific during Typhoon Tip.

1983 Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed and is sentenced to 4 years in jail.

1984 Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.

1986 Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the People's Republic of China

1988 Jaffna University Helidrop: Commandos of Indian Peace Keeping Force raided the Jaffna University campus to capture the LTTE chief and walked into a trap.

1988 Two officers of the Victoria Police are gunned down executional style in the Walsh Street police shootings, Australia.

1991 Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.

1994 NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere).

    

1997 Sidi Daoud massacre in Algeria; 43 killed at a fake roadblock. 1999 Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup. 1999 The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia 1999 The Day of Six Billion: The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born. 2000 The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39

 

2002 Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300. 2005 The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fi Jnlng and Ni H ishng for five days in orbit.

OCTOBER 13
  
54 Nero ascends to the Roman throne 409 Vandals and Alans cross the Pyrenees and appear in Hispania. 1307 Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be later tortured into a "confession" ofheresy.

586

1332 Rinchinbal Khan, Emperor Ningzong of Yuan becomes the Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, reigning for only 53 days.

1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

 

1773 The Whirlpool Galaxy is discovered by Charles Messier. 1775 The United States Continental Congress orders the establishment of the Continental Navy (later renamed the United States Navy).

1777 After his defeat on October 7, 1777, British General John Burgoyne's Army at The Battles of Saratoga becomes surrounded by superior numbers, setting the stage for its surrender a feat of arms which inspires the Kingdom of France to enter the American Revolutionary War against theBritish.

1792 In Washington, D.C., the cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion (known as the White House since 1818) is laid.

1812 War of 1812: Battle of Queenston Heights As part of the Niagara campaign in Ontario, Canada, United States forces under General Stephen Van Rensselaer are repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops led by Sir Isaac Brock.

1843 In New York City, Henry Jones and 11 others found B'nai B'rith (the oldest Jewish service organization in the world).

1845 A majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approve a proposed constitution, that if accepted by the U.S. Congress, will make Texas a U.S. state.

1881 Revival of the Hebrew language as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and friends agree to use Hebrew exclusively in their conversations.

  

1884 Greenwich, in London, England, is established as Universal Time meridian of longitude. 1885 The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is founded in Atlanta, Georgia. 1892 Edward Emerson Barnard discovers D/1892 T1, the first comet discovered by photographic means, on the night of October 1314.

1915 The Battle for the Hohenzollern Redoubt marks the end of the Battle of Loos in northern France, World War I.

1917 The "Miracle of the Sun" is witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people in the Cova da Iria in Ftima, Portugal.

1918 Mehmed Talat Pasha and the Young Turk (C.U.P.) ministry resign and sign an armistice, ending Ottoman participation in World War I.

  

1923 Ankara replaces Istanbul as the capital of Turkey. 1943 World War II: The new government of Italy sides with the Allies and declares war on Germany. 1944 World War II: Riga, the capital of Latvia is liberated by the Red Army.

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1946 France adopts the constitution of the Fourth Republic. 1962 The Pacific Northwest experiences a cyclone the equal of a Cat 3 hurricane. Winds measured above 150 mph at several locations; 46 people died.

1967 The first game in the history of the American Basketball Association is played as the Anaheim Amigos lose to the Oakland Oaks 134-129 in Oakland, California.

  

1970 Fiji joins the United Nations. 1972 An Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-62 crashes outside Moscow killing 176. 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes mountains, near the border between Argentina and Chile. By December 23, 1972, only 16 out of 45 people lived long enough to be rescued.

1976 A Bolivian Boeing 707 cargo jet crashes in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, killing 100 (97, mostly children, killed on the ground).

1976 The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle is obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, who was then working at the C.D.C.

1977 Four Palestinians hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.

 

1983 Ameritech Mobile Communications (now AT&T) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois. 1990 End of the Lebanese Civil War. Syrian forces launch an attack on the free areas of Lebanon removing General Michel Aoun from the presidential palace.

1992 An Antonov An-124 operated by Antonov Airlines registered SSSR-82002, crashes near Kiev, Ukraine killing 8.

 

1999 The United States Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). 2010 The 2010 Copiap mining accident in Copiap, Chile comes to an end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground awaiting rescue.

OCTOBER 14

222 Pope Callixtus I is killed by a mob in Rome's Trastevere after a 5-year reign in which he has stabilized the Saturday fast three times per year, with no food, oil, or wine to be consumed on those days. Callixtus is succeeded by cardinal Urban I.

1066 Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conquerordefeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.

1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.

1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

588

 

1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England. 1656 Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state inPuritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.

 

1758 Seven Years' War: Austria defeats Prussia at the Battle of Hochkirk. 1773 The first recorded Ministry of Education, the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Polish for Commission of National Education), is formed in Poland.

1773 Just before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company's tea ships are set ablaze at the oldseaport of Annapolis, Maryland.

    

1805 Battle of Elchingen, France defeats Austria. 1806 Battle of Jena-Auerstdt France defeats Prussia. 1808 The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France. 1812 Work on London's Regent's Canal starts. 1840 The Maronite leader Bashir II surrenders to the British Army and then is sent into exile on the islands of Malta.

 

1843 The British arrest the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell for conspiracy to commit crimes. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Bristoe Station Confederate troops under the command of General Robert E. Lee fail to drive the American Union Army completely out of theCommonwealth of Virginia.

1867 The 15th and the last military Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan, returning his power to the Emperor of Japan and thence to the re-established civil government of Japan

 

1882 University of the Punjab is founded in a part of India that later became West Pakistan. 1884 The American inventor, George Eastman, receives a U.S. Government patent on his new paperstrip photographic film.

 

1888 Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene. 1908 The Chicago Cubs defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2-0, clinching the World Series. It would be their last one to date.

1910 The English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his Farman Aircraft biplane on Executive Avenue near the White House in Washington, D.C..

1912 While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech.

1913 Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom's worst coal mining accident, occurs, and it claims the lives of 439 miners.

1920 Part of Petsamo Province is ceded by the Soviet Union to Finland.

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1925 An Anti-French uprising in French-occupied Damascus, Syria. (All French inhabitants flee the city.) 1926 The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published. 1933 Nazi Germany withdraws from The League of Nations. 1938 The first flight of the Curtiss Aircraft Company's P-40 Warhawk fighter plane. 1939 The German submarine U-47 sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbor at Scapa Flow, Scotland.

1940 Balham subway station disaster, in London, England, occurs during the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids on Great Britain.

1943 Prisoners at the Nazi German Sobibor extermination camp in Poland revolt against the Germans, killing eleven SS guards, and wounding many more. About 300 of the Sobibor Camp's 600 prisoners escape, and about 50 of these survive the end of the war.

1943 The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers in aerial combat during the second mass-daylight air raid on the Schweinfurt ball-bearingfactories in western Nazi Germany.

1944 Athens, Greece, is liberated by British Army troops entering the city as the Wehrmacht pulls out during World War II. This clears the way for the Greek government-in-exile to return to its historic capital city, with George Papandreou, Sr., as the head-of-government.

1947 Captain Chuck Yeager of the U.S. Air Force flies a Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft, the Glamorous Glennis, faster than the speed of sound - over the high desertof Southern California - and becomes the first pilot and the first airplane to do so in level flight.

1949 Eleven leaders of the American Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial in a Federal District Court, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. Federal Government.

1949 Chinese Civil War: Chinese Communist forces occupy the city of Guangzhou (Canton), in Guangdong, China.

1952 Korean War: United Nations and South Korean forces launch Operation Showdown against Chinese strongholds at the Iron Triangle. The resulting Battle of Triangle Hill is the biggest and bloodiest battle of 1952.

1956 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Untouchable caste leader, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 of his followers (see Neo-Buddhism).

1957 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian Monarch to open up an annual session of the Canadian Parliament, presenting her Speech from the Throne in Ottawa, Canada.

1958 The American Atomic Energy Commission, with supporting military units, carries out an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site, just north of Las Vegas, Nevada.

1958 The District of Columbia's Bar Association votes to accept African-Americans as member attorneys.

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1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot fly over the island of Cuba and take photographs of Soviet missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads being installed and erected in Cuba.

1964 Leonid Brezhnev becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and thereby, along with his allies - such as Alexei Kosygin - the leader of theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), ousting the former monolithic leader Nikita Khrushchev, and sending him into retirement as a nonperson in the USSR.

 

1966 The city of Montreal, Quebec, begins the operation of its underground Montreal Metro rapid-transit system. 1967 The Vietnam War: The folk singer Joan Baez is arrested concerning a physical blockade of the U.S. Army's induction center in Oakland, California.

1968 Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio of San Francisco in California for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.

1968 Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps will send about 24,000 soldiers and Marines back to Vietnamfor involuntary second tours of duty in the combat zone there.

1968 The first live telecast from a manned spacecraft, the Apollo 7, launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the U.S.A.

1968 An earthquake rated at 6.8 on the Richter Scale destroys the Australian town of Meckering, Western Australia, and it also ruptures all nearby main highways and railroads.

1968 Jim Hines of the United States of America becomes the first man ever to break the so-called "ten-second barrier" in the 100-meter sprint in the Summer Olympic Games held in Mexico City with a time of 9.95 seconds.

1969 The United Kingdom introduces the British fifty-pence coin, which replaces, over the following years, the British ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalization of theBritish currency in 1971, and the abolition of the shilling as a unit of currency anywhere in the world.

1973 In the Thammasat student uprising over 100,000 people protest in Thailand against the Thanom military government; 77 are killed and 857 are injured by soldiers.

1979 The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C., the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, demands "an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people", and draws 200,000 people.

1981 Citing official misconduct in the investigation and trial, Amnesty International charges the U.S. Federal Government with holding Richard Marshall of the American Indian Movement as a political prisoner.

1981 Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected as the President of Egypt one week after the assassination of the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.

1982 U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.

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1994 The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of the future Palestinian Self Government.

1998 Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with six bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia.

2006 College football brawl between University of Miami and Florida International University leads to suspensions of 31 players of both teams.

OCTOBER 15

1582 Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.

1764 Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1783 The Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon marks the first human ascent, by Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier, (tethered balloon).

1793 Queen Marie-Antoinette of France is tried and convicted in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.

 

1815 Napoleon I of France begins his exile on Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. 1863 American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Glasgow is fought, resulting in the surrender of Glasgow, Missouri, and its Union garrison, to the Confederacy.

      

1878 The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation. 1880 Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists. 1888 The "From Hell" letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by investigators. 1894 The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying. 1904 The Russian Baltic Fleet leaves Reval, Estonia for Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. 1910 Airship America launched from New Jersey in the first attempt to cross the Atlantic by a powered aircraft. 1917 World War I: At Vincennes outside of Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for the German Empire.

1928 The airship, Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States.

1932 Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.

592

1934 The Soviet Republic of China collapses when Chiang Kai-shek's National Revolutionary Army successfully encircles Ruijin, forcing the fleeing Communists to begin the Long March.

   

1939 The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed La Guardia Airport) is dedicated. 1944 The Arrow Cross Party (very similar to Hitler's NSDAP (Nazi party)) takes power in Hungary. 1945 World War II: The former premier of Vichy France Pierre Laval is shot by a firing squad for treason. 1951 Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducts the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.

  

1953 British nuclear test Totem 1 detonated at Emu Field, South Australia. 1956 Fortran, the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time. 1965 Vietnam War: The Catholic Worker Movement stages an anti-war rally in Manhattan including a public burning of a draft card; the first such act to result in arrest under a new amendment to the Selective Service Act.

 

1966 Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. 1969 Vietnam War; The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam is held in Washington DC and across the US. Over 2 million demonstrate nationally; about 250,000 in the nation's capitol.

1970 Thirty-five construction workers are killed when a section of the new West Gate Bridge in Melbourne collapses.

  

1970 The domestic Soviet Aeroflot Flight 244 is hijacked and diverted to Turkey. 1971 The start of the 2500-year celebration of Iran, celebrating the birth of Persia. 1979 Black Monday in Malta. The Building of the Times of Malta, the residence of the opposition leader Eddie Fenech Adami and several Nationalist Party clubs are ransacked and destroyed by supporters of the Malta Labour Party.

  

1987 The Great Storm of 1987 hits France and England. 1989 Wayne Gretzky becomes the all-time leading points scorer in the NHL. 1990 Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.

1997 The first supersonic land speed record is set by Andy Green in ThrustSSC (United Kingdom), exactly 50 years and 1 day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Earth's atmosphere.

   

1997 The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn. 2001 NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io. 2003 China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission. 2003 The Staten Island Ferry boat Andrew J. Barberi runs into a pier at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island, killing 11 people and injuring 43.

2005 A riot in Toledo, Ohio breaks out during a National Socialist/Neo-Nazi protest; over 100 are arrested.

593

2007 Seventeen activists in New Zealand are arrested in the country's first post 9/11 anti-terrorism raids.

OCTOBER 16

456 Magister militum Ricimer defeats Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire.

 

1384 Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. 1590 Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d'Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples.

       

1780 Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War. 1781 George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia after the Siege of Yorktown. 1793 Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. 1793 The Battle of Wattignies ends in a French victory. 1813 The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig. 1834 Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt to the ground. 1841 Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.

1846 William TG Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.

      

1859 John Brown leads a raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. 1869 The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered". 1869 Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women. 1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. 1882 The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business. 1905 The Partition of Bengal in India takes place. 1906 The Captain of Kpenick fools the city hall of Kpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.

  

1916 Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic. 1923 The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney. 1934 Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.

 

1939 World War II: First attack on British territory by the German Luftwaffe. 1940 Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.

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1940 Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established. 1945 The Food and Agriculture Organization is founded in Quebec City, Canada. 1946 Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial. 1949 Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.

    

1949 The diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic are established. 1951 The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba begins. 1964 The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon. 1964 Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin are inaugurated as General Secretary of the CPSU and Premier, respectively and the collective leadership is established.

1968 United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the USA's team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.

1968 Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.

1970 In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act.

 

1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1975 The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.

1975 Rahima Banu, a 2-year old girl from the village of Kuralia in Bangladesh, is the last known person to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox.

1975 The Australian Coalition opposition parties using their senate majority, vote to defer the decision to grant supply of funds for the Whitlam Government's annual budget, sparking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.

    

1978 Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave. 1978 Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 1984 Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1986 Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders. 1991 Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.

1993 Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.

 

1995 The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C. 1995 The Skye Bridge is opened.

595

1996 Eighty-four people are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 football fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City.

1998 Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a warrant from Spain requesting his extradition on murder charges.

2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.

2006 Hawaii Earthquake: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport.

OCTOBER 17

539 BC Cyrus the Great marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allows the Jews to return toYehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

 

1091 London Tornado of 1091: A tornado thought to be of strength T8/F4 strikes the heart of London. 1346 Battle of Neville's Cross: King David II of Scotland is captured by Edward III of England near Durham, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.

1448 Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.

1456 The University of Greifswald is established, making it the second oldest university in northern Europe (also for a period the oldest in Sweden, andPrussia)

        

1604 Kepler's Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus. 1610 French king Louis XIII is crowned in Rheims. 1660 Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn and quartered. 1662 Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to France for 40,000 pounds. 1771 Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang Mozart, age 15. 1777 American Revolutionary War: American troops defeat the British in the Battle of Saratoga. 1781 American Revolutionary War: General Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Battle of Yorktown. 1800 Britain takes control of the Dutch colony of Curaao. 1806 Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I of Haiti is assassinated after an oppressive rule.

  

1814 London Beer Flood occurs in London, killing nine. 1860 First The Open Championship (referred to in North America as the British Open). 1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).

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1907 Guglielmo Marconi's company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.

1912 Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War.

      

1917 First British bombing of Germany in World War I. 1931 Al Capone convicted of income tax evasion. 1933 Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States. 1941 For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship. 1941 German troops execute the male population of the villages Kerdyllia in Serres, Greece. 1943 Burma Railway (Burma-Thailand Railway) is completed. 1945 A massive number of people, headed by CGT and Evita, gather in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina to demand Juan Peron's release.

1956 The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Sellafield,in Cumbria, England.

1961 Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.

1964 Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies opens the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the middle of the capital Canberra.

1965 The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair closes after a two year run. More than 51 million people had attended the two-year event.

1966 A fire at a building in New York, New York kills 12 firefighters, the New York City Fire Department's deadliest day until the September 11, 2001 attacks.

  

1966 Botswana and Lesotho join the United Nations. 1968 Black American athletes make a silent protest against racism at the Olympics 1970 Montreal, Quebec: Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte murdered by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1973 OPEC starts an oil embargo against a number of western countries, considered to have helped Israel in its war against Syria.

1977 German Autumn: Four days after it is hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaininghostages on board.

 

1979 Mother Teresa awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1979 The Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services.

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1980 As part of the Holy See United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican

1989 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (7.1 on the Richter scale) hits the San Francisco Bay Area and causes 57 deaths directly (and 6 indirectly).

1998 At Jesse, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, a petroleum pipeline explodes killing about 1200 villagers, some of whom are scavenging gasoline.

 

2000 Train crash at Hatfield, north of London, leading to collapse of Railtrack. 2003 The pinnacle is fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 56 metres (184 ft) and become the World's tallest highrise.

OCTOBER 18

320 Pappus of Alexandria, Greek philosopher, observes an eclipse of the sun and writes a commentary on The Great Astronomer (Almagest).

1009 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.

   

1016 The Danes defeat the Saxons in the Battle of Ashingdon. 1081 The Normans defeat the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Dyrrhachium. 1210 Pope Innocent III excommunicates German leader Otto IV. 1356 Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroyes the town of Basel, Switzerland.

 

1386 Opening of the University of Heidelberg. 1599 Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, defeats the Army of Andrew Bathory in the Battle of leading to the first recorded unification of the Romanian people. elimb r,

      

1648 Boston Shoemakers form first U.S. labor organization. 1748 Signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession. 1767 Mason-Dixon line, survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed. 1775 African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed from slavery. 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio is signed between France and Austria 1851 Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London. 1860 The Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.

1867 United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.

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1898 United States takes possession of Puerto Rico. 1912 The First Balkan War begins. 1914 The Schoenstatt Movement is founded in Germany. 1921 The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic is formed as part of the RSFSR. 1922 The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcastingservice.

  

1925 The Grand Ole Opry opens in Nashville, Tennessee. 1929 Women are considered "Persons" under Canadian law. 1936 Adolf Hitler announces the Four Year Economic Plan to the German people. The plan details the rebuilding of the German military from 1936 to 1940.

  

1944 Adolf Hitler orders the establishment of a German national militia. 1944 Soviet Union begins liberation of Czechoslovakia. 1945 The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1945 A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Prez Jimnez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, stages a coup d'tat against then president Isaas Medina Angarita, who is overthrown by the end of the day.

  

1954 Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio. 1964 The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair closes for its first season after a six-month run. 1967 The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

1968 The U.S. Olympic Committee suspends Tommie Smith and John Carlos for giving a "black power" salute during a victory ceremony at the Mexico City games.

1977 German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight by the Red Army Faction (RAF) comes to an end when Schleyer is murdered and various RAF members allegedly commit suicide.

    

1985 The Nintendo Entertainment System is released. 1985 Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System is released. 1991 Azerbaijan declares independence from USSR. 2003 Bolivian Gas War: President Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada, is forced to resign and leave Bolivia. 2007 Karachi bombings: A suicide attack on a motorcade carrying former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto kills 139 and wounds 450 more. Bhutto herself is not injured.

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OCTOBER 19

202 BC Second Punic War: At the Battle of Zama, Roman legions under Scipio Africanus defeat Hannibal Barca, leader of the invading Carthaginianarmy.

  

439 The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take Carthage in North Africa. 1216 King John of England dies at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry. 1453 The French recapture of Bordeaux brings the Hundred Years' War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil.

 

1466 The Thirteen Years War ends with the Second Treaty of Thorn. 1469 Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country,Spain.

  

1512 Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia). 1649 New Ross town, Co. Wexford, Ireland, surrenders to Oliver Cromwell. 1781 At Yorktown, Virginia, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis' sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau.

 

1789 Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States. 1805 Napoleonic Wars: Austrian General Mack surrenders his army to the Grand Army of Napoleon at the Battle of Ulm. 30,000 prisoners are captured and 10,000 casualties inflicted on the losers.*1812 Napoleon I of France retreats from Moscow.

 

1813 The Battle of Leipzig concludes, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats. 1822 In Parnaba; Simplcio Dias da Silva, Joo Cndido de Deus e Silva and Domingos Dias declare the independent state of Piau.

1864 Battle of Cedar Creek Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroy the Confederate Army under Jubal Early.

 

1864 St. Albans Raid Confederate raiders launch an attack on Saint Albans, Vermont from Canada. 1866 Venice - Annexion of Veneto and Mantua to Italy - At Hotel Europa, Austria hands over Veneto to France, which hands it immediately over to Italy.

 

1873 Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules. 1904 Polytechnic University of the Philippines founded as Manila Business School through the superintendence of the American C.A. O'Reilley.

   

1912 Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya from the Ottoman Empire. 1914 The First Battle of Ypres begins. 1917 The Love Field in Dallas, Texas is opened. 1921 Portuguese Prime Minister Antnio Granjo and other politicians are murdered in a Lisbon coup.

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1933 Germany withdraws from the League of Nations. 1935 The League of Nations places economic sanctions on fascist Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia. 1943 Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University. 1944 United States forces land in the Philippines. 1950 The People's Liberation Army takes control of the town of Qamdo; this is sometimes called the "Invasion of Tibet".

1950 The People's Republic of China joins the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river to fight United Nations forces.

 

1954 First ascent of Cho Oyu. 1956 The Soviet Union and Japan sign a Joint Declaration, officially ending the state of war between the two countries that had existed since August 1945.

 

1959 The first discothque opens. 1969 The first Prime Minister of Tunisia in twelve years, Bahi Ladgham, is appointed by President Habib Bourguiba.

   

1973 President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes. 1974 Niue becomes a self-governing colony of New Zealand. 1976 Battle of Aishiya in Lebanon. 1983 Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, is overthrown and executed in a military coup d'tat led by Bernard Coard.

1986 Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and a prominent leader of FRELIMO, and 33 others die when their Tupolev 134 plane crashes into the Lebombo Mountains.

1987 In retaliation for Iranian attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy disables three of Iran's offshore oil platforms.

 

1987 Black Monday - the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22%, 508 points. 1989 The convictions of the Guildford Four are quashed by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, after they had spent 15 years in prison.

2001 SIEV-X, an Indonesian fishing boat en-route to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, sinks in international waters with the loss of 353 people.

 

2003 Mother Teresa is beatified by Pope John Paul II. 2004 Myanmar prime minister Khin Nyunt is ousted and placed under house arrest by the State Peace and Development Council on charges of corruption.

 

2004 Care International aid worker Margaret Hassan is kidnapped in Iraq. 2005 Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

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2005 Hurricane Wilma becomes the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882 mb.

2007 Philippines. A bomb explosion rocked Glorietta 2, a shopping mall in Makati. The blast killed 11 and injured more than 100 people.

OCTOBER 20

1548 The city of Nuestra Seora de La Paz (Our Lady of Peace) is founded by Alonso de Mendoza by appointment of the king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

1740 Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refuse to honour the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession begins.

  

1781 Patent of Toleration, providing limited freedom of worship, is approved in Habsburg Monarchy. 1803 The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase. 1818 The Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.

1827 Battle of Navarino a combined Turkish and Egyptian armada is defeated by British, French, and Russian naval force in the port of Navarino in Pylos, Greece.

1883 Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancn, by which the Tarapac province is ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in theWar of the Pacific.

1910 The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic, is launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 

1935 The Long March ends. 1941 World War II: Thousands of civilians in Kragujevac in German-occupied Serbia are killed in the Kragujevac massacre.

1943 The cargo vessel Sinfra is attacked by Allied aircraft at Suda Bay, Crete, and sunk. 2,098 Italian prisoners of war drown with it.

 

1944 The Soviet Army and Yugoslav Partisans liberate Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia 1944 Liquid natural gas leaks from storage tanks in Cleveland, then explodes; the explosion and resulting fire level 30 blocks and kill 130.

1944 General Douglas MacArthur fulfills his promise to return to the Philippines when he commands an Allied assault on the islands, reclaiming them from the Japanese during theSecond World War.

1947 The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.

 

1947 United States of America and Pakistan establish diplomatic relations for the first time. 1951 The "Johnny Bright Incident" occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma

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1952 Governor Evelyn Baring declares a state of emergency in Kenya and begins arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising, including Jomo Kenyatta, the future first President of Kenya.

    

1967 A purported bigfoot is filmed by Patterson and Gimlin. 1968 Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. 1970 Siad Barre declares Somalia a socialist state. 1971 The Nepal Stock Exchange collapses. 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre": President Richard Nixon fires U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fireWatergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.

 

1973 The Sydney Opera House opens. 1976 The ferry George Prince is struck by a ship while crossing the Mississippi River between Destrehan and Luling, Louisiana. Seventy-eight passengers and crew die and only 18 people aboard the ferry survive.

1977 A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, the road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.

1982 During the UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, 66 people are crushed to death in the Luzhniki disaster.

1991 The Oakland Hills firestorm kills 25 and destroys 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.

OCTOBER 21
   
1096 People's Crusade: The Turkish army annihilates the People's Army of the West. 1512 Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. 1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as Strait of Magellan. 1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunatethat in effect rules Japan until the mid-nineteenth century.

1774 First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.

 

1797 In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched. 1805 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar: A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signals almost the end of French maritime power and leaves Britain's navy unchallenged until the 20th century.

1816 The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by the Rev Hutchings. It is the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia.

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1824 Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement. 1854 Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War. 1861 American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.

1867 Manifest Destiny: Medicine Lodge Treaty Near Medicine Lodge, Kansas a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate a reservation in western Oklahoma.

1879 Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13 hours before burning out).

1892 Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition are held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1, 1893.

   

1895 The Republic of Formosa collapses as Japanese forces invade. 1902 In the United States, a five month strike by United Mine Workers ends. 1912 During the First Balkan War, Kardzhali is liberated by Bulgarian forces 1921 President Warren G. Harding delivers the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south.

  

1921 George Melford's silent film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, premiers. 1931 The Sakurakai, a secret society in the Imperial Japanese Army, launches an abortive coup d'tat attempt. 1944 The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200 kilograms (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

  

1945 Women's suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time. 1945 Argentine military officer and politician Juan Pern marries actress Eva Pern. 1959 In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens to the public.

1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.

 

1965 Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun. 1966 Aberfan disaster: A slag heap collapses on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren.

1967 Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, D.C.. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility. Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.

1969 A coup d'tat in Somalia brings Siad Barre to power.

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1973 John Paul Getty III's ear is cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome; it doesn't arrive until November 8.

1973 Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams becomes the first player in NFL history to score two safeties in the same game.

 

1977 The European Patent Institute is founded. 1978 Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1979 Moshe Dayan resigns from the Israeli government because of strong disagreements with Prime Minister Menachem Begin over policy towards the Arabs.

1983 The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

1986 In Lebanon, pro-Iranian kidnappers claim to have abducted American writer Edward Tracy (he is released in August 1991).

1987 Jaffna hospital massacre is carried out by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 70 ethnic Tamil patients, doctors and nurses.

1994 North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea and the United States sign an agreement that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and agree to inspections.

 

1994 In Seoul, 32 people are killed when the Seongsu Bridge collapses. 2003 Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in documenting its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz.

OCTOBER 22
  
362 A mysterious fire destroys the temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch. 794 Emperor Kanmu relocates the Japanese capital to Heiankyo (now Kyoto). 1383 The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: King Fernando dies without a male heir to the Portuguese throne, sparking a period of civil war and disorder.

  

1575 Foundation of Aguascalientes. 1633 Battle of southern Fujian sea: The Ming dynasty defeats the Dutch East India Company. 1707 Scilly naval disaster: four British Royal Navy ships run aground near the Isles of Scilly because of faulty navigation. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and thousands of sailors drown.

  

1730 Construction of the Ladoga Canal is completed. 1746 The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) receives its charter. 1777 American Revolutionary War: American defenders of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River repulse repeated Hessian attacks in the Battle of Red Bank.

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1784 Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska. 1790 Warriors of the Miami tribe under Chief Little Turtle defeat United States troops under General Josiah Harmar at the site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the Northwest Indian War.

1797 One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, Andr-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.

 

1836 Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas. 1844 The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.

     

1866 A plebiscite ratifies the annexion of Veneto and Mantua to Italy, occurred three days before, on October 19. 1875 First telegraphic connection in Argentina. 1877 The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners. 1878 The first rugby match under floodlights takes place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton. 1883 The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod's Faust. 1895 In Paris an express train overruns a buffer stop and crosses more than 30 metres of concourse before plummeting through a window at Gare Montparnasse.

1907 Panic of 1907: A run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sets events in motion that will lead to a depression.

1910 Dr. Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife and is subsequently hanged at Pentonville Prison in London.

    

1924 Toastmasters International is founded. 1926 J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal. 1927 Nikola Tesla exposed his six (6) new inventions including motor with onephase electricity 1928 Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. 1934 In East Liverpool, Ohio, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents shoot and kill notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

1941 World War II: French resistance member Guy Mquet and 29 other hostages are executed by the Germans in retaliation for the death of a German officer.

1943 World War II: in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.

1944 World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.

  

1953 Laos gains independence from France. 1957 Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam. 1960 Independence of Mali from France.

606

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the Communist nation.

  

1963 A BAC One-Eleven prototype airliner crashes in UK with the loss of all on board. 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor. 1964 Canada: A Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects the design which becomes the new official Flag of Canada.

1966 The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' GoGo).

  

1966 The Soviet Union launches Luna 12. 1968 Apollo program: Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times. 1972 Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris.

 

1975 The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus. 1976 Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders ofdogs. The dye is still used in Canada.

1981 The United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its strike the previous August.

 

1981 The TGV railway service between Paris and Lyon is inaugurated. 1983 Two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.

1999 Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity.

2005 Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record with 22 named storms.

2006 A Panama Canal expansion proposal is approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum held in Panama.

2007 Raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base is carried out by 21 Tamil Tiger commandos. All except one died in this attack. Eight Sri Lankan Air Force planes are destroyed and 10 damaged.

2008 India launches its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.

OCTOBER 23

607

42 BC Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus's army. Brutus commits suicide.

 

425 Valentinian III is elevated as Roman Emperor, at the age of 6. 502 The Synodus Palmaris, called by Gothic king Theodoric the Great, discharges Pope Symmachus of all charges, thus ending the schism ofAntipope Laurentius.

 

1086 At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI. 1157 The Battle of Grathe Heath ends the civil war in Denmark. King Sweyn III is killed and Valdemar I restores the country.

      

1295 The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England is signed in Paris. 1641 Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. 1642 Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War. 1694 British/American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phipps, fail to seize Quebec from the French. 1707 The first Parliament of Great Britain meets. 1739 War of Jenkins' Ear starts: British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declares war on Spain. 1812 Claude Franois de Malet, a French general, begins a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russiaand that he is now the commandant of Paris.

 

1850 The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. 1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all militaryrelated cases.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Westport Union forces under General Samuel R. Curtis defeat Confederate troops led by General Sterling Priceat Westport, near Kansas City.

  

1867 72 Senators are summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate. 1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Metz concludes with a decisive Prussian victory. 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.

1911 First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.

 

1912 First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins. 1915 Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.

 

1917 Lenin calls for the October Revolution. 1929 Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.

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1929 The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California.

1935 Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosencrantz are fatally shot at a saloon in Newark, New Jersey in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre.

1941 World War II: Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the Wehrmachtfrom capturing Moscow.

1942 World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein: At El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begins a critical offensive to expel theAxis armies from Egypt.

1942 All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims is awardwinning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory", "Love in Bloom", "Blue Hawaii").

1942 World War II: The Battle for Henderson Field begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.

  

1944 World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines. 1944 World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary. 1946 The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.

1956 Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).

1958 The Springhill Mine Bump An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.

1958 The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story La flute six schtroumpfs, aJohan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.

1965 Vietnam War: The 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile), in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launches a new operation seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleiku in the II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).

1970 Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas.

1972 Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months.

1973 The Watergate Scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.

1973 A United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria.

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1983 Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.

1989 The Hungarian Republic is officially declared by president Mtys Sz rs, replacing the communist Hungarian People's Republic.

  

1989 Phillips Disaster in Pasadena, Texas kills 23 and injures 314. 1992 Emperor Akihito becomes the first Emperor of Japan to stand on Chinese soil. 1993 Shankill Road bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb prematurely detonates in the Shankill area of Belfast, killing the bomber and nine civilians.

1998 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a "land for peace" agreement.

 

2001 Apple announces the iPod. 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.

2004 A powerful earthquake and its aftershocks hit Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, killing 35 people, injuring 2,200, and leaving 85,000 homeless or evacuated.

2007 A powerful cold front in the Bay of Campeche causes the Usumacinta Jackup rig to collide with Kab 101, leading to the death and drowning of 22 people during rescue operations after evacuation of the rig.

OCTOBER 24

69 Second Battle of Bedriacum, forces under Antonius Primus, the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian, defeat the forces ofEmperor Vitellius.

 

1147 After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques, reconquered Lisbon. 1260 The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  

1260 Saif ad-Din Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, is assassinated by Baibars, who seizes power for himself. 1360 The Treaty of Brtigny is ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War. 1590 John White, The governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the "lost" colonists.

 

1648 The Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War. 1795 Partitions of Poland: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is completely divided among Austria, Prussia, and Russia

  

1812 Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Maloyaroslavets takes place near Moscow. 1851 William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel and Ariel (moon) orbiting Uranus. 1857 Sheffield F.C., the world's first football club, is founded in Sheffield, England.

610

1861 The First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express.

  

1892 Goodison Park, the world's first association football specific stadium is opened. 1901 Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. 1911 Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

 

1912 First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo concludes with the Serbian victory. 1917 Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat by the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany on the Austro-Italian front of World War I (lasts until 19 November - also called Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo).

  

1926 Harry Houdini's last performance, which is at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. 1929 "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange. 1930 A bloodless coup d'tat in Brazil ousts Washington Lus Pereira de Sousa, the last President of the First Republic. Getlio Dornelles Vargas is then installed as "provisional president."

 

1931 The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic. 1944 World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

  

1945 Founding of the United Nations 1946 A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space. 1947 Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.

  

1954 Dwight D. Eisenhower pledges United States support to South Vietnam 1957 The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program. 1960 Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash

1964 Northern Rhodesia gains independence from the United Kingdom and becomes the Republic of Zambia (Southern Rhodesia remained a colony)

 

1973 Yom Kippur War ends 1977 Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)

 

1980 Government of Poland legalizes Solidarity trade union 1986 Nezar Hindawi is sentenced to 45 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down by a British court, for the attempted bombing on an El Al flight at Heathrow. After the verdict, the United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, claiming that Hindawi is helped by Syrian officials.

611

1990 Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian "stay-behind" clandestine paramilitary NATO army.

 

1998 Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission 2002 Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.

 

2003 Concorde makes its last commercial flight. 2005 Hurricane Wilma makes landfall in Florida resulting in 35 direct 26 indirect fatalities and causing $20.6B USD in damage.

2006 Justice Rutherford of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down the "motive clause", an important part of the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act.

2008 "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.

OCTOBER 25

1147 The Portuguese, under Afonso I, and Crusaders from England and Flanders conquer Lisbon after a fourmonth siege.

  

1147 Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum. 1415 The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt. 1616 Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off theWest Australian coast.

  

1747 British fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeats the French at the second battle of Cape Finisterre. 1760 George III becomes King of Great Britain. 1812 War of 1812: The American heavy frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.

     

1813 War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay. 1828 The St Katharine Docks opened in London. 1854 The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade). 1861 The Toronto Stock Exchange is created. 1900 The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal. 1917 Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.

1920 After 74 days on Hunger Strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Fin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney died.

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1924 The forged Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of reelection.

1938 The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell".

1944 Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.

1944 The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.

 

1944 The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers occupation. 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.

    

1945 The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies. 1962 Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba. 1962 Uganda joins the United Nations. 1962 Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison. 1971 The United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)

 

1977 Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0. 1980 Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague.

1983 Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'tat.

1991 History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.

 

1995 A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students. 1997 After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis SassouNguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.

 

2004 Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned. 2009 The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.

OCTOBER 26

306 Martyrdom of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki

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1597 Imjin War: Admiral Yi Sun-sin routs the Japanese Navy of 300 ships with only 13 ships at the Battle of Myeongnyang.

 

1640 The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Scotland and Charles I of England. 1689 General Piccolomini of Austria burned down Skopje to prevent the spread of cholera. He died of cholera himself soon after.

 

1774 The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1775 King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776 Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

    

1795 The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created. 1811 The Argentine government declare the freedom of expression for the press by decree. 1825 The Erie Canal opens passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie. 1859 The Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, north Wales with 459 dead. 1860 Meeting of Teano. Giuseppe Garibaldi, conqueror of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, gives it to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

   

1861 The Pony Express officially ceases operations. 1881 The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona. 1905 Norway becomes independent from Sweden. 1909 It Hirobumi, Resident-General of Korea, was shot to death by Korean independence supporter Ahn Junggeun at the Harbin train station in Manchuria.

1912 First Balkan War: The Ottoman occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron Saint Demetrius. On the same day, Serbiantroops captured Skopje.

1917 World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of AustriaHungary and Germany. The young unknown Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel captures Mount Matajur with only 100 Germans against a force of over 7000 Italians.

 

1917 World War I: Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers. 1918 Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.

   

1921 The Chicago Theatre opens. 1936 The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation. 1940 The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight. 1942 World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.

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1943 World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil". 1944 World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory. 1947 The Maharaja of Kashmir agrees to allow his kingdom to join India. 1948 Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania. 1955 After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares permanent neutrality.

 

1955 Ng

nh Di m declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.

1958 Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.

    

1959 First photographs taken of the far side of the Moon, by Luna 3. 1964 Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed. 1967 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran. 1968 Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy pilots Soyuz 3 into space for a four-day mission. 1977 The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.

1979 Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyuha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.

   

1984 "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon. 1985 The Australian government returns ownership of Uluru to the local Pitjantjatjara Aborigines. 1992 The Charlottetown Accord fails to win majority support in a Canada wide referendum. 1992 The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Dispatch, system which failed.

 

1994 Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in his hotel in Malta.

1999 Britain's House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.

2000 Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Cte d'Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Gu.

 

2001 The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law. 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.

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2003 The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.

OCTOBER 27
        
312 Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross. 710 Saracen invasion of Sardinia. 939 Edmund I succeeds Athelstan as King of England. 1275 Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam. 1524 Italian Wars: The French troops lay siege to Pavia. 1553 Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva. 1644 Second Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War. 1682 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded. 1795 The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which establishes the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S.

   

1806 The French Army enters Berlin. 1810 United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida. 1827 Bellini's third opera Il pirata is premiered at Teatro alla Scala di Milano 1838 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.

1870 Marshal Franois Achille Bazaine surrenders to Prussian forces at Metz along with 140,000 French soldiers in one of the biggest French defeats of the Franco-Prussian War.

1904 The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.

1914 World War I: The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons), is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin.

1916 Battle of Segale: Negus Mikael, marching on the Ethiopian capital in support of his son Emperor Iyasus V, is defeated by Fitawrari abte Giyorgis, securing the throne for Empress Zauditu.

  

1922 A referendum in Rhodesia rejects the country's annexation to the South African Union. 1924 The Uzbek SSR is founded in the Soviet Union. 1936 Mrs Wallis Simpson files for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.

1944 World War II: German forces capture Bansk Bystrica during Slovak National Uprising thus bringing it to an end.

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1948 Lopold Sdar Senghor founds the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. 1953 British nuclear test Totem 2 is carried out at Emu Field, South Australia. 1954 Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force. 1958 Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed in a bloodless coup d'tat by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier.

  

1961 NASA launches the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1. 1961 Mauritania and Mongolia join the United Nations. 1962 Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

 

1962 A plane carrying Enrico Mattei, post-war Italian administrator, crashes in mysterious circumstances. 1964 Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as "A Time for Choosing".

1967 Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the Baltimore Four protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records.

   

1971 The Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed Zaire. 1973 The Caon City meteorite, a 1.4 kg chondrite type meteorite, strikes in Fremont County, Colorado. 1981 The Soviet submarine U 137 runs aground on the east coast of Sweden. 1986 The British government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang.

1988 Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.

 

1991 Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet Union. 1992 United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey for being gay, precipitating first military, then national, debate aboutgays in the military that resulted in the United States "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy.

    

1994 The U.S. prison population tops 1 million for the first time in American history. 1994 Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object to be unquestionably identified. 1995 Latvia applies for membership in the European Union. 1995 Former Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi is convicted in absentia of corruption. 1997 October 27, 1997 mini-crash: Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 554.26 points to 7,161.15.

1999 Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and 6 other members.

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2004 The Boston Red Sox win the World Series for the first time in 86 years. 2005 Riots begin in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers. 2005 The SSETI Express micro-satellite is successfully launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

OCTOBER 28

97 Emperor Nerva is forced by the Praetorian Guard, to adopt general Marcus Ulpius Trajanus as his heir and successor.

  

306 Maxentius is proclaimed Roman Emperor. 312 Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman Emperor. 1061 Empress Agnes, acting as Regent for her son, brings about the election of Bishop Cadalus, the Antipope Honorius II.

 

1516 Battle of Yaunis Khan: Turkish forces under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha defeat the Mameluks near Gaza. 1531 Battle of Amba Sel: Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi again defeats the army of Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia. The southern part of Ethiopia falls under Imam Ahmad's control.

  

1538 The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Toms de Aquino, is established. 1628 The Siege of La Rochelle, which had lasted for 14 months, ends with the surrender of the Huguenots. 1636 A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.

1664 The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, later to be known as the Royal Marines, is established.

  

1707 The 1707 H ei earthquake causes more than 5,000 deaths in Honshu, Shikoku and Ky sh , Japan 1775 American Revolutionary War: A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Battle of White Plains British Army forces arrive at White Plains, attack and capture Chatterton Hill from theAmericans.

1834 The Battle of Pinjarra is fought in the Swan River Colony in present-day Pinjarra, Western Australia. Between 14 and 40 Aborigines are killed by British colonists.

  

1835 The United Tribes of New Zealand is established with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 1848 The first railroad in Spain between Barcelona and Matar is opened. 1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Fair Oaks & Darbytown Road (also known as the Second Battle of Fair Oaks) ends Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond, Virginia.

 

1886 In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty. 1891 The Mino-Owari earthquake, the largest earthquake in Japan's history, strikes Gifu Prefecture.

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1893 Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathtique, receives its premire performance in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.

 

1915 Richard Strauss conducts the first performance of his tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie in Berlin. 1918 World War I: Czechoslovakia is granted independence from Austria-Hungary marking the beginning of independent Czechoslovak state, after 300 years.

 

1918 New Polish government in Western Galicia is established. 1919 The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.

1922 March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

   

1928 Declarated of Youth Pledge in Indonesia , the first time Indonesia Raya song was sung 1929 Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval. 1936 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary. 1940 World War II: Greece rejects Italy's ultimatum. Italy invades Greece through Albania, marking Greece's entry into World War II.

 

1942 The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska. 1948 Swiss chemist Paul Mller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.

  

1954 The modern Kingdom of the Netherlands is re-founded as a federal monarchy. 1958 John XXIII, is elected as Pope. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.

 

1964 Vietnam War: U.S. officials deny any involvement in bombing North Vietnam. 1965 Nostra Aetate, the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions" of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI; it absolves the Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus, reversing Innocent III's 760 year-old declaration.

  

1965 Construction on the St. Louis Arch is completed. 1971 Britain launches its first satellite, Prospero, into low Earth orbit atop a Black Arrow carrier rocket. 1982 Spanish Socialist Workers' Party wins elections, leading to first Socialist government in Spain after death of Franco. Felipe Gonzalez becomes Prime Minister-elect.

1985 Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.

1986 The centenary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty is celebrated in New York Harbor.

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1995 289 people are killed and 265 injured in Baku Metro fire, the deadliest subway disaster. 1998 An Air China jetliner is hijacked by disgruntled pilot Yuan Bin and flown to Taiwan. 2005 Plame affair: Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame case. Libby resigns later that day.

2006 Funeral service takes place for those executed at Bykivnia forest, outside Kiev, Ukraine. 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s early 1940s are reburied.

  

2007 Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner becomes the first woman elected President of Argentina. 2009 The 28 October 2009 Peshawar bombing kills 117 and wounds 213. 2009 NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for its latercancelled Constellation program.

OCTOBER 29

539 BC Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon and detained Nabonidus and finish the Babylonian captivity and gave the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple; but most Jews chose to remain in Babylon.

312 Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, he stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius' body is fished out the Tiber and beheaded.

437 Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor inConstantinople unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius.

 

969 Byzantine troops occupy Antioch Syria. 1268 Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church.

   

1390 First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people. 1422 Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France. 1467 Battle of Brustem: Charles the Bold defeats Liege. 1618 English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

 

1658 Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle). 1665 Battle of Ambuila, where Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king Antonio I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga.

 

1675 Leibniz makes the first use of the long s () as a symbol of the integral in calculus. 1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.

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1792 Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

  

1859 Spain declares war on Morocco. 1863 Eighteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1886 The first ticker-tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.

1901 In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.

1901 Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1918 The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny on the night of the 29th-30th, an action which would trigger the German revolution.

  

1921 The Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed. 1921 Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA. 1921 The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.

  

1922 The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister. 1923 Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. 1929 The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or "Black Tuesday", ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1941 Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".

1942 Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews.

   

1944 The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division. 1945 Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns. 1948 Safsaf massacre. 1953 BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco, California. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.

1955 The Soviet battleship Novorossiisk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.

621

1956 Suez Crisis begins: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.

 

1956 Tangier Protocol is signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco. 1957 Israel's prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

1960 In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.

  

1961 Syria exits from the United Arab Republic. 1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar unite to form the Republic of Tanzania. 1964 A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is "Murph the surf") from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

 

1966 National Organization For Women is founded. 1967 London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.

  

1967 Montreal's World Fair, Expo 67, closes with over 50 million visitors. 1969 The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. 1980 Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

    

1980 Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's murderer, leaves for New York from his home in Hawaii. 1983 Over 500,000 people demonstrate against cruise missiles in The Hague, Netherlands. 1985 Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multi-party election in Liberia. 1986 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway. 1991 The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1994 Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).

1998 Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.

1998 Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.

1998 ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.

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1998 While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he is landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.

   

1998 Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras. 1998 The Gothenburg nightclub fire in Sweden claims 63 lives and injures 200. 1999 A large cyclone devastates Orissa, India. 2002 Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people are shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.

2004 The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

2004 In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution.

 

2005 29 October 2005 Delhi bombings kill more than 60. 2008 Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world's largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.

OCTOBER 30
  
758 Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates. 1137 Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily. 1226 Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.

1270 The Eighth Crusade and siege of Tunis end by an agreement between Charles I of Sicily (brother to King Louis IX of France, who had died months earlier) and the sultan of Tunis.

   

1340 Battle of Rio Salado. 1470 Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats the Yorkists in battle. 1485 King Henry VII of England is crowned. 1501 Ballet of Chestnuts a banquet held by Cesare Borgia in the Papal Palace where fifty prostitutes or courtesans are in attendance for the entertainment of the guests.

1831 In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United Stateshistory.

 

1863 Danish Prince Wilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes. 1864 Second war of Schleswig ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrianadministration.

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1864 Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch". 1894 Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially. 1905 Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly. 1918 The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East. 1920 The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney. 1922 Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy. 1925 John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter. 1929 The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany. 1938 Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.

  

1941 World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations. 1941 1,500 Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Belzec extermination camp. 1942 Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.

1944 Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

1945 Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.

1947 The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.

 

1950 Pope Pius XII witnesses "The Miracle of the Sun" while at the Vatican. 1953 Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.

1960 Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

1961 Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.

1961 Because of "violations of Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead.

1965 Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions is found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.

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1970 In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.

 

1972 A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332. 1973 The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.

1974 The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire.

1975 Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain's acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.

1980 El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969's Football War before the International Court of Justice.

  

1983 The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held. 1985 Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission. 1987 In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine.

 

1991 The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens. 1993 Greysteel massacre: The Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist terrorist group, open fire on a crowded bar in Greysteel, Northern Ireland. Eight civilians are killed and thirteen wounded.

1995 Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote is 50.6% to 49.4%).

 

2000 The last Multics machine is shut down. 2002 British Digital terrestrial television (DTT) Service Freeview begins transmitting in parts of the United Kingdom.

2005 The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.

OCTOBER 31
   
475 Romulus Augustulus is proclaimed Western Roman Emperor. 1517 Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. 1587 Leiden University Library opens its doors after its founding in 1575. 1822 Emperor Agustn de Iturbide attempts to dissolve the Mexican Empire.

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1861 American Civil War: Citing failing health, Union General Winfield Scott resigns as Commander of the United States Army.

1863 The Maori Wars resumes as British forces in New Zealand led by General Duncan Cameron begin their Invasion of the Waikato.

       

1864 Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state. 1876 A monster cyclone ravages India, resulting in over 200,000 deaths. 1913 Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across United States. 1913 The Indianapolis Street Car Strike and subsequent riot begins. 1917 World War I: Battle of Beersheba "last successful cavalry charge in history". 1918 Banat Republic is founded 1923 The first of 160 consecutive days of 100 degrees at Marble Bar, Australia. 1924 World Savings Day is announced in Milan, Italy by the Members of the Association at the 1st International Savings Bank Congress (World Society of Savings Banks).

 

1926 Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured. 1938 Great Depression: In an effort to restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.

  

1940 World War II: The Battle of Britain ends the United Kingdom prevents a possible German invasion. 1941 After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed. 1941 World War II: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.

  

1941 A fire in a clothing factory in Huddersfield, England kills 49 1943 World War II: An F4U Corsair accomplishes the first successful radar-guided interception. 1944 Dr. jur. Erich Gstl, a member of the Waffen SS, is awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognise extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy.

 

1954 Algerian War of Independence: The Algerian National Liberation Front begins a revolt against French rule. 1956 Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal.

  

1959 Lee Harvey Oswald attempts to renounce his American citizenship at the US Embassy in Moscow, USSR. 1961 In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb. 1963 An explosion at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum (now Pepsi Coliseum) in Indianapolis kills 74 people during an ice skating show. The explosion also injures 400. A faulty propane tank connection in a concession stand is blamed.

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1968 Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

1973 Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape. Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escape from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Republic of Ireland aboard a hijacked helicopter that lands in the exercise yard.

1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards. Riots soon break out in New Delhi and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.

1994 An American Eagle ATR-72 crashes in Roselawn, Indiana, after circling in icy weather, killing 68 passengers and crew.

1996 A Fokker F100 operating as TAM Transportes Areos Regionais Flight 402 crashes into several houses in So Paulo, Brazil killing 98 including 2 on the ground.

1997 19-year-old British au pair Louise Woodward, convicted by a Cambridge, Massachusetts, jury of seconddegree murder the day before, is sentenced to life in prison.

1998 Iraq disarmament crisis begins: Iraq announces it would no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.

1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 traveling from New York City to Cairo crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on-board.

1999 Yachtsman Jesse Martin returns to Melbourne after 11 months of circumnavigating the world, solo, nonstop and unassisted.

2000 A Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 operating as Flight 006 collides with construction equipment upon takeoff in Taipei, Taiwan killing 79 passengers and four crew members.

 

2000 A chartered Antonov An-26 explodes after takeoff in Northern Angola killing 50. 2000 Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been continuously crewed since.

2002 A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy andobstruction of justice related to the collapse of his exemployer.

2003 A bankruptcy court approves MCI's reorganization plans, essentially clearing the telecommunications company to exit bankruptcy.

2003 Mahathir bin Mohamad resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia and is replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, marking an end to Mahathir's 22 years in power.

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NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER 1

365 The Alamanni cross the Rhine and invade Gaul. Emperor Valentinian I moves to Paris to command the army and defend the Gallic cities.

996 Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrchi (Austria in Old High German).

 

1179 Philip II is crowned King of France. 1348 The anti-royalist Union of Valencia attacks the Jews of Murviedro on the pretext that they are serfs of the King of Valencia and thus "royalists."

 

1512 The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time. 1520 The Strait of Magellan is discovered, the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during the first global circumnavigation voyage.

 

1604 William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London. 1611 William Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1612 (22 October O.S.) Time of Troubles in Russia: Moscow, Kitai-gorod, is captured by Russian troops under command of Dmitry Pozharsky

 

1683 The British crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties. 1688 William III of Orange sets a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to liberate England, Scotland and Ireland from the tyrannicalKing James II of England during the Glorious Revolution.

1755 Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty thousand and ninety thousand people.

1765 The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the 13 colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1790 Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster.

1800 US President John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House).

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1805 Napoleon Bonaparte invades Austria during the War of the Third Coalition. 1814 Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France, in the Napoleonic Wars.

1848 In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opens.

1859 The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse is lit for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for about 19 miles (30 kilometers), in good conditions.

1861 American Civil War: US President Abraham Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army, replacing General Winfield Scott.

1870 In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast.

    

1876 New Zealand's provincial government system is dissolved. 1884 The Gaelic Athletic Association is set up in Hayes's Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary. 1886 Ananda College, a leading Buddhist school in Sri Lanka is established with 37 students. 1894 Nicholas II becomes the new Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies. 1896 A picture showing the unclad (bare) breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.

1897 The first Library of Congress building opened its doors to the public. The Library had been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.

1901 Sigma Phi Epsilon, the largest national male collegiate fraternity is established at Richmond College, in Richmond, VA.

 

1911 The first dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat, during the Italo-Turkish War. 1914 World War I: the first British Royal Navy defeat of the war with Germany, the Battle of Coronel, is fought off of the western coast of Chile, in the Pacific, with the loss of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth.

 

1915 Parris Island is officially designated a US Marine Corps Recruit Depot. 1916 Paul Miliukov delivers in the State Duma the famous "stupidity or treason" speech, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Strmer government.

1918 Malbone Street Wreck: the worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 93 deaths.

 

1918 Western Ukraine gains its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1920 American Fishing Schooner Esperanto defeats the Canadian Fishing Schooner Delawana in the First International Fishing Schooner Championship Races in Halifax.

1922 The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, abdicates.

629

1928 The Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet, replacing the version of the Arabic alphabet previously used, comes into force in Turkey.

 

1937 Stalinists execute Pastor Paul Hamberg and seven members of Azerbaijan's Lutheran community. 1938 Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral in an upset victory during a match race deemed "the match of the century" in horse racing.

 

1939 The first rabbit born after artificial insemination is exhibited to the world. 1941 American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography.

 

1942 Matanikau Offensive begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on November 4. 1943 World War II: Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, United States Marines, the 3rd Marine Division, land on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.

1943 World War II: In support of the landings on Bougainville, U.S. aircraft carrier forces attack the huge Japanese base at Rabaul.

 

1944 World War II: Units of the British Army land at Walcheren in the Netherlands. 1945 The official North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, is first published under the name Chongro. Australia joins the United Nations.

1946 The New York Knicks played against the Toronto Huskies at the Maple Leaf Gardens, in the first Basketball Association of America game. The Knicks would win 68-66.

 

1948 Off southern Manchuria, 6,000 people are killed as a Chinese merchant ship explodes and sinks. 1950 Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.

 

1950 Pope Pius XII claims Papal Infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle: 6,500 American soldiers are exposed to 'Desert Rock' atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary.

1952 Operation Ivy The United States successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike" ["M" for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The explosion had a yield of 10 megatons.

  

1953 Andhra Pradesh attained statehood on 1 November 1953, with Kurnool as its capital. 1954 The Front de Libration Nationale fires the first shots of the Algerian War of Independence. 1955 The bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 occurs near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members aboard the Douglas DC-6B airliner.

1956 The Indian states Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Mysore state are formally created under the States Reorganisation Act.

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1957 The Mackinac Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas.

 

1959 Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante wears a protective mask for the first time in an NHL game. 1959 In Rwanda, Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa is beaten up by Tutsi forces, leading to a period of violence known as the wind of destruction.

1960 While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.

1961 50,000 women in 60 cities participate in the inaugural Women Strike for Peace (WSP) against nuclear proliferation.

1963 The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.

1968 The Motion Picture Association of America's film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.

    

1970 Club Cinq-Sept fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France kills 146 young people. 1973 Watergate Scandal: Leon Jaworski is appointed as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor. 1973 The Indian state of Mysore is renamed as Karnataka to represent all the regions within Karunadu. 1981 Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the United Kingdom. 1982 Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of their factory in Marysville, Ohio. The Honda Accord is the first car produced there.

 

1993 The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union. 2000 Serbia joins the United Nations.

NOVEMBER 2
  
1410 The Peace of Bictre between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions is signed. 1570 A tsunami in the North Sea devastates the coast from Holland to Jutland, killing more than 1,000 people. 1675 King Philip's War: A combined effort by the Plymouth, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut colonies attacks the Great Swamp Fort, owned by the Narragansetts.

 

1769 Don Gaspar de Portol leads the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. 1772 American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence.

  

1783 In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army". 1795 The French Directory succeeds the French National Convention as the government of Revolutionary France. 1861 American Civil War: Western Department Union General John C. Fremont is relieved of command and replaced by David Hunter.

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1868 Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally 1882 Oulu, Finland is decimated by the Great Oulu Fire of 1882 1889 North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states. 1895 The first gasoline-powered race in the United States. First prize: $2,000 1898 Cheerleading is started at the University of Minnesota with Johnny Campbell leading the crowd in cheering on the football team.

   

1899 The Boers begin their 118 day siege of British held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War. 1909 Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity is founded at Boston University. 1914 Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire. 1917 The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the clear understanding "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities".

1920 In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the U.S. presidential election, 1920.

  

1930 Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia. 1936 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established. 1936 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis Powers.

1936 The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "highdefinition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.

1947 In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.

  

1953 The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan names the country The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. 1957 The Levelland UFO Case in Levelland, Texas, generates national publicity. 1959 Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1959 The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorwayand M45 motorway

   

1960 Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case 1963 South Vietnamese President Ng nh Di m is assassinated following a military coup. 1964 King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal. 1965 Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

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1966 The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.

1967 Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "The Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

1973 The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India form a 'United Front' in the state of Tripura.

1974 78 die when the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burns down. Six of the victims jumped to their deaths from the seventh floor after a club official barred the doors after the fire started.

  

1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. 1984 Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962. 1988 The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.

1995 Former South African defense minister General Magnus Malan and 10 other former senior military officers are arrested and charged with murdering 13 people in 1987, (all the accused are later acquitted).

2000 The first resident crew to the ISS docked in November 2nd on the Soyuz TM-31

NOVEMBER 3

361 Emperor Constantius II dies of a fever at Mopsuestia in Cilicia, on his deathbed he is baptised and declares his cousin Julian rightful successor.

        

644 Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph, is assassinated by a Persian slave in Medina. 1468 Lige is sacked by Charles I of Burgundy's troops. 1493 Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea. 1783 John Austin, a highwayman, is the last person to be publicly hanged at London's Tyburn gallows. 1783 The American Continental Army is disbanded. 1793 French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined. 1812 Napoleon's armies are defeated at the Battle of Vyazma 1817 The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank, opens in Montreal, Quebec. 1838 The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper is founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.

1848 A greatly revised Dutch constitution, drafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, severely limiting the powers of the Dutch monarchy, and strengthening the powers of parliament and ministers, is proclaimed.

1867 Garibaldi and his followers are defeated in the Battle of Mentana and fail to end the Pope's Temporal power in Rome (it would be achieved three years later).

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1883 American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the poet" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves a clue that eventually leads to his capture.

      

1903 With the encouragement of the United States, Panama separates from Colombia. 1905 Czar Nicholas II of Russia signs a document of amnesty for political prisoners. 1911 Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T. 1913 The United States introduces an income tax. 1918 Austria-Hungary enters into an armistice with the Allies, and the Habsburg-ruled empire dissolves. 1918 Poland declares its independence from Russia. 1930 Getlio Dornelles Vargas becomes Head of the Provisional Government in Brazil after a bloodless coup on October 24.

   

1935 George II of Greece regains his throne through a popular plebiscite. 1942 World War II: The Koli Point action begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on November 12. 1943 World War II: 500 aircraft of the U.S. 8th Air Force devastate Wilhelmshafen harbor in Germany. 1944 World War II: Two supreme commanders of the Slovak National Uprising, Generals Jn Golian and Rudolf Viest are captured, tortured and later executed by German forces.

1957 Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.

  

1964 Washington D.C. residents are able to vote in a presidential election for the first time. 1967 Vietnam War: The Battle of Dak To begins. 1969 Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies.

1973 Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

 

1978 Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1979 Greensboro massacre: Five members of the Communist Workers Party are shot dead and seven are wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis during a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States.

 

1982 The Salang tunnel fire in Afghanistan kills up to 2,000 people. 1986 Iran-Contra Affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

 

1986 The Federated States of Micronesia gain independence from the United States of America. 1988 Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries try to overthrow the Maldivian government. At President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's request, the Indian military suppresses the coup attempt within 24 hours.

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1996 Death of Abdullah atl , leader of the Turkish ultra-nationalist organisation Grey Wolves in the Susurluk car-crash, which leads to the resignation of the Turkish Interior Minister, Mehmet A ar (a leader of the True Path Party, DYP).

1997 The United States of America imposes economic sanctions against Sudan in response to its human rights abuses of its own citizens and its material and political assistance to Islamic extremist groups across the Middle East and Eastern Africa.

2007 Pervez Musharraf declares emergency rule across Pakistan. He suspends the Constitution, imposes a State of Emergency, and fires the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

NOVEMBER 4

1333 The River Arno flooding causing massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.

 

1429 Joan of Arc liberates Saint-Pierre-le-Motier. 1501 Catherine of Aragon (later Henry VIII's first wife) meets Arthur Tudor, Henry VIII's older brother they would later marry.

 

1576 Eighty Years' War: In Flanders, Spain captures Antwerp (after three days the city is nearly destroyed). 1677 The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange. They would later jointly reign as William and Mary.

  

1737 The Teatro di San Carlo is inaugurated. 1783 W.A. Mozart's Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria. 1791 The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.

1825 The Erie Canal is completed with Governor DeWitt Clinton performing the Wedding of The Waters ceremony in New York Harbour.

 

1839 The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. 1852 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expands to become Italy.

 

1861 The University of Washington opens in Seattle, Washington as the Territorial University. 1864 American Civil War: Battle of Johnsonville Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in material.

1890 City & South London Railway: London's first deep-level tube railway opens between King William Street and Stockwell.

 

1918 World War I: Austria-Hungary surrenders to Italy. 1918 The German Revolution begins when 40,000 sailors take over the port in Kiel.

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1921 The Sturmabteilung or SA is formed by Adolf Hitler 1921 Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo. 1921 The Italian unknown soldier is buried in the Altare della Patria (Fatherland Altar) in Rome. 1922 In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

 

1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected the first female governor in the United States. 1939 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases ofweapons by belligerents.

1942 World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel leads his forces on a five-month retreat.

  

1944 World War II: Bitola Liberation Day 1952 The United States government establishes the National Security Agency. 1955 After being totally destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopens with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio.

1956 Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.

1960 At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.

1962 In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope is successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island. It would also be the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.

1966 Two-thirds of Florence, Italy is submerged as the River Arno floods; together with the contemporaneous flood of the Po River in northern Italy, this leads to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.

1970 Vietnam War: Vietnamization The United States turns control of the Binh Thuy Air Base in the Mekong Delta over to South Vietnam.

1970 Genie, a 13-year-old feral child is found in Los Angeles, California having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.

1973 The Netherlands experiences the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.

1979 Iran hostage crisis begins: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invades the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).

1993 A China Airlines Boeing 747 overruns Runway 13 at Hong Kong's Kai Tak International Airport while landing during a typhoon, injuring 22 people.

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1994 San Francisco: First conference that focuses exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.

 

1995 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Orthodox Israeli. 2002 Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.

 

2008 Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States. 2008 Proposition 8 passes in California, revoking state recognition of LGBT marriages.

NOVEMBER 5
 
1138 Ly Anh Tong is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two, starting a 37-year reign. 1499 Publication of the Catholicon in Trguier (Brittany). This Breton-French-Latin dictionary was written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc. It is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.

 

1530 The St. Felix's Flood destroys the city of Reimerswaal in the Netherlands. 1605 Gunpowder Plot: A conspiracy led by Robert Catesby to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is thwarted when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the House of Lords.

  

1688 The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Brixham. 1743 Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle. 1757 Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.

1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in theProclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.

  

1780 French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle. 1831 Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia. 1838 The Federal Republic of Central America begins to disintegrate when Nicaragua separates from the Federation.

 

1854 Crimean War: The Battle of Inkerman. 1862 American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.

1862 Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to hang. 38 are ultimately executed and the others reprieved.

1872 Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.

1895 George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.

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1911 After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica. 1913 King Otto of Bavaria is deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumes the title Ludwig III. 1916 The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of November 5th of the emperors of Germany and AustriaHungary.

1916 The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.

1917 October Revolution: In Tallinn, Estonia, Communist leader Jaan Anvelt leads revolutionaries in overthrowing the Provisional Government (As Estonia and Russia are still using the Julian Calendar, subsequent period references show an October 23 date).

    

1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church. 1937 Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people. 1942 The Second Battle of El Alamein is won by the British in El Alamein, Egypt. 1945 Colombia joins the United Nations. 1967 The Hither Green rail crash in the United Kingdom kills 49 people. Survivors include Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.

1970 Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).

 

1983 Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured. 1986 USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.

 

1987 Govan Mbeki is released from custody after serving 24 years of a life sentence for terrorism and treason. 1990 Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.

1995 Andr Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrtien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.

1996 President of Pakistan Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolves the National Assembly of Pakistan.

 

2003 Green River Killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder. 2006 Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'as in 1982.

 

2007 China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon. 2009 US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting at a US military installation.

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NOVEMBER 6

355 Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.

1528 Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.

1632 Thirty years war: Battle of Ltzen is fought, the Swedes are victorious but the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus dies in the battle.

  

1789 Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. 1844 The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted. 1856 Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.

  

1860 American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln is elected 16th president of the United States 1861 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. 1865 American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.

1869 In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first officialintercollegiate American football game.

 

1913 Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa. 1917 World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.

   

1918 The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland. 1925 Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union. 1934 Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1935 Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

   

1935 First flight of the Hawker Hurricane. 1935 Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie. 1939 World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place. 1941 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.

1942 World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.

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1943 World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.

1944 Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

 

1947 Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948). 1962 Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.

1963 Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.

1965 Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program.

1971 The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, codenamed Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

1975 Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.

 

1977 The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39. 1985 In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the April 19 Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogot, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.

1985 The Iran-Contra Affair: The American press reveals that U.S. President Ronald Reagan had authorized the shipment of arms to Iran.

1986 Sumburgh disaster A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.5 miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.

1999 Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.

2004 An express train collides with a stationary carriage near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing 7 and injuring 150.

2005 The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 kills 25 in Northwestern Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana.

NOVEMBER 7
 
335 Athanasius is banished to Trier, on charge that he prevented a grain fleet from sailing to Constantinople. 680 The Sixth Ecumenical Council commences in Constantinople.

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1492 The Ensisheim Meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village ofEnsisheim, Alsace, France.

  

1619 Elizabeth of Scotland and England is crowned Queen of Bohemia. 1665 The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published. 1775 John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore's Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters in order to fight with Murray and the British.

 

1786 The oldest musical organization in the United States is founded as the Stoughton Musical Society. 1811 Tecumseh's War: The Battle of Tippecanoe is fought near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana, United States.

1837 In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.

1861 American Civil War: Battle of Belmont: In Belmont, Missouri, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp but are forced to retreat when Confederate reinforcements arrive.

 

1872 The ship Mary Celeste sails from New York, eventually to be found deserted 1874 A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1885 In Craigellachie, British Columbia, construction ends on the Canadian Pacific Railway extending across Canada.

   

1893 Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote. 1900 Battle of Leliefontein, a battle during which the Royal Canadian Dragoons win three Victoria Crosses. 1907 Delta Sigma Pi is founded at New York University. 1907 Jess Garca saves the entire town of Nacozari de Garcia, Sonora by driving a burning train full of dynamite six kilometers away before it can explode.

 

1908 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia. 1910 The first air freight shipment (from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio) is undertaken by the Wright Brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.

1912 The Deutsche Opernhaus (now Deutsche Oper Berlin) opens in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, with a production of Beethoven's Fidelio.

   

1914 The first issue of The New Republic magazine is published. 1914 The German colony of Kiaochow Bay and its centre at Tsingtao are captured by Japanese forces. 1916 Jeannette Rankin is the first woman elected to the United States Congress. 1917 The Gregorian calendar date of the October Revolution, which gets its name from the Julian calendar date of 25 October. On this date in 1917, the Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace.

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1917 World War I: Third Battle of Gaza ends: British forces capture Gaza from the Ottoman Empire. 1918 The 1918 influenza epidemic spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7,542 (about 20% of the population) by the end of the year.

 

1918 Kurt Eisner overthrows the Wittelsbach dynasty in the Kingdom of Bavaria. 1919 The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in twenty-three different U.S. cities.

1920 Patriarch Tikhon issues a decree that leads to the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

    

1921 The Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), National Fascist Party, comes into existence. 1929 In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art opens to the public. 1931 The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. 1933 Fiorello H. La Guardia is elected the 99th mayor of New York City. 1940 In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.

1941 World War II: Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that over 5,000 people died in the sinking.

1944 A passenger train derails in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico from excessive speed when descending a hill. 16 people are killed and 50 are injured.

1944 Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German World War I veteran, is hanged by his Japanese captors along with 34 of his ring.

 

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America. 1956 Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to immediately withdraw their troops from Egypt.

  

1957 Cold War: The Gaither Report calls for more American missiles and fallout shelters. 1963 Wunder von Lengede: In Germany, eleven miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days. 1967 Carl B. Stokes is elected as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first African American mayor of a major American city.

1967 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1973 The U.S. Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.

1975 In Bangladesh, a joint force of people and soldiers takes part in an uprising led by Col. Abu Taher that ousts and kills Brig. Khaled Mosharraf, freeing the then house-arrestedarmy chief and future president MajGen. Ziaur Rahman. The day is occasionally observed as the National Revolution and Solidarity Day.

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1983 1983 United States Senate bombing: a bomb explodes inside the United States Capitol. No people are harmed, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused.

1987 In Tunisia, president Habib Bourguiba is overthrown and replaced by Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

1989 Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.

 

1989 David Dinkins becomes the first African American mayor of New York City. 1989 East German Prime Minister Willi Stoph, along with his entire cabinet, is forced to resign after huge antigovernment protests.

  

1990 Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland. 1991 Magic Johnson announces that he is infected with HIV and retires from the NBA. 1994 WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world's first internet radio broadcast.

 

1996 NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor. 2000 Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected to the United States Senate, becoming the first former First Lady to win public office in the United States, although actually she still was the First Lady.

 

2000 Controversial US presidential election that is later resolved in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court Case. 2000 The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country's largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

 

2002 Iran bans advertising of United States products. 2004 War in Iraq: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day "state of emergency" as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2007 Jokela school shooting in Tuusula, Finland resulting in the death of nine people.

NOVEMBER 8
 
1519 Hernn Corts enters Tenochtitln and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration. 1520 Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 people.

1576 Eighty Years' War: Pacification of Ghent The States-General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.

 

1602 The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened to the public. 1620 The Battle of White Mountain takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.

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1745 Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of ~5000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.

  

1793 In Paris, the French Revolutionary government opens the Louvre to the public as a museum. 1837 Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes Mount Holyoke College. 1861 American Civil War: The "Trent Affair" The USS San Jacinto stops the United Kingdom mail ship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.

 

1889 Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state. 1892 The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.

   

1895 While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Rntgen discovers the X-ray. 1901 Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek. 1917 The People's Commissars give authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. 1923 Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

1933 Great Depression: New Deal US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.

1935 A dozen labor leaders come together to announce the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), an organization charged with advancing industrial unionism.

  

1937 The Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew") opens in Munich. 1939 Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans. 1939 In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

 

1942 World War II: Operation Torch United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa. 1942 World War II: French resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyst generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.

1950 Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraftdogfight in history.

1957 Operation Grapple X, Round C1: Britain conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.

1960 John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century to become the 35th president of the United States.

1965 The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.

644

1965 The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom.

1965 The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War, while the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment fight one of the first set-piece engagements of the war between Australian forces and the Vietcong at the Battle of Gang Toi.

1966 Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.

1973 The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay 2.9 million USD.

 

1976 A series of earthquakes spreads panic in the city of Thessaloniki, which is evacuated. 1977 Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.

1987 Remembrance Day Bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.

2002 Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441 The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein todisarm or face "serious consequences".

2004 War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

NOVEMBER 9
    
694 Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery. 1282 Pope Martin IV excommunicates King Peter III of Aragon. 1313 Louis the Bavarian defeats his cousin Frederick I of Austria at the Battle of Gamelsdorf. 1330 Battle of Posada, Wallachian Voievode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army in an ambush 1456 Ulrich II of Celje (Slovene: Ulrik Celjski, German Ulrich von Cilli, Hungarian: Cillei Ulrik), last prince of Celje principality, is assassinated inBelgrade.

   

1492 Peace of Etaples between Henry VII and Charles VIII. 1494 The Family de' Medici are expelled from Florence. 1520 More than 50 people are sentenced and executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath 1620 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

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1688 The Glorious Revolution: William of Orange captures Exeter. 1697 Pope Innocent XII founds the city of Cervia. 1720 The synagogue of Yehudah he-Hasid is burned down by Arab creditors, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.

 

1729 Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville. 1764 Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.

  

1791 Foundation of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen. 1793 William Carey reaches the Hooghly River. 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup d'tat of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).

1822 The Action of 9 November 1822 between USS Alligator and a squadron of piratical schooners off the coast of Cuba.

 

1848 Robert Blum, a German revolutionary, is executed in Vienna. 1851 Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.

  

1857 The Atlantic founded in Boston. 1861 The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto. 1862 American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.

    

1867 Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration. 1872 The Great Boston Fire of 1872. 1887 The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1888 Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim. 1906 Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

 

1907 The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday. 1913 The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.

  

1914 SMS Emden sunk by HMAS Sydney in the Battle of Cocos. 1917 Joseph Stalin enters the provisional government of Bolshevik Russia. 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.

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1923 In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.

1935 The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.

 

1937 Japanese troops take control of Shanghai, China. 1938 Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht.

   

1940 Warsaw is awarded the Virtuti Militari. 1947 Junagadh is annexed as to Indian military intervention. 1953 Cambodia becomes independent from France. 1960 Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he quit to join the newly-elected John F. Kennedyadministration.

1963 At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, in Japan, a three-train disaster occurs in Yokohama, kills more than 160 people.

1965 Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.

1965 Catholic Worker member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

1967 Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

 

1967 First issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published. 1970 Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.

1979 Nuclear false alarm: the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled.

1985 Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.

1989 Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany.

 

1990 Mary Robinson is elected Ireland's first female President. 1993 Stari most, the "old bridge" in Bosnian Mostar built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing.

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1994 The chemical element Darmstadtium is discovered. 1998 A US federal judge ordered 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement inUnited States history.

1998 Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.

2005 The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

 

2005 Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people. 2007 The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.

NOVEMBER 10

1293 Raden Wijaya is crowned as the first monarch of Majapahit kingdom of Java, taking throne name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

1444 Battle of Varna: The crusading forces of King Vladislaus III of Varna (aka Ulaszlo I of Hungary and Wladyslaw III of Poland) are crushed by theTurks under Sultan Murad II and Vladislaus is killed.

1520 Danish King Christian II executes dozens of people in the Stockholm Bloodbath after a successful invasion of Sweden.

 

1619 Ren Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy. 1659 Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Maratha King kills Afzal Khan, Adilshahi in the battle popularly known as Battle of Pratapgarh. This is also recognised as the first defence of Swarajya

1674 Anglo-Dutch War: As provided in the Treaty of Westminster, Netherlands cedes New Netherlands to England.

1766 The last colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen's College (later renamed Rutgers University).

  

1775 The United States Marine Corps is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas. 1793 A Goddess of Reason is proclaimed by the French Convention at the suggestion of Chaumette. 1821 Cry of Independence by Rufina Alfaro at La Villa de Los Santos, Panama setting into motion a revolt which lead to Panama's independence from Spain and to it immediately becoming part of Colombia

1847 The passenger ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked in thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster results in the construction of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.

1865 Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

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1871 Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?".

1898 Beginning of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in US history.

1910 The date of Thomas A. Davis' opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, though the official founding date is November 23, 1910.

1918 The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa, Ontario and Washington, DC) that said on November 11, 1918 all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

1919 The first national convention of the American Legion is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ending on November 12.

1942 World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral Franois Darlan's agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.

1944 The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.

1945 Heavy fighting in Surabaya between Indonesian nationalists and returning colonialists after World War II, is celebrated as Heroes' Day (Hari Pahlawan).

 

1951 Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States. 1954 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

1958 The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1969 National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program Sesame Street.

1970 Vietnam War: Vietnamization For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

 

1970 The Soviet Lunar probe Lunokhod 1 is launched. 1971 In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city of Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine aircraft.

1972 Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.

1975 The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.

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1975 United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution is repealed in December 1991 byResolution 4686).

1979 A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada just west ofToronto, Ontario, Canada, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.

  

1984 The first Breeders' Cup takes place at Hollywood Park Racetrack. 1989 Fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria. 1995 In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), are hanged by government forces.

1997 WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).

  

2001 Apple resellers start selling the iPod 2006 Sri Lankan Tamil Parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj is assassinated in Colombo. 2007 Por qu no te callas? incident between King Juan Carlos of Spain and Venezuela's president Hugo Chvez.

NOVEMBER 11

308 At Carnuntum, Emperor emeritus Diocletian confers with Galerius, Augustus of the East, and Maximianus, the recently returned formerAugustus of the West, in an attempt to restore order to the Roman Empire.

1215 The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.

1500 Treaty of Granada Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon agree to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them.

 

1620 The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. 1634 Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes An Act for the Punishment for the Vice ofBuggery.

1673 Second Battle of Khotyn in Ukraine: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski defeat the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets made by Kazimierz Siemienowicz are successfully used.

1675 Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = (x).

1724 Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman known for attacking "Thief-Taker General" (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, is hanged in London.

1750 The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, is formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the first college fraternity.

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1778 Cherry Valley Massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.

1805 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Drenstein 8000 French troops attempt to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force.

1813 War of 1812: Battle of Crysler's Farm British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign.

  

1831 In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising. 1839 The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia. 1864 American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.

1865 Treaty of Sinchula is signed by which Bhutan cedes the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.

1869 The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.

 

1880 Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol. 1887 Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.

  

1887 Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal begins at Eastham. 1889 The State of Washington is admitted as the 42nd State of the United States. 1911 Many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through.

1918 World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compigne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 (The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) and this is annually honoured with a two-minute silence. The war officially ends on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28th 1919.

1918 Jzef Pi sudski comes to Warsaw and assumes supreme military power in Poland. Poland regains its independence, celebrated each year on this day.

 

1918 Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power. 1919 The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World.

 

1919 L

pl

a day Latvian forces defeat the Freikorps at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.

1921 The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.

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1924 Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the first recognized Greek Republic. 1926 U.S. Route 66 is established. 1930 Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Le Szilrd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

 

1934 The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia is opened. 1940 World War II: Battle of Taranto The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

   

1940 The German cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan. 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in the U.S. Midwest. 1942 World War II: Nazi Germany completes its occupation of France. 1944 Dr. jur. Erich Gstl, a member of the Waffen SS, is presented with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, to recognise extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy.

  

1960 A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam is crushed. 1962 Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait. 1965 In Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white-minority government of Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence.

 

1966 NASA launches Gemini 12. 1967 Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to "new left" antiwar activist Tom Hayden.

1968 Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.

 

1968 A second republic is declared in the Maldives. 1972 Vietnam War: Vietnamization The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.

1975 Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam, appoints Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announces a general election to be held in early December.

   

1975 Independence of Angola. 1981 Antigua and Barbuda joins the United Nations. 1992 The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests. 1993 A sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1999 The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.

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2000 Kaprun disaster: 155 skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel in Kaprun, Austria.

2001 Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling in.

 

2004 New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington. 2004 The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.

2006 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II unveils the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and theBritish Army.

2008 RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) sets sail on her final voyage to Dubai.

NOVEMBER 12
 
764 Tibetan troops occupy Chang'an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty, for fifteen days. 1028 Future Byzantine empress Zoe marries Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.

     

1439 Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament. 1555 The English Parliament re-establishes Catholicism. 1602 Sebastian Viscaino lands at and names San Diego, California. 1793 Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined. 1847 Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic. 1892 William "Pudge" Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player on record, participating in his first paid game for theAllegheny Athletic Association.

1893 The treaty of the Durand Line is signed between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan; the Durand Line has gained international recognition as an international border between the two nations.

     

1905 Norway holds a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic. 1912 The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. 1918 Austria becomes a republic. 1920 Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rapallo. 1922 The Sigma Gamma Rho sorority is founded on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. 1927 Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

 

1933 Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster. 1936 In California, the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.

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1938 Hermann Gring proposes plans to make Madagascar the "Jewish homeland", an idea that had first been considered by 19th century journalist Theodor Herzl.

1941 World War II: temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 C as the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.

 

1941 World War II: The Soviet cruiser Chervona Ukraina is destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol. 1942 World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal. The battle lasts for three days.

1944 World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleshipTirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Troms, Norway.

1948 In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.

 

1956 Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia join the United Nations. 1958 A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

 

1968 Equatorial Guinea joins the United Nations. 1968 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District is argued before the Supreme Court of the United States.

1969 Vietnam War: My Lai Massacre Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story.

1970 The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous "exploding whale" incident.

1970 The 1970 Bhola cyclone makes landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.

1971 Vietnam War: as part of Vietnamization, US President Richard M. Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops fromVietnam.

 

1975 The Comoros joins the United Nations. 1978 Pope John Paul II takes possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, as the Bishop of Rome.

1979 Iran hostage crisis: in response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.

1980 The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

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1981 Space Shuttle program: mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.

1982 In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov becomes the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.

1990 Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.

  

1990 Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web. 1991 Dili Massacre: Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor. 1996 A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

    

1997 Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. 1998 U.S. Vice President Al Gore signs the Kyoto Protocol. 1998 Daimler-Benz completes a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler. 1999 The Dzce earthquake strikes Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale. 2001 In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.

2001 Attack on Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.

2003 Iraq war: in Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.

2003 Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commercial railway systems.

2004 The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database is launched on the web and revolutionizes chemical-genedisease information for research scientists.

NOVEMBER 13

1002 English king thelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.

 

1160 Louis VII of France marries Adele of Champagne. 1642 First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green the Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to takeLondon.

1775 American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Col. Ethan Allen attack Montreal, Quebec, defended by British General Guy Carleton.

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1841 James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.

      

1851 The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers in what would become Seattle, Washington. 1864 The new Constitution of Greece is adopted. 1887 Bloody Sunday clashes in central London. 1901 The 1901 Caister Lifeboat Disaster. 1916 Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription. 1918 Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 1927 The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

 

1941 World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U-81, sinking the following day. 1942 World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal U.S. and Japanese ships engage in an intense, close-quarters surface naval engagement during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

  

1947 Russia completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles 1950 General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, is assassinated in Caracas. 1954 Great Britain defeats France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris in front of around 30,000 spectators.

1956 The United States Supreme Court declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

  

1965 The SS Yarmouth Castle burns and sinks 60 miles off Nassau with the loss of 90 lives. 1969 Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. stage a symbolic March Against Death. 1970 Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night. This is regarded as the 20th century's worst natural disaster.

1971 The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.

1982 Ray Mancini defeats Duk Koo Kim in a boxing match held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kim's subsequent death (on November 17) leads to significant changes in the sport.

1982 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans.

1985 The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glacier, causing a lahar (volcanic mudslide) that buries Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1985 Xavier Suarez is sworn in as Miami, Florida's first Cuban-born mayor.

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1988 Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian law student in Portland, Oregon is beaten to death by members of the NeoNazi group East Side White Pride.

1990 In Aramoana, New Zealand, David Gray shoots dead 13 people, in what becomes known as the Aramoana Massacre.

1992 The High Court of Australia rules in Dietrich v The Queen that although there is no absolute right to have publicly funded counsel, in most circumstances a judge should grant any request for an adjournment or stay when an accused is unrepresented.

 

1994 In a referendum voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union. 1995 A truck-bomb explodes outside of a US-operated Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians. A group called the Islamic Movement for Change claims responsibility.

2000 Philippine House Speaker Manuel B. Villar, Jr. passes the articles of impeachment against Philippine President Joseph Estrada.

2001 War on Terrorism: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

  

2002 Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq agrees to the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441. 2002 The oil tanker Prestige sinks off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill. 2007 An explosion hits the south wing of the House of Representatives of the Philippines in Quezon City, killing four people, including Congressman Wahab Akbar, and wounding six.

NOVEMBER 14
  
1533 Conquistadors from Spain under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro arrive in Cajamarca, Inca empire 1770 James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile 1862 American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the Battle of Fredericksburg.

1889 Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in seventy-two days.

1910 Aviator Eugene Ely performs the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.

1918 Czechoslovakia becomes a republic.

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1921 The Communist Party of Spain is founded. 1922 The BBC begins radio service in the United Kingdom. 1923 Kentaro Suzuki completes his ascent of Mount Iizuna. 1940 World War II: In England, the city of Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.

1941 World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from the German submarine U-81 sustained on November 13.

 

1952 The first regular UK singles chart published by the New Musical Express. 1957 The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York is raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures are arrested.

1965 Vietnam War: The Battle of the Ia Drang begins the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

1967 The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares this day as "Day of the Colombian Woman".

  

1969 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon. 1970 Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organization. 1970 Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including members of the Marshall University football team.

   

1971 Enthronment of Pope Shenouda III as Pope of Alexandria 1973 In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey. 1975 Spain abandons Western Sahara. 1979 Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.

1982 Lech Wa sa, the leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment near the Soviet border.

1984 Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.

1990 After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.

1991 American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.

 

1991 Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile. 1991 In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.

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1995 A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.

  

2001 War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul. 2002 Argentina defaults on an $805 million World Bank payment. 2003 Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a TransNeptunian object.

2007 The last direct-current electrical distribution system in the United States is shut down in New York City by Con Edison.

NOVEMBER 15
   
655 Battle of Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria. 1315 Battle of Morgarten the Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I. 1515 Thomas Wolsey is invested as a Cardinal 1532 Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca leader Atahualpa for the first time outsideCajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day

 

1533 Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire. 1777 American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.

 

1791 The first U.S Catholic college, Georgetown University, opens its doors. 1806 Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains (it is later named Pikes Peak).

 

1859 The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece. 1864 American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia and starts Sherman's March to the Sea.

1889 Brazil is declared a republic by Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca and Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.

    

1920 First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva. 1923 The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counter Inflation in the Weimar Republic. 1926 The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations. 1935 Manuel L. Quezon is inaugurated as the second president of the Philippines. 1939 In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.

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1942 World War II: First flight of the Heinkel He 219. 1942 World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory. 1943 Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed inconcentration camps". (see Porajmos)

  

1945 Venezuela joins the United Nations. 1949 Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi. 1951 Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 resistance members, is sentenced to death by the court-martial.

   

1959 Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas.

1966 Gemini program: Gemini 12 splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. 1966 A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board. 1967 The only fatality of the X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.

1968 The US Air Force launches Operation Commando Hunt, a large-scale bombing campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail.

 

1969 Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea. 1969 Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death".

  

1969 In Columbus, Ohio, Dave Thomas opens the first Wendy's restaurant. 1971 Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004. 1976 Ren Lvesque and the Parti Qubcois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favour of independence.

 

1978 A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183. 1979 A package from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

 

1983 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is founded. Recognised only by Turkey. 1985 A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.

1985 The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.

1987 Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9-14 jetliner, crashes in a snowstorm at Denver, Colorado Stapleton International Airport, killing 28 occupants, while 54 survive the crash.

1987 In Bra ov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceau escu.

660

 

1988 In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran is launched on her first and last space flight. 1988 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.

    

1988 The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands. 1990 Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38. 2000 A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola killing more than 40 people. 2000 Jharkhand state comes into existence in India. 2003 The first day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300. Additional bombings follow on November 20.

2005 Boeing formally launches the stretched Boeing 747-8 variant with orders from Cargolux and Nippon Cargo Airlines.

2007 Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

NOVEMBER 16
 
534 A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published. 1491 An auto-da-f, held in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of vila, concludes the case of the Holy Child of La Guardia with the public execution of several Jewish and converso suspects.

  

1532 Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa. 1776 American Revolutionary War: Hessian mercenaries capture Fort Washington from the Patriots. 1776 American Revolution: the United Provinces (Low Countries) recognize the independence of the United States.

1805 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Schngrabern Russian forces under Pyotr Bagration delay the pursuit by French troops under Murat.

1821 American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.

1849 A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.

  

1852 The English astronomer John Russell Hind discovers the asteroid 22 Kalliope. 1857 Second relief of Lucknow twenty-four Victoria Crosses are awarded, the most in a single day. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Campbell's Station near Knoxville, Tennessee Confederate troops unsuccessfully attack Union forces.

1885 Canadian rebel leader of the Mtis and "Father of Manitoba", Louis Riel is executed for treason.

661

 

1907 Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, that is admitted as the 46th U.S. state. 1907 Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.

 

1914 The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens. 1938 LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.

1940 World War II: in response to the leveling of Coventry, England by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe two days before, the Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg.

 

1940 Holocaust: in occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world. 1943 World War II: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in Germancontrolled Vemork, Norway.

 

1944 Dueren, Germany is destroyed by Allied bombers. 1945 Cold War: Operation Paperclip the United States Army secretly admits 88 German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology.

 

1945 UNESCO is founded. 1965 Venera program: the Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, that will be the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet.

1973 Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.

1973 U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

1979 The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) is opened from Timpuri Noi to Sem n toarea in Bucharest, Romania.

1988 The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic declares that Estonia is "sovereign" but stops short of declaring independence.

1988 In the first open election in more than a decade, voters in Pakistan elect populist candidate Benazir Bhutto to be Prime Minister of Pakistan.

1989 A death squad composed of El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University.

 

1992 The Hoxne Hoard is discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk. 1997 After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People's Republic of China releases Wei Jingsheng, a prodemocracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons.

2000 Bill Clinton becomes the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

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NOVEMBER 17
      
284 Diocletian is proclaimed emperor by his soldiers. 473 The future Leo II is named associate emperor by Leo I. 794 Japanese Emperor Kammu changes his residence from Nara to Kyoto. 1183 The Battle of Mizushima. 1292 (O.S.) John Balliol becomes King of Scotland. 1511 Spain and England ally against France. 1558 Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I of England.

     

1603 English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason. 1659 The Peace of the Pyrenees is signed between France and Spain. 1777 Articles of Confederation are submitted to the states for ratification. 1796 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Arcole French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy. 1800 The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C. 1811 Jos Miguel Carrera, Chilean founding father, is sworn in as President of the executive Junta of the government of Chile.

 

1812 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Krasnoi. 1820 Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula is later named after him).

1827 The Delta Phi fraternity, America's oldest continuous social fraternity, is founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

 

1831 Ecuador and Venezuela are separated from Greater Colombia. 1855 David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now present-day ZambiaZimbabwe.

1856 American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.

 

1858 Modified Julian Day zero. 1863 American Civil War: Siege of Knoxville begins Confederate forces led by General James Longstreet place Knoxville, Tennessee under siege.

   

1869 In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated. 1871 The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York. 1876 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March is given its premire performance in Moscow. 1878 First assassination attempt against Umberto I of Italy.

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1903 The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two groups; the Bolsheviks (Russian for "majority") and Mensheviks (Russian for "minority").

1911 The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the first African-American fraternity at an historically black college or university, is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

1919 King George V of the United Kingdom proclaims Armistice Day (later Remembrance Day). The idea is first suggested by Edward George Honey.

  

1922 Former Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI goes into exile in Italy. 1933 United States recognizes Soviet Union. 1939 Nine Czech students are executed as a response to anti-Nazi demonstrations prompted by the death of Jan Opletal. In addition, all Czech universities are shut down and over 1200 Czech students sent to concentration camps. Since this event, International Students' Day is celebrated in many countries, especially in the Czech Republic.

 

1947 The U.S. Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath. 1947 American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain observe the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th Century.

 

1953 The remaining human inhabitants of the Blasket Islands, Kerry, Ireland are evacuated to the mainland. 1957 Vickers Viscount G-AOHP of British European Airways crashes at Ballerup after the failure of three engines on approach to Copenhagen Airport. The cause is a malfunction of the anti-icing system on the aircraft.

 

1962 President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region. 1967 Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports that he had been given on November 13, US President Lyndon B. Johnson tells the nation that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking...We are making progress."

1968 Alexandros Panagoulis is condemned to death for attempting to assassinate Greek dictator George Papadopoulos.

 

1968 British European Airways introduces the BAC One-Eleven into commercial service. 1969 Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.

 

1970 Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre. 1970 Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

 

1970 Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse. 1973 Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, US President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors "I am not a crook".

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1973 The Athens Polytechnic Uprising against the military regime ends in a bloodshed in the Greek capital. 1979 Brisbane Suburban Railway Electrification. The first stage from Ferny Grove to Darra is commissioned. 1982 Duk Koo Kim dies unexpectedly from injuries sustained during a 14-round match against Ray Mancini in Las Vegas, Nevada, prompting reforms in the sport of boxing.

 

1983 The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded in Mexico. 1989 Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins: In Czechoslovakia, a student demonstration in Prague is quelled by riot police. This sparks an uprising aimed at overthrowing thecommunist government (it succeeds on December 29).

1990 Fugendake, part of the Mount Unzen volcanic complex, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan becomes active again and erupts.

1997 In Luxor, Egypt, 62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut, known as Luxor massacre (The police then kill the assailants).

2000 A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills 7, and causes millions of SIT of damage. It is one of the worst catastrophes in Slovenia in the past 100 years.

 

2000 Alberto Fujimori is removed from office as president of Peru. 2004 Kmart Corp. announces that it is buying Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $11 billion USD and naming the newly merged company Sears Holdings Corporation.

2007 Brian May of the rock band Queen (band) was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.

NOVEMBER 18
     
326 The old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated. 1105 Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV. 1210 Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV 1302 Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam (One Faith). 1307 William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head. 1421 A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known asSint-Elisabethsvloed.

  

1493 Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico. 1494 French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy. 1601 Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.

 

1626 St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated. 1686 Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants.

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1730 Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.

1803 The Battle of Vertires, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.

1809 In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.

1863 King Christian IX of Denmark decides to sign the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the GermanDanish war of 1864.

1865 Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.

1883 American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.

1903 The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

  

1904 General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup. 1905 Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway. 1909 Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of Jos Santos Zelaya.

1916 World War I: First Battle of the Somme in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.

 

1918 Latvia declares its independence from Russia. 1926 George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize".

1928 Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.

1929 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.

1930 S ka Ky iku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed S ka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda.

1938 Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

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1940 World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.

1940 New York City's "Mad Bomber" George Metesky places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison.

1943 World War II Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.

1947 The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.

1949 The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.

  

1961 United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam. 1963 The first push-button telephone goes into service. 1970 U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million USD in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.

1978 In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.

 

1987 Iran-Contra Affair: the U.S. Congress issues its final report on the Iran-Contra Affair. 1987 King's Cross fire: in London, 31 people die in a fire at the city's busiest underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.

1988 War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.

1991 Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.

1991 After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.

1993 In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is ratified by the House of Representatives.

 

1993 In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution. 1999 In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.

2002 Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.

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2003 In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.

2003 The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state may not "deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry."

NOVEMBER 19

1095 The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, begins.

1493 Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).

1794 The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.

  

1816 Warsaw University is established. 1847 The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened. 1863 American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony atGettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 

1881 A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine. 1911 The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.

 

1916 Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures. 1930 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow commit their first robbery, the first in a long series of robberies and other criminal acts.

1941 World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

1942 World War II: Battle of Stalingrad Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks atStalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.

1943 Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

1944 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling $14 billion USD in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.

 

1946 Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations. 1947 George VI of the United Kingdom creates Philip Mountbatten the Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to George's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the next day.

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1950 US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe 1954 Tl Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III. 1955 National Review publishes its first issue. 1959 The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel. 1967 The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong. 1969 Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

 

1969 Football player Pel scores his 1,000th goal. 1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knessetin Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

 

1977 Transportes Areos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 130. 1979 Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.

1984 San Juanico Disaster: A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.

1985 Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

1985 Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion USD judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buyGetty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.

1988 Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists inKosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.

1990 Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.

1994 In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A 1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

 

1996 Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire. 1998 Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.

 

1998 Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for $71.5 million USD. 1999 Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.

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NOVEMBER 20
   
284 Diocletian is chosen as Roman Emperor. 762 During An Shi Rebellion, Tang Dynasty, with the help of Huihe tribe, recaptured Luoyang from the rebels. 1194 Palermo is conquered by Emperor Henry VI. 1407 A truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orlans is agreed under the auspices of John, Duke of Berry. Orlans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.

 

1695 Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed. 1700 Great Northern War: Battle of Narva King Charles XII of Sweden defeats the army of Tsar Peter the Great at Narva.

  

1739 Start of the Battle of Porto Bello between British and Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins' Ear. 1789 New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights. 1820 An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story).

  

1845 Argentine Confederation: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado. 1861 American Civil War: Secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate government. 1910 Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosi, denouncing President Porfirio Daz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.

1917 World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.

 

1917 Ukraine is declared a republic. 1923 Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion (One Billion on the long scale) Papiermark

  

1936 Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, is killed by a republican execution squad. 1940 World War II: Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers. 1943 World War II: Battle of Tarawa (Operation Galvanic) begins United States Marines land on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore guns and machine guns.

   

1945 Nuremberg Trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg. 1947 The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London. 1952 Slnsk trials a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbeannation.

1969 Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

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1974 The United States Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T. This suit later leads to the breakup of AT&T and its Bell System.

1979 Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French special forces to put down the uprising.

 

1985 Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released. 1989 Velvet Revolution: The number of protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.

1991 An Azerbaijani MI-8 helicopter carrying 19 peacekeeping mission team with officials and journalists from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan is shot down by Armenian military forces in Khojavend district of Azerbaijan.

1992 In England, a fire breaks out in Windsor Castle, badly damaging the castle and causing over 50 million worth of damage.

1993 Savings and loan crisis: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his "dealings" with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.

1994 The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (localized fighting resumes the next year).

1998 A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya andTanzania.

 

1998 The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched. 2001 In Washington, D.C., U.S. President George W. Bush dedicates the United States Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building, honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday.

2003 After the November 15 bombings, a second day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings occurs in Istanbul, Turkey, destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Bank AS and the Britishconsulate.

2008 After critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997.

NOVEMBER 21

164 BC Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

235 Pope Anterus succeeds Pontian as the nineteenth pope. During the persecutions of emperor Maximinus Thrax he is martyred.

1272 Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.

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1386 Timur of Samarkand captures and sacks the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, taking King Bagrat V of Georgia captive.

 

1620 Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.). 1783 In Paris, Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier and Franois Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

   

1789 North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state. 1861 American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin secretary of war. 1877 Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound. 1894 Port Arthur massacre: Port Arthur, Manchuria falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First SinoJapanese War.

1905 Albert Einstein's paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, is published in the journal "Annalen der Physik". This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the massenergy equivalence formula E = mc.

1910 Sailors onboard Brazil's most powerful military units, including the brand-new warships Minas Geraes, So Paulo, and Bahia, violently rebel in what is now known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash).

 

1916 World War I: A mine explodes and sinks HMHS Britannic in the Aegean Sea, killing 30 people. 1918 Flag of Estonia, previously used by pro-independence activists, is formally adopted as national flag of the Republic of Estonia.

1920 Irish War of Independence: In Dublin, 31 people are killed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday". This included fourteen British informants, fourteen Irish civilians and three Irish Republican Army prisoners.

 

1922 Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator. 1927 Columbine Mine Massacre: Striking coal miners are allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.

1942 The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by general vehicles until 1943).

1953 The British Natural History Museum announces that the "Piltdown Man" skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.

   

1962 The Chinese People's Liberation Army declares a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War. 1964 The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic (at the time it is the world's longest suspension bridge). 1964 Second Vatican Council: The third session of the Roman Catholic Church's ecumenical council closes. 1967 Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

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1969 U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agree in Washington, D.C. on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. is to retain its rights to bases on the island, but these are to be nuclear-free.

 

1969 The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI. 1970 Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.

1971 Indian troops, partly aided by Mukti Bahini (Bengali guerrillas), defeat the Pakistan army in the Battle of Garibpur.

1974 The Birmingham Pub Bombings kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six are sentenced to life in prison for the crime but subsequently acquitted.

1977 Minister of Internal Affairs Allan Highet announces that 'the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem "God Save the Queen" and the poem "God Defend New Zealand", written by Thomas Bracken, as set to music by John Joseph Woods, both being of equal status as national anthems appropriate to the occasion.

1979 The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan is attacked by a mob and set on fire, killing four. (see: Foreign relations of Pakistan)

1980 A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally's Las Vegas). 87 people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

1980 Lake Peigneur drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platform, several barges, houses and trees thousands of feet down to the bottom of the dissolving salt deposit.

1985 United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations. He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

1986 Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1990 The Charter of Paris for a New Europe refocuses the efforts of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europeon post-Cold War issues.

1995 The Dayton Peace Agreement is initialed at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement is formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.

 

1996 Antonio Salinass in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 33. 2002 NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

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2004 The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election is held, giving rise to massive protests and controversy over the election's integrity.

2004 The island of Dominica is hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history. The northern half of the island receives the most damage, especially the town of Portsmouth. It is also felt in neighboring Guadeloupe, where one person is killed.

 

2004 The Paris Club agrees to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraq's external debt. 2006 Anti-Syrian Lebanese Minister and MP Pierre Gemayel is assassinated in suburban Beirut.

NOVEMBER 22

498 After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus is elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius is elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.

845 The first King of all Brittany, Nominoe defeats the Frankish king Charles the Bald at the Battle of Ballon near Redon.

1307 Pope Clement V issues the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.

  

1573 The Brazilian city of Niteri is founded. 1574 Discovery of the Juan Fernndez Islands off Chile. 1635 Dutch colonial forces on Taiwan launch a pacification campaign against native villages, resulting in Dutch control of the middle and south of the island.

1718 Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as "Blackbeard") is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

 

1812 War of 1812: 17 Indiana Rangers are killed at the Battle of Wild Cat Creek. 1837 Canadian journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie calls for a rebellion against Great Britain in his essay "To the People of Upper Canada", published in his newspaper The Constitution.

 

1858 Denver, Colorado is founded. 1864 American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: Confederate General John Bell Hood invades Tennessee in an unsuccessful attempt to draw Union General William T. Sherman from Georgia.

1869 In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today.

  

1908 The Congress of Manastir establishes the Albanian alphabet. 1928 The premier performance of Ravel's Bolro takes place in Paris. 1935 The China Clipper takes off from Alameda, California for its first commercial flight. It reaches its destination, Manila, a week later.

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1940 World War II: Following the initial Italian invasion, Greek troops counterattack into Italian-occupied Albania and capture Korytsa.

1942 World War II: Battle of Stalingrad General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army is surrounded.

1943 World War II: War in the Pacific U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan (see Cairo Conference)

  

1943 Lebanon gains independence from France. 1954 The Humane Society of the United States is founded. 1963 In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 is adopted by the UN Security Council, establishing a set of the principles aimed at guiding negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

1969 In American football, the University of Michigan upset Ohio State University, 24-12, in Bo Schembechler's first season as Michigan's head coach. The win set off the 10 Year War between Schembechler and Ohio State's Woody Hayes. (See also Michigan-Ohio State rivalry).

        

1973 The Italian Fascist organization Ordine Nuovo is disbanded. 1974 The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status. 1975 Juan Carlos is declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco. 1977 British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service. 1986 Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Berbick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history. 1987 Two Chicago television stations are hijacked by an unknown pirate dressed as Max Headroom. 1988 In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed. 1989 In West Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad, killing him. 1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdraws from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership.

   

1995 Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery. 2002 In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest. 2004 The Orange Revolution begins in Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections. 2005 Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.

NOVEMBER 23

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534 BC Thespis of Icaria becomes the first actor to portray a character onstage. 1227 Polish Prince Leszek I the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at G sawa. 1248 Conquest of Seville by the Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile. 1499 Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England.

    

1531 The Second war of Kappel results in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland. 1644 John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship. 1808 French and Poles defeat the Spanish at battle of Tudela 1844 Independence of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark. 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops.

1867 The Manchester Martyrs are hanged in Manchester, England for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish nationalists from custody.

1876 Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.

 

1889 The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. 1890 King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become his heir.

1903 Governor of Colorado James Peabody sends the state militia into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners' strike.

 

1910 Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden. 1914 Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair.

1918 Heber J. Grant succeeds Joseph F. Smith as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.

1934 An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory. This leads to the Abyssinia Crisis.

  

1936 The first edition of Life is published. 1940 World War II: Romania becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers. 1943 World War II: The Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstrae in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg is destroyed. It will eventually be rebuilt in 1961 and be called theDeutsche Oper Berlin.

  

1943 World War II: Tarawa and Makin atolls fall to American forces. 1946 French Navy fire in Hai Phong, Viet Nam, kills 6,000 civilians. 1955 The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.

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1959 General Charles de Gaulle, President of France, declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a "Europe, "from the Atlantic to the Urals."

1963 The BBC broadcasts the first ever episode of Doctor Who (starring William Hartnell) which is the world's longest running science fiction drama.

1971 Representatives of the People's Republic of China attend the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, for the first time.

 

1976 Apneist Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment. 1979 In Dublin, Ireland, Provisional Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon is sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

 

1980 A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people. 1981 Iran-Contra Affair: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1985 Gunmen hijack EgyptAir Flight 648 while en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the aircraft, but 60 people die in the raid.

1990 The first all woman expedition to the south pole (3 Americans, 1 Japanese and 12 Russians), sets off from Antarctica on the 1st leg of a 70 day, 1287 kilometre ski trek.

1993 Rachel Whiteread wins both the 20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the 40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.

1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.

  

2001 The Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary. 2003 Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigns following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections. 2005 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country.

2006 A series of bombing kills at least 215 people and injured 257 others in Sadr City, making it the second deadliest sectarian attack since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003.

2007 MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sinks in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands. There are no fatalities.

 

2009 The Maguindanao massacre occurs in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, Mindanao, Philippines 2010 The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong occurs on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea. The North Korean artillery attack kills 2 civilians and 2 South Korean marines.

NOVEMBER 24

380 Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.

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1429 Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charit. 1542 Battle of Solway Moss: The English army defeats the Scots. 1639 Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree observe the transit of Venus, an event Horrocks had predicted. 1642 Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1835 The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).

 

1850 Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein. 1859 Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, the anniversary of which is sometimes called "Evolution Day"

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant captureLookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1906 The Canton Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers Betting Scandal, the first major scandal in professional American football.

1922 Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.

1932 In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

    

1935 The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress. 1940 World War II: Slovakia becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers. 1941 World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French. 1943 World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men. 1944 World War II: Bombing of Tokyo The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.

1950 The "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die as a result of the storm.

1962 The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.

1963 Lee Harvey Oswald is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting happens to be broadcast live on television.

1963 Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.

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1965 Joseph Dsir Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.

 

1966 Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board. 1969 Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

1971 During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1973 A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasted only four months.

1974 Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

1992 A China Southern Airlines domestic flight in the People's Republic of China, crashes, killing all 141 people on-board.

NOVEMBER 25
 
571 BC Servius Tullius, king of Rome, celebrates a triupmh for his victory over the Etruscans. 1034 Mel Coluim mac Cineda, King of Scots dies. Donnchad, the son of his daughter Bethc and Crnn of Dunkeld, inherits the throne.

  

1120 The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England. 1177 Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard. 1343 A tsunami, caused by the earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastates Naples (Italy) and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.

  

1491 The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins. 1667 A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people. 1703 The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity which it maintains through November 27. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.

1755 King Ferdinand VI of Spain grants royal protection to the Beaterio de la Compaia de Jesus, now known as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

1758 French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control. Fort Pitt is built nearby and it grows into modernPittsburgh.

1759 An earthquake hits the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000-40,000.

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1783 American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

1795 Partitions of Poland: Stanislaus August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, is forced to abdicate and is exiled to Russia.

 

1826 The Greek frigate Hellas arrives in Nafplion to become the first flagship of the Hellenic Navy. 1833 A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2 rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.

1839 A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routingConfederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.

1864 American Civil War: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.

1874 The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.

1876 Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

 

1905 The Danish Prins Carl arrives in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway. 1917 German forces defeat Portuguese army of about 1200 at Negomano on the border of modernday Mozambique and Tanzania.

1918 Vojvodina, formerly Austro-Hungarian crown land, proclaims its secession from AustriaHungary to join the Kingdom of Serbia.

1926 The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history strikes on Thanksgiving day. 27 twisters of great strength are reported in the Midwest, including the strongest November tornado, an estimated F4, that devastates Heber Springs, Arkansas. There are 51 deaths in Arkansas alone, 76 deaths and over 400 injuries in all.

1936 In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures "to safeguard their common interests" in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. The pact is renewed on the same day five years later with additional signatories.

 

1940 World War II: First flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder. 1943 World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1947 Red Scare: The "Hollywood Ten" are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.

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1947 New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.

1952 Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London later becoming the longest continuously-running play in history.

   

1958 French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community. 1960 The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated. 1963 President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. 1970 In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt.

1973 George Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, is ousted in a hardliners' coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

 

1975 Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands. 1977 Former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. is found guilty by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and is sentenced to death by firing squad.

1982 The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroys an entire city block, including the Northwestern National Bank building and the recently closed Donaldson's Department Store.

1984 36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

1986 Iran Contra Affair: US Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels inNicaragua.

 

1986 The King Fahd Causeway is officially opened in the Persian Gulf. 1987 Typhoon Nina pummels the Philippines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that destroys entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm.

 

1988 German politician Rita Sssmuth becomes president of the Bundestag. 1992 The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993.

1996 An ice storm strikes the central U.S. killing 26 people. A powerful windstorm affects Florida and winds gust over 90 mph, toppling trees and flipping trailers.

1999 The United Nations establishes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal Sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic.

2008 A car bomb in St. Petersburg, Russia, kills three people and injures one.

NOVEMBER 26

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43 BC The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian", later "Caesar Augustus"), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, andMark Antony is formed.

783 The Asturian queen Adosinda is put up in a monastery to prevent her kin from retaking the throne from Mauregatus.

1476 Vlad III Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

  

1778 In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui. 1784 The Catholic Apostolic Prefecture of the United States established. 1789 A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.

 

1805 Official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. 1825 At Union College in Schenectady, New York a group of college students form Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

 

1842 The University of Notre Dame is founded. 1863 American Civil War: Mine Run Union forces under General George Meade position against troops led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26th as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November (since 1941, on the fourth Thursday).

   

1865 Battle of Papudo: The Spanish navy engages a combined Peruvian-Chilean fleet north of Valparaiso, Chile. 1909 Sigma Alpha Mu is founded in the City College of New York by 8 Jewish young men. 1913 Phi Sigma Sigma is founded at Hunter College in New York City. 1917 The National Hockey League is formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas as its first teams.

 

1918 The Podgorica Assembly votes for "union of the people", declaring assimilation into the Kingdom of Serbia. 1922 Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.

1922 Toll of the Sea debuts as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor (The Gulf Between is the first film to do so but it is not widely distributed).

1939 Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates the incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later.

1942 World War II: Yugoslav Partisans convene the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Biha in northwestern Bosnia.

1944 World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing 168 shoppers.

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1944 World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium. 1949 The Indian Constituent Assembly adopts India's constitution presented by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. 1950 Korean War: Troops from the People's Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

1965 In the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter outer space.

1968 Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

1970 In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.

1977 'Vrillon', claiming to be the representative of the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', takes over Britain's Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 PM.

1983 Brink's-MAT robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly 26 million are stolen from the Brink's-MAT vault at Heathrow Airport.

1986 Iran-Contra scandal: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission.

 

1990 The Delta II rocket makes its maiden flight. 1998 Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament.

 

2003 Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England. 2004 Ruzhou School massacre: a man stabs and kills eight people and seriously wounds another four in a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China.

2004 Male Po'ouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.

2008 The first of many attacks on Mumbai, India are fired. These ten coordinated attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists kill 166 and injure more than 300 people in Mumbai.

NOVEMBER 27

176 Emperor Marcus Aurelius grant his son Commodus the rank of Imperator and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions.

 

1095 Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. 1295 The first elected representatives from Lancashire are called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament".

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1703 The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703. 1727 The foundation stone to the Jerusalem's Church in Berlin was laid. 1815 Adoption of Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland. 1830 St. Catherine Laboure experienced a vision of the Blessed Virgin standing on a globe, crushing a serpent with her feet, and emanating rays of light from her hands.

  

1839 In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded. 1856 The Coup of 1856 leads to Luxembourg's unilateral adoption of a new, reactionary constitution. 1863 American Civil War: Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and several of his men escape the Ohio Penitentiary and return safely to the South.

1868 Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.

1886 German judge Emil Hartwich sustains fatal injuries in a duel, which would become the background for "Effi Briest", a classic work of German literature.

1895 At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.

    

1901 The U.S. Army War College is established. 1912 Spain declares a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco. 1924 In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held. 1934 Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI. 1940 In Romania, the ruling party Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled King Carol II of Romania's aides, including former minister Nicolae Iorga.

1940 World War II: At the Battle of Cape Spartivento, the Royal Navy engages the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean Sea.

1942 World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.

1944 World War II: An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump at Fauld, Staffordshire kills seventy people.

 

1954 Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving 44 months for perjury. 1963 The Convention on the Unification of Certain Points of Substantive Law on Patents for Invention is signed at Strasbourg.

1964 Cold War: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appeals to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster".

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1965 Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.

1971 The Soviet space program's Mars 2 orbiter releases a descent module. It malfunctions and crashes, but it is the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars.

1973 The Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States Senate votes 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on December 6, the House confirmed him 387 to 35).

1975 The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiplebombings and shootings across England.

1978 In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.

  

1978 The Kurdish party PKK is founded in the city of Riha (Urfa) in Turkey. 1983 Avianca Flight 011, a Boeing 747 crashes near Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 181. 1984 Under the Brussels Agreement signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain, the former agreed to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty.

1989 Avianca Flight 203, a Boeing 727, explodes in mid-air over Colombia, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground. The Medelln Cartel claimed responsibility for the attack.

1991 The United Nations Security Council adopts Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.

  

1992 For the second time in a year, military forces try to overthrow president Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela. 1997 Twenty-five are killed in the second Souhane massacre in Algeria. 1999 The left-wing Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government with leader Helen Clark becoming the first elected female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history.

2001 A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

  

2004 Pope John Paul II returns the relics of Saint John Chrysostom to the Eastern Orthodox Church. 2005 The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France. 2006 The Canadian House of Commons endorses Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion to declare Quebec a nation within a unified Canada.

NOVEMBER 28

1095 On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead theFirst Crusade to the Holy Land.

1443 Skanderbeg and his forces liberate Kruja in Middle Albania and raise the Albanian flag.

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1520 After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach thePacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

1582 In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a 40 bond for their marriage license.

1660 At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.

1729 Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.

  

1785 The Treaty of Hopewell is signed. 1811 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, was premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. 1814 The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig andAndreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.

 

1821 Panama Independence Day: Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia. 1843 Ka L Hui: Hawaiian Independence Day The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.

1862 American Civil War: In the Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General John Blunt defeat General John Marmaduke's Confederates.

 

1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time: the New Zealand general election. 1895 The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1905 Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Fin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.

   

1907 In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater. 1910 Eleftherios Venizelos, leader of the Liberal Party, wins the Greek elections again. 1912 Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire. 1914 World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opens for bond trading.

 

1918 Bucovina voted for the union with the Kingdom of Romania. 1919 Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markiewicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

1920 Irish War of Independence: Kilmichael Ambush - The Irish Republican Army ambush a convoy of British Auxiliaries and kill seventeen.

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1929 Ernie Nevers of the then Chicago Cardinals scores all of the Cardinals' points in this game as the Cardinals defeat the Chicago Bears 40-6.

 

1942 In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people. 1943 World War II: Tehran Conference U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.

   

1958 Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community. 1960 Mauritania becomes independent of France. 1964 Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars. 1964 Vietnam War: National Security Council members agree to recommend that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.

1965 Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President Elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.

1972 Last executions in Paris, of the Clairvaux Mutineers, Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet, guillotined at La Sante Prison. (Bontems had been found innocent of murder by the court, but as Buffet's accomplice is condemned to death anyway.) The chief executioner is Andre Obrecht.

 

1975 East Timor declares its independence from Portugal. 1975 As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.

1979 Air New Zealand Flight 901, a DC-10 operated sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashes into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

1984 Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.

 

1987 South African Airways flight 295 crashes into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 people on-board. 1989 Cold War: Velvet Revolution In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.

 

1991 South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia. 1994 In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.

NOVEMBER 29
 
800 Charlemagne arrives at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III. 1394 The Korean king Yi Seong-gye, founder of the Joseon Dynasty, moves the capital from Kaes ng to Hanyang, today known as Seoul.

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1777 San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San Jos de Guadalupe. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.

1781 The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.

  

1807 The Portuguese Royal Family leaves Lisbon to escape from Napoleonic troops. 1830 November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia's rule in Poland begins. 1847 The Sonderbund is defeated by the joint forces of other Swiss cantons under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour.

1847 Whitman Massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.

1850 The treaty, Punctation of Olmtz, is signed in Olomouc. Prussia capitulates to Austrian Empire, which took over the leadership of German Confederation.

1864 Indian Wars: Sand Creek Massacre Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapahononcombatants inside Colorado Territory.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Spring Hill Confederate advance into Tennessee misses opportunity to crush Union army. Gen. Hood angered, leads to Battle of Franklin.

     

1872 Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River. 1877 Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time. 1881 Spokan Falls (today the city of Spokane, Washington) is officially incorporated as a city. 1885 End of Third Anglo-Burmese War, and end of Burmese monarchy 1890 The Meiji Constitution goes into effect in Japan and the first Diet convenes. 1890 At West Point, New York, the United States Naval Academy defeats the United States Military Academy 24-0 in the first ArmyNavy football game.

1893 The Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, is founded by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces in late Qing Dynasty of China after his memorial to the throne is approved by the Qing Government.

 

1910 The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest E. Sirrine. 1913 Fdration Internationale d'Escrime, the international organizing body of competitive fencing, is founded in Paris, France.

   

1915 Fire destroys most of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California. 1922 Howard Carter opens the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the public. 1929 U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole. 1934 The Chicago Bears defeat the Detroit Lions 19-16 in the first nationally broadcast game.

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1943 The second session of AVNOJ, the Anti-fascist council of national liberation of Yugoslavia, is held in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, determining the post-war ordering of the country.

1944 The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

     

1944 Albania is liberated by the Albanian partisans. 1945 The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia is declared. 1947 The Partition Plan: the United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Israel. 1947 My Trach Massacre: First Indochina War. 1950 Korean War: North Korean and Chinese troops force United Nations forces to retreat from North Korea. 1952 Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.

1961 Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1963 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

1963 Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831: A Douglas DC-8 carrying 118, crashes after taking-off from Dorval Airport near Montreal.

  

1965 The Canadian Space Agency launches the satellite Alouette 2. 1967 Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation. 1972 Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game, in Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

1983 Soviet war in Afghanistan: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution stating that Soviet Union forces should withdraw from Afghanistan.

 

1987 Korean Air Flight 858 explodes over the Thai-Burmese border, killing 155. 1990 Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council passes two resolutions to restore international peace and security if Iraq did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

2007 The Armed Forces of the Philippines lay siege to The Peninsula Manila after soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes stage a mutiny.

2007 A 7.4 magnitude earthquake occurs off the northern coast of Martinique. This affected the Eastern Caribbean as far north as Puerto Rico and as far south as Trinidad.

NOVEMBER 30

1700 Battle of Narva A Swedish army of 8,500 men under Charles XII defeats a much larger Russian army at Narva.

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1718 Swedish king Charles XII dies during a siege of the fortress Fredriksten in Norway. 1782 American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

 

1783 A 5.3 magnitude earthquake strikes New Jersey. 1786 Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgates a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. Consequently, November 30 is commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.

1803 In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1804 The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase.

  

1824 First ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal. 1829 First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking. 1853 Crimean War: Battle of Sinop The Imperial Russian Navy under Pavel Nakhimov destroys the Ottoman fleet under Osman Pasha at Sinop, a sea port in northern Turkey.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Franklin The Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounts a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions commanded by John McAllister Schofield around Franklin, Tennessee, with Hood losing six generals and almost a third of his troops.

 

1868 The inauguration of a statue of King Charles XII of Sweden takes place in the King's garden in Stockholm. 1872 The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.

 

1886 The Folies Bergre stages its first revue. 1902 American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.

    

1908 A mine explosion in the mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania kills 154. 1916 Costa Rica becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1934 The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman becomes the first to officially exceed 100mph. 1936 In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire. 1939 Winter War: Soviet forces cross the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the war.

 

1940 Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut. 1942 World War II: Guadalcanal Campaign: Battle of Tassafaronga A smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers led by Raiz Tanaka defeats a US cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.

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1947 19471948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine begins on this day, leading up to the creation of the state of Israel.

1953 Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda.

1954 In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges Meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space.

  

1966 Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1967 The People's Republic of South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1967 The Pakistan Peoples Party is founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who becomes its first Chairman later as the Head of state and Head of government after the 1971 Civil War.

 

1971 Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the United Arab Emirates. 1972 Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnamdue to the fact that troop levels are now down to 27,000.

1981 Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).

     

1982 Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released. 1989 Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a Red Army Faction terrorist bomb. 1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law. 1994 MS Achille Lauro fire off Somalia coast. 1995 Official end of Operation Desert Storm. 1998 Exxon and Mobil sign a $73.7 billion USD agreement to merge, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest company.

1999 In Seattle, Washington, United States, protests against the WTO meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.

1999 British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.

 

2001 In Renton, Washington, United States, Gary Ridgway aka The Green River Killer is arrested. 2004 Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, Utah finally loses, leaving him with US$2,520,700, television's biggest game show winnings.

 

2004 Lion Air Flight 538 crash lands in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, killing 26. 2005 John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.

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DECEMBER
DECEMBER 1
  
800 Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican. 1420 Henry V of England enters Paris. 1640 End of the Iberian Union: Portugal acclaims as King Joo IV of Portugal, ending 60 years of personal union of the crowns of Portugal and Spainand the end of the rule of the House of Habsburg (also called the Philippine Dynasty).

  

1768 The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromy in Norway. 1822 Peter I is crowned Emperor of Brazil. 1824 United States presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1826 French philhellene Charles Nicolas Fabvier forces his way through the Turkish cordon and ascends the Acropolis of Athens, which had been under siege.

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1834 Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony in accordance with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. 1864 In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in theEmancipation Proclamation.

 

1885 First serving of the soft drink Dr Pepper at a drug store in Waco, Texas (United States). 1913 Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Buenos Aires Subway starts operating, it's the first underground railway system in the southern hemisphere and in Latin America

  

1913 The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line. 1913 Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece. 1918 Transylvania unites with Romania, following the incorporation of Bessarabia (March 27) and Bukovina (November 28).

  

1918 Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom. 1918 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed. 1919 Lady Astor becomes the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom (she had been elected to that position on November 28).

1925 World War I aftermath: The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.

1934 In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot dead by Leonid Nikolayev at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad.

1941 World War II: Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.

1952 The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgenson, the first notable case of sexual reassignment surgery.

1955 American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

  

1958 The Central African Republic becomes independent from France. 1958 The Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago, Illinois, kills 92 children and three nuns. 1959 Cold War: Opening date for signature of the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.

1960 Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested then deported from Hamburg, Germany, after accusations of attempted arson.

 

1963 Nagaland becomes the 16th state of India. 1964 Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.

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1964 Malawi, Malta and Zambia join the United Nations. 1965 The Border Security Force is formed in India as a special force to guard the borders. 1969 Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II. 1971 Cambodian Civil War: Khmer Rouge rebels intensify assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray.

  

1971 The Indian Army recaptures part of Kashmir occupied forcibly by Pakistan. 1973 Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia. 1974 TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport killing all 92 people on board.

       

1974 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport. 1975 Lambda Theta Phi - The first Latino fraternity is established in New Jersey. 1976 Angola joins the United Nations. 1981 A Yugoslavian Inex Adria Aviopromet DC-9 crashes in Corsica killing all 180 people on board. 1981 The AIDS virus is officially recognized. 1982 At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart. 1988 Benazir Bhutto is appointed Prime Minister of Pakistan. 1989 1989 Philippine coup attempt: The right-wing military rebel Reform the Armed Forces Movement attempts to oust Philippine President Corazon Aquino in a failed bloody coup d'tat.

1989 Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the communist party the leading role in the state.

  

1990 Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 metres beneath the seabed. 1991 Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union. 2001 Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA's purchase by American Airlines.

2009 The Treaty of Lisbon, which amends the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, which together comprise the constitutional basis ofEuropean Union, comes into effect.

DECEMBER 2
  
1409 The University of Leipzig opens. 1755 The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire. 1763 Dedication of the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, the first synagogue in what became the United States.

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1775 The USS Alfred becomes the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag (the precursor to the Stars and Stripes); the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones.

1804 At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French, the first French Emperor in a thousand years.

1805 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Austerlitz French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte defeat a joint RussoAustrian force.

1823 Monroe Doctrine: US President James Monroe delivers a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts.

1845 Manifest Destiny: US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West.

    

1848 Franz Josef I becomes Emperor of Austria. 1851 French President Louis-Napolon Bonaparte overthrows the Second Republic. 1852 Louis-Napolon Bonaparte becomes Emperor of the French (Napoleon III). 1859 Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry. 1867 At Tremont Temple in Boston, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.

  

1899 Philippine-American War: The Battle of Tirad Pass, termed "The Filipino Thermopylae", is fought. 1908 Child Emperor Pu Yi ascends the Chinese throne at the age of two 1917 An armistice is signed between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk and peace talks leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk began.

1920 Following more than a month of Turkish-Armenian War, the Turkish dictated Treaty of Alexandropol is concluded.

1927 Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.

1930 Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover goes before the United States Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

  

1939 New York City's La Guardia Airport opens. 1942 Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. 1943 A Luftwaffe bombing raid on the harbour of Bari, Italy, sinks numerous cargo and transport ships, including an American Liberty ship, the John Harvey, with a stockpile ofWorld War I-era mustard gas.

1946 The British Government invites four Indian leaders, Nehru, Baldev Singh, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan to obtain the participation of all parties in the Constituent Assembly.

1947 Jerusalem Riots of 1947: Riots break out in Jerusalem in response to the approval of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

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1954 Red Scare: The United States Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute".

1954 The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and the Republic of China, is signed in Washington, D.C..

1956 The Granma yacht reaches the shores of Cuba's Oriente province and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement disembark to initiate theCuban Revolution.

1961 In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.

1962 Vietnam War: After a trip to Vietnam at the request of US President John F. Kennedy, US Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official not to make an optimistic public comment on the war's progress.

    

1970 The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations. 1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm Al Quwain form the United Arab Emirates. 1975 Pathet Lao seizes power in Laos, and establishes the Lao People's Democratic Republic. 1976 Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba replacing Osvaldo Dortics Torrado. 1980 Four U.S. nuns and churchwomen, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, are murdered by a death squad in El Salvador.

1988 Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state.

 

1993 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in Medelln. 1993 Space Shuttle program: STS-61 NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

   

1999 Glenbrook rail accident near Sydney, New South Wales. 1999 The United Kingdom devolves political power in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Executive. 2001 Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 2008 Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat resigns after the 2008 Thailand political crisis.

DECEMBER 3

1799 War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch, Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshall Sztray de NagyMihaly defeats the French at Wiesloch.

1800 War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden, French General Moreau defeats the Austrian Archduke John near Munich decisively, coupled with First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte's victory at Marengo effectively forcing the Austrians to sign an armistice and ending the war.

1818 Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.

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1854 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, Australiaare killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.

1901 US President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking the Congress to curb the power oftrusts "within reasonable limits".

  

1904 The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory. 1910 Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show. 1912 Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the two-month long First Balkan War.

 

1912 First Balkan War: The Naval Battle of Elli takes place. 1917 After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.

1944 Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government forces supported by the British Army.

1959 The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire.

1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property.

1967 At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).

1970 October Crisis: In Montreal, Quebec, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross is released by the Front de libration du Qubec terrorist group after being held hostage for 60 days. Police negotiate his release and in return the Canadian government grants five terrorists from the FLQ's Chenier Cell their request for safe passage to Cuba.

1971 Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches pre-emptive strike against India and a full scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives.

  

1973 Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter. 1976 An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but plays a concert two days later. 1979 In Cincinnati, Ohio, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert .

1982 A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.

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1984 Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

1989 Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the cold war between Nato and The Soviet Union may be coming to an end.

1990 At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Northwest Airlines Flight 1482 collides with Northwest Airlines Flight 299 on the runway, killing 7 passengers and 1 crew member aboard flight 1482.

1992 UN Security Council Resolution 794 is unanimously passed, approving a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers led by the United States to form UNITAF, with the task of establishing peace and ensuring that humanitarian aid is distributed in Somalia.

1992 The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching La Corua, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.

1997 In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign The Ottawa treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States,People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.

1999 NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

  

1999 Six firefighters are killed in the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire in Worcester, Massachusetts. 2005 XCOR Aerospace makes first manned rocket aircraft delivery of US Mail in Mojave, California. 2007 Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, also closing a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.

DECEMBER 4
 
306 Martyrdom of Saint Barbara. 771 Austrasian King Carloman dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne King of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.

 

1110 First Crusade: The Crusaders sack Sidon. 1259 Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.

1563 The final session of the Council of Trent is held (it opened on December 13, 1545).

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1619 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish in England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God (this is considered by many to be the firstThanksgiving in the Americas).

1674 Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek (the mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois).

1676 Battle of Lund: A Danish army under the command of King Christian V of Denmark engages the Swedish army commanded by Field MarshalSimon Grundel-Helmfelt.

   

1745 Charles Edward Stewart's army reaches Derby, its furthest point during the second Jacobite Rising. 1783 At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, US General George Washington formally bids his officers farewell. 1791 The first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published. 1829 In the face of fierce local opposition, British governor Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that all who abet suttee in India are guilty of culpable homicide.

1864 American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under Union General Judson Kilpatrick prevent troops led by Confederate General Joseph Wheeler from interfering with Union General William T. Sherman's campaign destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta, Georgia.

1867 Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange).

1872 The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia (the ship had been abandoned for nine days but is only slightly damaged).

  

1875 Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison and flees to Cuba, then Spain. 1881 The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published. 1906 Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc The first intercollegiate Black Greek Letter Organization is founded at Cornell University.

1909 1st Grey Cup game is played. The University of Toronto Varsity Blues defeat the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club 266.

1909 The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club, the oldest professional hockey franchise in the world, is founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association.

1918 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.

 

1921 The first Virginia Rappe manslaughter trial against Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle ends in a hung jury. 1939 World War II: HMS Nelson is struck by a mine (laid by U-31) off the Scottish coast and is laid up for repairs until August 1940.

1942 Holocaust: In Warsaw, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz set up the egota organization.

699

 

1942 World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign ends. 1943 World War II: In Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile.

1943 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.

1945 By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations (the UN is established on October 24, 1945).

   

1954 The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida, United States 1958 Dahomey (present-day Benin) becomes a self-governing country within the French Community. 1967 Vietnam War: US and South Vietnamese forces engage Viet Cong troops in the Mekong Delta. 1969 Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.

1971 The United Nations Security Council calls an emergency session to consider the deteriorating situation between India and Pakistan.

 

1971 The Indian Navy attacks the Pakistan Navy and Karachi. 1971 The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".

1971 McGurk's Bar bombing: An Ulster Volunteer Force bomb kills 15 civilians and wounds 17 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 

1975 Suriname joins the United Nations. 1977 Jean-Bdel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire.

 

1977 Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 is hijacked and crashes in Tanjong Kupang, Johor, killing 100. 1978 Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco, California's first female mayor (she served until January 8, 1988).

 

1979 The Hastie fire in Hull, kills three schoolboys and eventually leads police to arrest Bruce George Peter Lee. 1980 English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbands, following the death of drummer John Bonham on September 25th.

1981 South Africa grants independence to the Ciskei "homeland" (not recognized by any government outside South Africa).

  

1982 The People's Republic of China adopts its current constitution. 1984 Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers. 1991 Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut. He is the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.

700

1991 Captain Mark Pyle pilots Clipper Goodwill, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 727-221ADV, to Miami International Airport ending 64 years of Pan Am operations.

   

1992 Somali Civil War: President George H. W. Bush orders 28,000 US troops to Somalia in Northeast Africa. 1993 A truce is concluded between the government of Angola and UNITA rebels. 1998 The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched. 2005 Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong protest for democracy and call on the Government to allow universal and equal suffrage.

2006 An adult giant squid is caught on video for the first time by Tsunemi Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo.

DECEMBER 5
     
63 BC Cicero gave the fourth and final Catiline Orations. 663 Fourth Council of Toledo takes place. 771 Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman. 1082 Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona is assassinated. 1408 Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reaches Moscow. 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.

1492 Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

   

1496 King Manuel I of Portugal issues a decree of expulsion of "heretics" from the country. 1590 Niccol Sfondrati becomes Pope Gregory XIV. 1746 Revolt in Genoa against Spanish rule. 1757 Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen Frederick II of Prussia leads Prussian forces to a decisive victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine.

  

1766 In London, James Christie holds his first sale. 1775 At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1776 At The College of William and Mary, Phi Beta Kappa is founded and becomes the first American College Fraternity.

  

1815 Foundation of Macei in Brazil. 1831 Former US President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives. 1847 Jefferson Davis is elected to the US senate, his first political post.

701

1848 California Gold Rush: In a message before the U.S. Congress, US President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

     

1865 Chincha Islands War: Peru allies with Chile against Spain. 1876 Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278 people in Brooklyn, NY. 1914 The Italian Parliament proclaims the neutrality of the country. 1920 Dimitrios Rallis forms a government in Greece. 1932 German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa. 1933 Prohibition in the United States ends: Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States).

 

1934 Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attack Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city. 1936 The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic is established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.

1941 World War II: In the Battle of Moscow Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.

 

1941 World War II: Great Britain declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania. 1943 World War II: U.S. Army Air Force begins attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow .

  

1944 World War II: Allied troops occupy Ravenna. 1945 Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle. 1952 Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.

1955 The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFLCIO.

  

1955 E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 1957 Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia. 1958 Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

1958 The Preston bypass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.

1964 Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.

702

1974 In American football, the Birmingham Americans would win what would eventually be the only World Bowl in World Football League history.

 

1976 The United Nations General Assembly adopts Pakistan's resolution on security of non-Nuclear States. 1977 Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The move is in retaliation for the Declaration of Tripoli against Egypt.

 

1978 The Soviet Union signs a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. 1979 Sonia Johnson is formally excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for her outspoken criticism of the church concerning the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

 

1983 Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina. 1983 ICIMOD is established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and legitimised through an Act of Parliament in Nepal in the same year.

  

1993 The mayor of Wien (Vienna), Helmut Zilk, is wounded by a letter bomb. 1995 The Sri Lankan government announces the conquest of Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. 2005 The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2005 The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there.

 

2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrows the government in Fiji. 2007 Westroads Mall massacre: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.

2010 The Harlem Globetrotters Played their famous "Four Point Game" against the Generals.

DECEMBER 6
 
1060 Bla I of Hungary is crowned king of Hungary. 1240 Mongol invasion of Rus: Kiev under Danylo of Halych and Voivode Dmytro falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan.

 

1534 The city of Quito in Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastin de Belalczar. 1648 Colonel Pride of the New Model Army purges the Long Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I of England, in order for the King's trial to go ahead; came to be known as "Pride's Purge".

  

1704 Battle of Chamkaur. 1745 Charles Edward Stewart's army begins retreat during the second Jacobite Rising. 1768 The first edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica is published.

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1790 The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1849 American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. 1865 The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery. 1877 The first edition of the Washington Post is published. 1877 Thomas Edison, using his new phonograph, makes one of the earliest recordings of a human voice, reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

     

1884 The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. is completed. 1897 London becomes the world's first city to host licenced taxicabs. 1907 A coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia kills 362 workers. 1916 World War I: The Central Powers capture Bucharest. 1917 Finland declares independence from Russia. 1917 Halifax Explosion: In Canada, a munitions explosion kills more than 1,900 people and destroys part of the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 

1921 The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives. 1928 The government of Colombia sent military forces to suppress a month-long strike by United Fruit Company workers, resulting in an unknown number of deaths.

  

1922 One year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State comes into existence. 1933 U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that the James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene. 1941 World War II: The United Kingdom declares war on Finland in support of the Soviet Union during the Continuation War.

 

1947 The Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated. 1956 A violent water polo match between Hungary and the USSR takes place during the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, against the backdrop of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

1957 Project Vanguard: A launchpad explosion of Vanguard TV3 thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.

1965 Pakistan's Islamic Ideology Advisory Committee recommends that Islamic Studies be made a compulsory subject for Muslim students from primary to graduate level.

 

1967 Adrian Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States. 1969 Meredith Hunter is killed by the Hells Angels during a The Rolling Stones's concert at the Altamont Speedway in California.

 

1971 Pakistan severs diplomatic relations with India following New Delhi's recognition of Bangladesh. 1973 The Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States House of Representatives votes 387 to 35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on November 27, theSenate confirmed him 92 to 3).

1975 Balcombe Street Siege: An IRA Active Service Unit takes a couple hostage in Balcombe Street, London.

704

  

1977 South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana, although it is not recognized by any other country. 1978 Spain approves its latest constitution in a referendum. 1982 Droppin Well bombing: The Irish National Liberation Army detonate a bomb in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven British soldiers and six civilians.

 

1988 The Australian Capital Territory is granted self-government. 1989 The cole Polytechnique Massacre (or Montreal Massacre): Marc Lpine, an anti-feminist gunman, murders 14 young women at the cole Polytechnique in Montreal.

 

1991 In Croatia, forces of the Yugoslav People's Army bombard Dubrovnik after laying siege to the city since May. 1992 The Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India is demolished, leading to widespread riots causing the death of over 1500 people.

1997 A Russian Antonov An-124 cargo plane crashes into an apartment complex near Irkutsk, Siberia, killing 67.

   

2001 The Canadian province of Newfoundland is renamed Newfoundland and Labrador. 2005 Several villagers are shot dead during protests in Dongzhou, China. 2006 NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars. 2008 The 2008 Greek riots break out upon the murder of a 15-year-old boy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by a police officer.

DECEMBER 7
  
43 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated. 1696 Connecticut Route 108, third oldest highway in Connecticut, is laid out to Trumbull. 1724 Tumult of Thorn religious unrest is followed by the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toru ) by Polish authorities.

     

1732 The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London. 1776 Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general. 1787 Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution. 1862 US Civil War: Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas. 1869 American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri. 1900 Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black body emission.

1917 World War I: The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.

705

1930 W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

1936 Australian cricketer Jack Fingleton becomes the first player to score centuries in four consecutive Test innings.

1941 World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forcesand Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing a declaration of war upon Japan by the United States.

  

1946 A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history. 1949 Chinese Civil War: The government of Republic of China moves from Nanking to Taipei. 1962 Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality's constitution, devolving some of his power to advisory and legislative councils.

 

1963 Instant replay is used for the first time in an Army-Navy game by its inventor, director, Tony Verna. 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.

1970 The first ever general election on the basis of direct adult franchise is held in Pakistan for 313 National Assembly seats.

1971 Pakistan President Yahya Khan announces the formation of a Coalition Government at Centre with Nurul Amin as Prime Minister and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as Vice-Prime Minister.

1972 Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

 

1975 Indonesia invades East Timor. 1982 In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1983 An Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 collides with an Aviaco DC-9 in dense fog while the two airliners are taxiing down the runway at Madrid Barajas International Airport, killing 93 people.

1987 Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.

 

1987 Alianza Lima air disaster. A plane crashes killing all Alianza Lima team in Ventanilla, Callao, Peru. 1988 Spitak Earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.

 

1988 Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist. 1993 The Long Island Rail Road massacre: Passenger Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.

706

1994 Norfolk Southern ends its steam excursion program. This is the last time that Norfolk and Western 611 is under steam.

1995 The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

1999 The Recording Industry Association of America files a lawsuit against the Napster file-sharing client alleging copyright infringement.

2003 The Conservative Party of Canada is officially recognized after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

2005 Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of U.S. federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.

 

2006 A tornado strikes Kensal Green, North West London, seriously damaging about 150 properties. 2007 The Hebei Spirit oil spill begins in South Korea after a crane barge that had broken free from a tug collides with the Very Large Crude Carrier, Hebei Spirit.

DECEMBER 8

1432 the first battle between the forces of vitrigaila and Sigismund K stutaitis is fought near the town of Oszmiana (Ashmyany), launching the most active phase of the civil war in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

1660 Margaret Hughes becomes the first actress to appear on an English public stage, playing the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.

1854 In his Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that theVirgin Mary was born free of original sin.

 

1907 King Gustaf V of Sweden accedes to the Swedish throne. 1912 Leaders of the German Empire hold an Imperial War Council to discuss the possibility that war might break out.

1941 United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares December 7 to be "a date which will live in infamy", after which the U.S. and theRepublic of China declare war against Japan.

1941 Japanese forces invade Thailand's southern peninsula. They face a heavy resistance, however, Plaek Phibunsongkhram ordered a ceasefire.

 

1941 Japanese forces launch an invasion into Hong Kong. Battle of Hong Kong begins. 1953 United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his "Atoms for Peace" speech, and the U.S. launches its "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, and research institutions around the world.

1963 Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707, is struck by positive lightning and crashes near Elkton, Maryland, United States, killing all 81 people on board.

707

 

1966 The Greek ship SS Heraklion sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200. 1972 United Airlines Flight 553 crashes after aborting its landing attempt at Chicago Midway International Airport, killing 45.

 

1974 A plebiscite results in the abolition of monarchy in Greece. 1980 John Lennon, an English musician and peace activist, is murdered by Mark David Chapman, a mentally unstable fan, in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City.

  

1982 In Suriname, several opponents of the military government are killed. 1987 The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed. 1987 Frank Vitkovic shoots and kills eight people at the Australia Post building in Melbourne, before jumping to his death.

 

1987 The Alianza Lima air disaster occurs. 1991 The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.

   

1991 The Romanian Constitution is adopted in a referendum. 1993 The North American Free Trade Agreement is signed into law by US President Bill Clinton. 1998 Eighty-one people are killed by armed groups in Algeria. 1998 The Australian Cricket Board's cover-up of Shane Warne and Mark Waugh's involvement with bookmakers is revealed.

2002 The Caribbean Community Heads of Government meet with the Government of Cuba and declare the date to be "CARICOM-Cuba Day"to celebrate diplomatic ties between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Cuba.

 

2004 The Cuzco Declaration is signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations. 2005 Ante Gotovina, a Croatian army general accused of war crimes, is captured in the Playa de las Amricas, Tenerife by the Spanish police.

2007 Benazir Bhutto, first and only female former Prime Minister of Pakistan, had her PPP Office stormed by unidentified gunmen. Three supporters are killed.

 

2009 Bombings in Baghdad, Iraq kill 127 and injure 448. 2010 With the second launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

DECEMBER 9

730 Battle of Marj Ardabil: the Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, al-Djarrah ibn Abdullah

1425 The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.

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1531 The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City. 1793 New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster. 1824 Patriot forces led by General Antonio Jos de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.

             

1835 The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas. 1851 The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal, Quebec. 1856 The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces. 1861 American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress. 1872 In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U.S. state. 1875 The Massachusetts Rifle Association, "America's Oldest Active Gun Club", is founded. 1888 Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department. 1897 Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper, La Fronde, in Paris. 1905 In France, the law separating church and state is passed. 1917 In Palestine, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby captures Jerusalem. 1922 Gabriel Narutowicz is announced the first president of Poland. 1931 The Constituent Cortes approves the constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic. 1935 Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in gangland murder. 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.

1940 World War II: Operation Compass British and Indian troops under the command of MajorGeneral Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.

1941 World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.

 

1941 World War II: The 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon. 1946 The "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" begin with the "Doctors' Trial", prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.

1950 Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

 

1953 Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company. 1956 Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.

 

1958 The John Birch Society is founded in the United States. 1960 The first episode of the world's longest-running television soap opera Coronation Street is broadcast in the United Kingdom.

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1961 The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel ends with verdicts of guilty on 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.

  

1961 Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain. 1962 The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona. 1965 The Kecksburg UFO incident: a fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that itexamined the object.

 

1966 Barbados joins the United Nations. 1968 NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.

 

1971 The United Arab Emirates join the United Nations. 1979 The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.

    

1987 Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. 1988 The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland is officially opened. 2000 The Supreme Court of the United States stays the sixth Florida recount. 2003 A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more. 2008 The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for a number of alleged crimes including attempting to sell the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama's election to the Presidency.

DECEMBER 10

1041 The adopted son of Empress Zoe of Byzantium succeeds to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire as Michael V.

1508 The League of Cambrai is formed by Pope Julius II, Louis XII of France, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Ferdinand II of Aragon as an alliance against Venice.

 

1520 Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate. 1541 Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.

 

1665 The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps is founded by Michiel de Ruyter 1684 Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

 

1799 France adopts the metre as its official unit of length. 1817 Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state.

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1861 American Civil War: the Confederate States of America accept a rival state government's pronouncement that declares Kentucky to be the 13th state of the Confederacy.

1861 Forces led by Nguyen Trung Truc, an anti-colonial guerrilla leader in southern Vietnam, sink the French lorcha L'Esperance.

1864 American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outerConfederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

1868 The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red andgreen gas lamps.

     

1869 Kappa Sigma Fraternity is founded at the University of Virginia 1884 Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time. 1898 Spanish-American War: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the conflict. 1901 The first Nobel Prizes are awarded. 1902 Women are given the right to vote in Tasmania. 1906 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1907 The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clash with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals who have been vivisected.

  

1927 The Grand Ole Opry premieres on radio. 1932 Thailand adopts a Constitution and becomes a constitutional monarchy. 1935 The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded to halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.

 

1936 Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII signs the Instrument of Abdication. 1941 World War II: The Royal Navy capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse are sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers near Malaya.

1941 World War II: Battle of the Philippines Imperial Japanese forces under the command of General Masaharu Homma land on the Philippine mainland.

 

1948 The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1949 Chinese Civil War: The People's Liberation Army begins its siege of Chengdu, the last Kuomintang-held city in mainland China, forcing President of the Republic of ChinaChiang Kai-shek and his government to retreat to Taiwan.

  

1955 The Mighty Mouse Playhouse premieres on television. 1965 The Grateful Dead's first concert performance under this new name. 1968 Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.

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1978 Arab-Israeli conflict: Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1979 Kaohsiung Incident: Taiwanese pro-democracy demonstrations are suppressed by the KMT dictatorship, and organizers are arrested.

 

1983 Democracy is restored in Argentina with the assumption of President Ral Alfonsn. 1989 Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announces the establishment of Mongolia's democratic movement that changes the second oldest communist country into a democracy.

1993 The last shift leaves Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland. The closure of the 156-year-old pit marks the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages.

1994 Rwandan Genocide: Military advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations Maurice Baril recommends that the UN multi-national forces in Zaire stand down.

DECEMBER 11

361 Julian the Apostate becomes sole Emperor of the Roman Empire, he rules from Constantinople and tries to restore paganism.

969 Byzatine Emperor Nikephoros II is assassinated by his wife Theofano and her lover, the later Emperor John I Tzimiskes.

 

1282 Llywelyn the Last, the last native Prince of Wales, is killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. 1602 A surprise attack by forces under the command of the Duke of Savoy and his brother-in-law, Philip III of Spain, is repelled by the citizens ofGeneva.

  

1789 The University of North Carolina is chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly. 1792 French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France is put on trial for treason by the National Convention. 1815 the U.S. Senate created a select committee on finance and a uniform national currency, predecessor of the United States Senate Committee on Finance.

      

1816 Indiana becomes the 19th U.S. state. 1868 Brazilians defeat Paraguayans at the Battle of Ava during the War of the Triple Alliance. 1905 A workers' uprising occurs in Kiev and establishes the Shuliavka Republic. 1907 The New Zealand Parliament Buildings are almost completely destroyed by fire. 1917 British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot and declares martial law. 1925 Roman Catholic papal encyclical Quas Primas introduces the Feast of Christ the King. 1927 Guangzhou Uprising: Communist militia and worker Red Guards launch an uprising in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, taking over most of the city and announcing the formation of a Guangzhou Soviet.

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1931 The British Parliament enacts the Statute of Westminster 1931, establishing legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia, theDominion of Canada, the Irish Free State, Dominion of Newfoundland, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa.

1934 Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the last time.

1936 Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII's abdication as King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of Indiabecomes effective.

 

1937 Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italy leaves the League of Nations. 1941 World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on Germany and Italy.

 

1946 The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established. 1948 The United Nations passes General Assembly Resolution 194, which established and defined the role of the United Nations Conciliation Commission as an organization to facilitate peace in the British Mandate for Palestine.

1958 French Upper Volta gains self-government from France, becomes the Republic of Upper Volta, and joins the French Community.

1960 French forces crack down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French president Charles de Gaulle.

    

1962 Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, is the last person to be executed in Canada. 1964 Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. 1968 The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus 1972 Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon. 1980 The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, also known as CERCLA or Superfund, is enacted by the U.S. Congress.

1981 El Mozote massacre: Armed forces in El Salvador kill an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War.

  

1993 Forty-eight people are killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapses near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 1994 First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Russian troops into Chechnya. 1994 A bomb explodes on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, en route from Manila to Tokyo, killing one. The captain is able to safely land the plane.

 

1997 The Kyoto Protocol opens for signature. 1998 Thai Airways Flight 261 crashes near Surat Thani Airport, killing 101. The pilot flying the Thai Airways Airbus A310-300 is thought to have suffered spatial disorientation.

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2001 The People's Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization. 2005 The Buncefield Oil Depot catches fire in Hemel Hempstead, England. 2005 Cronulla riots: Thousands of White Australians demonstrate against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese (and many who are not) inCronulla Sydney. These are followed up by retaliatory ethnic attacks on Cronulla.

2006 The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust is opened in Tehran, Iran by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Nations such as Israel and the United Statesexpress concern.

2007 Two car bombs explode at the Constitutional Court building in Algiers and the United Nations office. An estimated 45 people are killed in the bombings.

 

2008 Bernard Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. 2010 Two explosions occur in a busy shopping district of Stockholm, Sweden, killing one and injuring two others. Officials say the incident is being treated as a terrorist attack.

DECEMBER 12

627 Battle of Nineveh: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh.

1098 First Crusade: Massacre of Ma'arrat al-Numan Crusaders breach the town's walls and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. After finding themselves with insufficient food, they resort to cannibalism.

1408 The Order of the Dragon a monarchical chivalric order is created by Sigismund of Luxembourg, then King of Hungary.

1531 Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Seora de Guadalupe.) An image appeared miraculously on the cloak of Juan Diego, a simple indigenous peasant, on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City.[dubious discuss]

1781 American Revolutionary War: Second Battle of Ushant A Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt in HMS Victory, defeats a French fleet.

1787 Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the United States Constitution five days after Delaware became the first.

1862 USS Cairo sinks on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.

1870 Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman, the first one being Hiram Revels.

   

1897 Belo Horizonte, the first planned city in Brazil, is founded. 1901 Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland. 1911 Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India. 1911 King George V of the United Kingdom and Mary of Teck are enthroned as Emperor and Empress of India.

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1915 President of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai announces his intention to reinstate the monarchy and proclaim himself Emperor of China.

    

1917 In Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan founds Boys Town as a farm village for wayward boys. 1918 Flag of Estonia is raised atop the Pikk Hermann for the first time. 1925 The Majlis of Iran votes to crown Reza Khan as the new Shah of Persia. 1935 Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler. 1936 Xi'an Incident: The Generalissimo of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek is kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang.

 

1937 Panay incident: Japanese aircraft bomb and sink US gunboat Panay on the Yangtze River in China. 1939 Winter War: Battle of Tolvajrvi Finnish forces defeat those of the Soviet Union in their first major victory of the conflict.

1939 HMS Duchess (H64) sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men

1940 World War II: Approximately 70 people are killed in the Marples Hotel, Fitzalan Square, Sheffield as a result of a German air raid.

1941 World War II: Fifty four Japanese A6M Zero fighters raid Batangas Field, Philippines. Jess Villamor and four Filipino fighter pilots fend them off; Csar Basa is killed.

 

1941 World War II: USMC F4F "Wildcats" sink the first 4 major Japanese ships off Wake Island. 1941 World War II: UK declares war on Bulgaria. Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. India declares war on Japan.

 

1941 Adolf Hitler announces extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery 1942 World War II: German troops begin Operation Winter Storm, an attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad.

  

1942 A fire in a hostel in St. John's, Newfoundland kills 100 people. 1946 A fire at a New York City ice plant spreads to a nearby tenement killing 37 people. 1948 Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.

1950 Paula Ackerman, the first woman appointed to perform rabbinical functions in the United States, leads the congregation in her first services.

   

1956 Beginning of the Irish Republican Army's "Border Campaign". 1958 Guinea joins the United Nations. 1963 Kenya gains its independence from the United Kingdom. 1964 Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta becomes the first President of the Republic of Kenya.

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1969 Strategy of tension: Piazza Fontana bombing The offices of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, Milan, are bombed.

1979 Coup d'tat of December Twelfth: South Korean Army Major General Chun Doo-hwan orders the arrest of Army Chief of Staff General Jeong Seung-hwa without authorization from President Choi Kyu-ha, alleging involvement in the assassination of ex-President Park Chung Hee.

 

1979 President of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq, confers Nishan-e-Imtiaz on Nobel laureate Dr Abdus Salam. 1979 The unrecognised state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia returns to British control and resumes using the name Southern Rhodesia.

 

1979 A major earthquake and tsunami kill 259 people in Colombia. 1982 Women's peace protest at Greenham Common 30,000 women hold hands and form a human chain around the 14.5 kilometres (9.0 mi) perimeter fence.

1984 Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya becomes the third president of Mauritania after a coup d'tat against Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla while the latter is attending a summit.

1985 Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland killing 256, including 236 members of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division.

1988 The Clapham Junction rail crash kills thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains one of the worst train crashes in the United Kingdom.

   

1991 Russian Federation gains independence from the USSR. 2000 The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore 2005 Gebran Tueni, Lebanese journalist and politician, is assassinated. 2006 Peugeot produces its last car at the Ryton Plant signalling the end of mass car production in Coventry, formerly a major centre of the British motor industry.

DECEMBER 13

1294 Saint Celestine V resigns the papacy after only five months; Celestine hoped to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit.

  

1545 Council of Trent begins. 1577 Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage. 1636 The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

  

1642 Abel Janszoon Tasman reaches New Zealand. 1643 English Civil War: The Battle of Alton takes place in Hampshire. 1769 Dartmouth College is founded by the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, with a Royal Charter from King George III, on land donated by Royal GovernorJohn Wentworth.

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1809 Dr. Ephraim McDowell performed the first ovariotomy, removing a 22 pound tumor. 1862 American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee defeats the Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside.

 

1867 Fenian bomb explodes in Clerkenwell, London, killing six. 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing Nanjing, defended by the National Revolutionary Army under the command of General Tang Shengzhi, falls to the Japanese.

1937 Nanjing Massacre. Japanese troops begin carrying out several weeks of raping and killing of civilians and suspected Chinese resistance after the fall of Nanjing.

1938 The Holocaust: The Neuengamme concentration camp opens in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany.

1939 World War II: Battle of the River Plate Captain Hans Langsdorff of the German Deutschland class cruiser (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee engages with Royal Navycruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles.

    

1941 World War II: Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. 1943 World War II: The Massacre of Kalavryta by German occupying forces in Greece. 1949 The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. 1959 Archbishop Makarios becomes the first President of Cyprus. 1960 While Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaim him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.

  

1962 NASA "Relay 1" launch, first active repeater communications satellite in orbit. 1967 Constantine II of Greece attempts an unsuccessful counter-coup against the Regime of the Colonels 1968 Brazilian president Artur da Costa e Silva decrees the AI-5 (or the fifth Institutional Act), which lasts until 1978 and marks the beginning of the hard times of Brazilian military dictatorship.

1972 Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. This is the last manned mission to the moon of the 20th century.

 

1974 Malta becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations 1977 A DC-3 aircraft chartered from the Indianapolis-based National Jet crashes near Evansville Regional Airport, killing 29, including the University of Evansville basketball team, support staff and boosters of the team.

1979 The Canadian Government of Prime Minister Joe Clark is defeated in the House of Commons, prompting the 1980 Canadian election.

1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski declares martial law in Poland to prevent dismantling of the communist system by Solidarity.

1988 Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat gives a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in the Swiss city of Geneva after the United States authorities refused to give him avisa to enter New York.

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1989 Attack on Derryard checkpoint: The Provisional Irish Republican Army launch an attack on a British Army permanent vehicle checkpoint near Rosslea, Northern Ireland. Two British soldiers are killed and one badly wounded.

2000 The "Texas 7" escape from the John Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas and go on a robbery spree, during which police officer Aubrey Hawkins is shot and killed.

 

2001 the Indian Parliament Sansad is attacked by terrorists. 15 people are killed, including all the terrorists. 2002 Enlargement of the European Union: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, andSlovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.

2003 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit (see Operation Red Dawn).

2004 Former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet is put under house arrest, after being sued under accusations over 9 kidnapping actions and manslaughter. The house arrest is lifted the same day on appeal.

 

2006 The Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin, is announced as extinct.

DECEMBER 14
1287 St. Lucia's flood: The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing over 50,000 people. 1542 Princess Mary Stuart becomes Mary, Queen of Scots. 1751 The Theresian Military Academy is founded as the first Military Academy in the world. 1782 The Montgolfier brothers' first balloon lifts off on its first test flight. 1812 The French invasion of Russia comes to an end as the remnants of the Grande Arme are expelled from Russia.

    

 

1819 Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state. 1825 Advocates of Liberalism in Russia rise up against Tsar Nicholas I and are put down in the Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg.

   

1836 The Toledo War unofficially ends. 1896 The Glasgow Underground Railway is opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company. 1900 Quantum Mechanics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law. 1902 The Commercial Pacific Cable Company lays the first Pacific telegraph cable, from Ocean Beach, San Francisco to Honolulu, Hawaii.

 

1903 The Wright brothers make their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. 1907 The schooner Thomas W. Lawson runs aground and founders near the Hellweather's Reef within the Scilly Isles in a gale. The pilot and 15 seamen die.

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1909 New South Wales Premier Charles Wade signed the Seat of Government Surrender Act 1909, formally completing the transfer of State land to the Commonwealth to create the Australian Capital Territory.

1911 Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

1913 Haruna, the fourth and last ship of the Kong -class, launches, eventually becoming one of the Japanese workhorses during World War I and World War II.

1914 Lisandro de la Torre and others found the Democratic Progressive Party (Partido Demcrata Progresista, PDP) at the Hotel Savoy, Buenos Aires.

1918 Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Vin I, renounces the Finnish throne.

    

1939 Winter War: The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland. 1941 World War II: Japan signs treaty of alliance with Thailand. 1946 The United Nations General Assembly votes to establish its headquarters in New York City. 1947 The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is founded in Daytona Beach, Florida. 1955 Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Rom ania, Spain and Sri Lanka join the United Nations.

1958 The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first expedition to reach The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility in the Antarctic.

   

1961 The United Republic of Tanzania joins the United Nations. 1962 NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. 1963 Baldwin Hills Reservoir wall bursts, killing five people and damaging hundreds of homes in Los Angeles. 1964 American Civil Rights Movement: Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States The United States Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Congress can use the Constitution'sCommerce Clause power to fight discrimination.

1972 Apollo program: Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission. This is the last manned mission to the moon of the 20th century.

1981 Arab-Israeli conflict: Israel's Knesset passes The Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli law to the area of the Golan Heights.

    

1983 The 3rd Congress of the Communist Youth of Greece starts. 1994 Construction begins on the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River. 1995 Yugoslav Wars: The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris by leaders of various governments. 1999 Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations. 2003 President of Pakistan Pervez Musharaf narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.

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2004 The Millau viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, near Millau, France is officially opened. 2004 Cuba and Venezuela found the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. 2006 American spy satellite USA-193 is launched. 2008 President George W. Bush makes his fourth and final (planned) trip to Iraq as president and is almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaididuring a news conference in Baghdad.

DECEMBER 15
  
533 Byzantine general Belisarius defeats the Vandals, commanded by King Gelimer, at the Battle of Ticameron. 1167 Sicilian chancellor Stephen du Perche moves the royal court to Messina to prevent a rebellion. 1256 Hulagu Khan captures and destroys the Hashshashin stronghold at Alamut in present-day Iran as part of the Mongol offensive on Islamic southwest Asia.

1467 Stephen III of Moldavia defeats Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, with the latter being injured thrice, at the Battle of Baia.

  

1791 The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly. 1863 In Romania the mountain railway from Anina to Oravita is used for the first time. 1864 In the Battle of Nashville, Union forces under George H. Thomas almost completely destroy the Army of Tennessee under John B. Hood.

       

1868 Shogunate rebels found Ezo Republic in Hokkaid . 1905 The Pushkin House is established in St. Petersburg to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin 1906 The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens. 1913 Nicaragua becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires Convention. 1914 World War I: The Serbian Army recaptures Belgrade from the invading Austro-Hungarian Army. 1914 A gas explosion at Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine, Ky sh , Japan, kills 687. 1917 World War I: An armistice is reached between the new Bolshevik government and the Central Powers. 1933 The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.

 

1939 Gone with the Wind receives its premire at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 1941 Holocaust: German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

 

1941 The American Federation of Labor adopts a no-strike policy in war industries. 1942 The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse begins during the Guadalcanal campaign.

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1945 Occupation of Japan: General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as the state religion of Japan.

 

1954 The Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands is signed. 1955 Jens Olsen's World Clock is started by Danish King Frederick IX and Jens Olsen's youngest grandchild Birgit.

1960 Richard Paul Pavlick is arrested for attempting to blow up and assassinate the U.S. President-Elect, John F. Kennedy only four days earlier.

1961 In Jerusalem, Adolph Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.

1965 Gemini program: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.

 

1967 The Silver Bridge collapses, killing 46 people. 1970 Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully land on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet

 

1970 South Korean ferry Namyong Ho capsizes off Korean Strait killing 308. 1973 John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10, 1973.

1973 The American Psychiatric Association votes 130 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-II.

 

1976 Samoa becomes a member of the United Nations. 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and cut off all relations with Taiwan

1993 History of Northern Ireland: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

 

1994 Palau becomes a member of the United Nations. 1997 A chartered Tupolev TU-154 from Tajikistan crashes in the desert near Sharja, United Arab Emirates airport killing 85.

1997 The Treaty of Bangkok is signed allowing the transformation of Southeast Asia into a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.

 

2000 The 3rd reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down. 2001 The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.

2002 The Capital Center (formerly US Airways Arena) is demolished.

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2005 Latvia amends its constitution to eliminate possibility of same-sex couples being entitled to marry. 2005 Argentina's president Nstor Kirchner announces the early repayment of its external debt to the IMF. 2005 Introduction of the F-22 Raptor into USAF active service. 2006 First flight of the F-35 Lightning II. 2009 Boeing's new Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes its maiden flight from Seattle, Washington.

DECEMBER 16

755 An Lushan revolts against Chancellor Yang Guozhong at Fanyang, initiating the An Shi Rebellion during the Tang Dynasty of China.

  

1392 Nanboku-ch : Emperor Go-Kameyama abdicates in favor of rival claimant Go-Komatsu. 1431 Henry VI of England is crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris. 1497 Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

 

1575 The 1575 Valdivia earthquake takes place. 1598 Seven Year War: Battle of Noryang Point The final battle of the Seven Year War is fought between the China and the Korean Allied Forces and Japanese navies, resulting in a decisive Allied Forces victory.

1653 English Interregnum: The Protectorate Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

  

1689 Convention Parliament: The Declaration of Right is embodied in the Bill of Rights. 1707 Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan. 1761 Seven Years' War: After a four-month siege, the Russians under Pyotr Rumyantsev take the Prussian fortress of Kolobrzeg.

1773 American Revolution: Boston Tea Party Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1811 The first two in a series of severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri. These three so-called mega-quakes are believed to be an ongoing cataclysmic danger that could reprise the 1811-12 series of 2,000 quakes that affected the lands of what would be eight of today'sheartland states of the United States.

1826 Benjamin W. Edwards rides into Mexican controlled Nacogdoches, Texas and declares himself ruler of the Republic of Fredonia.

1838 Battle of Blood River: Voortrekkers led by Andries Pretorius and Sarel Cilliers defeat Zulu impis, led by Dambuza (Nzobo) and Ndlela kaSompisi in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

1850 History of New Zealand: The Charlotte-Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1863 American Civil War: Joseph E. Johnston replaces Braxton Bragg as commander of the Army of Tennessee.

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1864 American Civil War: Franklin-Nashville Campaign Battle of Nashville Major General George H. Thomas's Union forces defeat Lieutenant General John Bell Hood'sConfederate Army of Tennessee.

 

1907 The Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world 1914 World War I: German battleships under Franz von Hipper bombard the English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough.

 

1920 The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000. 1922 President of Poland Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated by Eligiusz Niewiadomski at the Zach ta Gallery in Warsaw.

1930 Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a posse of 200, following a botched bank robbery in Clinton, Indiana.

1937 Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay; neither is ever seen again.

  

1938 Adolf Hitler institutes the Cross of Honor of the German Mother 1941 World War II: Japanese forces occupy Miri, Sarawak 1942 Holocaust: Porajmos Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.

1944 World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

  

1946 Thailand joins the United Nations. 1947 William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor. 1950 U.S. President Harry S. Truman declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight with communist North Korea in the Korean War.

 

1957 Sir Feroz Khan Noon replaces Ibrahim Ismail Chundrigar as Prime Minister of Pakistan. 1960 1960 New York air disaster: While approaching New York's Idlewild Airport, a United Airlines Douglas DC8 collides with a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in a blindingsnowstorm over Staten Island, killing 134.

1965 Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966.

1971 Bangladesh War of Independence and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: The surrender of the Pakistan army brings an end to both conflicts.

1971 "National Day" of the Kingdom of Bahrain is celebrated. Not to be confused with Bahrain Independence Day which took place on August 15, 1971.

 

1972 Vietnam War: Henry Kissinger announces that North Vietnam has left private peace negotiations, in Paris. 1978 Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first post-Depression era city to default on its loans, owing $14,000,000 to local banks.

723

1979 Libya joins four other OPEC nations in raising crude oil prices, having an immediate dramatic effect on the United States.

1985 Mafia: In New York City, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of the Gambino family.

1986 Revolt in Kazakhstan against Communist Party of Kazakhstan, known as Zheltoksan, which becomes the first sign of ethnic strife during Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure

1989 Protests break out in Timi oara in response to an attempt by the government to evict dissident Hungarian pastor Lszl T ks.

1989 Walter LeRoy Moody begins his terrorist bombing streak when he sends Judge Robert Smith Vance a bomb in the mail, instantly killing him near his house in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

1991 Independence of The Republic of Kazakhstan. 1997 An episode of Pokmon, "Denn Senshi Porygon", aired in Japan induces seizures in 685 Japanese children.

1998 Iraq disarmament crisis: Operation Desert Fox The United States and United Kingdom bomb targets in Iraq.

2003 President George W. Bush signs the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 into law. The law establishes the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission to enforce its provisions.

2010 Self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, sparking the Tunisian Revolution and the 20102011 Middle East and North Africa protests.

DECEMBER 17
      
546 Gothic War: The Ostrogoths of King Totila conquer Rome by bribing the Byzantine garrison. 920 Romanos I is crowned co-emperor of the underage Emperor Constantine VII. 942 Assassination of William I of Normandy. 1398 Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud's armies in Delhi are defeated by Timur. 1531 Pope Clement VII establishes a parallel body to the Inquisition in Lisbon, Portugal. 1538 Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England. 1577 Francis Drake sails from Plymouth, England, on a secret mission to explore the Pacific Coast of the Americas for English Queen Elizabeth I.

1583 Cologne War: Forces under Ernest of Bavaria defeats the troops under Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg at the Siege of Godesberg.

 

1586 Emperor Go-Yozei becomes Emperor of Japan. 1600 Marriage of Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici.

724

      

1637 Shimabara Rebellion: Japanese peasants led by Amakusa Shiro rise against daimyo Matsukura Shigeharu. 1718 Great Britain declares war on Spain. 1777 France formally recognizes the United States of America. 1790 Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone. 1807 France issues the Milan Decree, which confirms the Continental System. 1812 War of 1812: U.S. forces attack a friendly Lenape village in the Battle of the Mississinewa. 1819 Simn Bolvar declares the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura (now Ciudad Bolvar in Venezuela).

 

1837 Fire in the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg occurred. 1862 American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

 

1865 First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert. 1903 The Wright Brothers make their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

 

1907 Ugyen Wangchuck is crowned first King of Bhutan 1918 Culmination of the Darwin Rebellion as some 1000 demonstrators march on Government House in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

   

1919 Uruguay becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1926 Antanas Smetona assumes power in Lithuania as the 1926 coup d'tat is successful. 1935 First flight of the Douglas DC-3 airplane. 1939 World War II: Battle of the River Plate The Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by Captain Hans Langsdorff outside Montevideo.

 

1941 World War II: Japanese forces land in Northern Borneo. 1944 World War II: Battle of the Bulge Malmedy massacre American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Peiper.

  

1947 First flight of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet strategic bomber. 1950 The F-86 Sabre's first mission over Korea. 1957 The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1960 Troops loyal to Haile Selassie I in Ethiopia crush the coup that began December 13, returning power to their leader upon his return from Brazil. Haile Selassie absolves his son of any guilt.

1960 1960 Munich Convair 340 crash: 20 passengers and crew on board as well as 32 people on the ground are killed.

1961 History of Goa: Operation Vijay India seizes Goa from Portugal.

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1967 Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria and is presumed drowned.

 

1969 The SALT I talks begin. 1969 Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs, stating that sightings are generated as a result of "A mild form of mass hysteria, Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, and misidentification of various conventional objects."

 

1970 Polish 1970 protests: In Gdynia soldiers fire at workers emerging from trains, killing dozens. 1973 Terrorism: 30 passengers are killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

    

1973 The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental diseases. 1981 Brigadier General James L. Dozier is abducted by the Red Brigade in Verona, Italy. 1981 The Senegambia Confederation is founded. 1983 The IRA bombs Harrods Department Store in London, killing six people. 1989 The first episode of television series The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", airs in the United States.

1989 Romanian Revolution: Protests continue in Timi oara with rioters breaking into the Romanian Communist Party's District Committee building and attempting to set it on fire.

1989 Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years.

1997 The United Kingdom commences its Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which extends the state's gun ban to include all handgunswith the exception of antique and show weapons.

2002 Second Congo War: The Congolese parties of the Inter Congolese Dialogue sign a peace accord which makes provision for transitional governance and legislative and presidential elections within two years.

2003 The Soham murder trial ends at the Old Bailey in London, with Ian Huntley found guilty of two counts of murder. His girlfriend Maxine Carr is found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

    

2003 SpaceShipOne flight 11P, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first supersonic flight. 2005 Anti-WTO protesters riot in Wan Chai, Hong Kong 2005 Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicate the throne as King of Bhutan. 2009 MV Danny F II sinks off the coast of Lebanon, resulting in the deaths of 44 people and over 28,000 animals. 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire.This act became the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution. The success of the Tunisian protests sparked protests in several other Arab countries.

DECEMBER 18

726

218 BC Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia Hannibal's Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.

1271 Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" ( Dynasty of Mongolia and China.

yun), officially marking the start of the Yuan

 

1642 Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand. 1777 The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga in October.

 

1787 New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1793 Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French Royalists to Lord Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.

   

1878 John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires is executed in Pennsylvania. 1878 The Al-Thani family become the rulers of the state of Qatar 1888 Richard Wetherill and his brother in-law discover the ancient Indian ruins of Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde. 1898 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first officially recognized land speed record of 39.245 mph (63.159 km/h) in a Jeantaud electric car.

1900 The Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook Narrow-gauge (2 ft 6 in or 762 mm) Railway (now the Puffing Billy Railway) in Victoria, Australia is opened for traffic.

  

1912 The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is found in the Piltdown Gravel Pit, by Charles Dawson. 1915 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt Wilson while president of the United States. 1916 World War I: The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French and British, and suffer 337,000 casualties.

 

1918 The United States House of Representatives approves the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition. 1932 The Chicago Bears defeat the Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 in the first ever NFL Championship Game. Because of a blizzard, the game is moved from Wrigley Field to the Chicago Stadium, the field measuring 80 yards (73 m) long.

 

1935 The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Ceylon. 1944 World War II: 77 B-29 Superfortress and 200 other aircraft of U.S. Fourteenth Air Force bomb Hankow, China, a Japanese supply base.

   

1956 Japan joins the United Nations. 1958 Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched. 1966 Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker. 1969 Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghan's motion to make permanent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which had temporarily suspended capital punishment in England, Wales and Scotland for murder (but not for all crimes) for a period of five years.

727

 

1971 Capitol Reef National Park is established in Utah. 1972 Vietnam War: President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will engage North Vietnam in Operation Linebacker II, a series of Christmas bombings, after peace talks collapsed with North Vietnam on the 13th.

1973 Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union.

  

1978 Dominica joins the United Nations. 1987 Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language. 1989 The European Community and the Soviet Union sign an agreement on trade and commercial and economic cooperation.

1996 The Oakland, California school board passes a resolution officially declaring "Ebonics" a language or dialect.

 

1997 HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium. 1999 NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.

2002 2003 California recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier.

2006 The first of a series of floods strikes Malaysia. The death toll of all flooding is at least 118, with over 400,000 people displaced.

2010 Governmental protests begin in Tunisia, beginning the 2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa protests

DECEMBER 19

211 Publius Septimius Geta, co-emperor of Rome, is lured to come without his bodyguards to meet his brother Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla), to discuss a possible reconciliation. When he arrives the Praetorian Guard murders him and he dies in the arms of his mother Julia Domna.

   

324 Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor. 1154 Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey. 1490 Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor by proxy. 1606 The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of thethirteen colonies that became the United States.

1776 Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis.

728

1777 American Revolutionary War: George Washington's Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1796 French Revolutionary Wars: Two British frigates under Commodore Horatio Nelson and two Spanish frigates under Commodore Don Jacobo Stuart engage in battle off the coast of Murcia.

1828 Nullification Crisis: Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun pens the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

1900 Hopetoun Blunder: The first Governor-General of Australia John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, appointed Sir William Lyne as premier of the new state New South Wales, but he is unable to persuade other colonial politicians to join his government and is forced to resign.

 

1907 A group of 239 coal miners die during a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania. 1912 William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over 1,000 people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

1916 World War I: Battle of Verdun On the Western Front, the French Army successfully holds off the German Army and drives it back to its starting position.

1920 King Constantine I is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son Alexander I of Greece and a plebiscite.

   

1924 The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England. 1932 BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service 1941 World War II: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. 1941 World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sink the HMS Valiant (1914) and HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913) in Alexandria harbour.

 

1946 Start of the First Indochina War. 1956 Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

 

1961 India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India. 1963 Zanzibar gains independence from the United Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy, under Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah.

1964 The South Vietnamese military junta of Nguyen Khanh dissolved the High National Council and arrested some of the members.

 

1967 Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt is officially presumed dead. 1972 Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

1975 John Paul Stevens is appointed a justice of The United States Supreme Court.

729

1981 Sixteen lives are lost when the Penlee lifeboat goes to the aid of the stricken coaster Union Star in heavy seas.

1983 The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.

1984 The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that the People's Republic of China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997 is signed in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.

1986 Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from internal exile in Gorky.

1995 The United States Government restores federal recognition to the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indian tribe.

 

1997 SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104. 1998 Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives forwards articles I and III of impeachment against President Bill Clinton to the Senate.

2000 The Leninist Guerrilla Units wing of the Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist attack a Nationalist Movement Party office in Istanbul, killing one person and injuring three.

2001 A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khvsgl Province, Mongolia.

2001 Argentine economic crisis: December 2001 riots Riots erupt in Buenos Aires.

DECEMBER 20
 
69 Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor. 217 The papacy of Zephyrinus ends. Callixtus I is elected as the sixteenth pope, but is opposed by the theologian Hippolytus who accuses him of laxity and of being a Modalist, one who denies any distinction between the three persons of the Trinity.

1192 Richard the Lion-Heart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladinending the Third crusade.

1522 Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate. They eventually settle onMalta and become known as the Knights of Malta.

1606 The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.

  

1803 The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans. 1860 South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States. 1915 World War I: Last Australian troops evacuated from Gallipoli.

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1917 Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded. 1924 Hitler: is released from Landsberg Prison 1941 World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.

 

1942 World War II: Bombing of Calcutta by the Japanese. 1946 An 8.1 Mw earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Nankaid , Japan, kill over 1,300 people and destroy over 38,000 homes.

1951 The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.

       

1952 United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington killing 87. 1955 Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom. 1959 The Walker Family Murders 1960 National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam is formed. 1968 The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California. 1973 The Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is assassinated by a car bomb attack in Madrid. 1977 Djibouti and Vietnam join the United Nations. 1984 The Summit tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derails near the town of Todmorden in the Pennines.

1987 History's worst peacetime sea disaster, when the passenger ferry Doa Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).

1988 The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances is signed in Vienna.

1989 United States invasion of Panama: The United States sends troops into Panama to overthrow government of Manuel Noriega. This is also the first combat use of purpose-designed stealth aircraft.

1991 A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.

 

1995 NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia. 1995 American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia killing 160.

  

1996 NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X. 1999 Macau is handed over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal. 2004 A gang of thieves steal 26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the largest bank robberies in UK history.

731

2005 US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of "intelligent design" in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

2007 Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.

2007 The painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is stolen from the So Paulo Museum of Art, along with O Lavrador de Caf, by the major Brazilian modernist painter Candido Portinari.

DECEMBER 21
 
1140 Conrad III of Germany besieged Weinsberg. 1598 Battle of Curalaba: The revolting Mapuche, led by cacique Pelentaru, inflict a major defeat on Spanish troops in southern Chile.

1620 Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

 

1832 EgyptianOttoman War: Egyptian forces decisively defeat Ottoman troops at the Battle of Konya. 1844 The Rochdale Pioneers commence business at their cooperative in Rochdale, England, starting the Cooperative movement.

1861 Medal of Honor: Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.

  

1872 Challenger expedition: HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sails from Portsmouth. 1879 World premire of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. 1883 The first Permanent Force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army are formed: The Royal Canadian Dragoons and The Royal Canadian Regiment.

 

1913 Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World. 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theater.

1941 World War II: A formal treaty of alliance between Thailand and Japan is signed in the presence of the Emerald Buddha in Wat Phra Kaew.

 

1962 Rondane National Park is established as Norway's first national park. 1967 Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, after living for 18 days after the transplant.

1968 Apollo program: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew performs the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity.

1969 The Gay Activists Alliance is formed in New York City.

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1969 The United Nations adopts the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. 1973 The Geneva Conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict opens. 1979 Lancaster House Agreement: An independence agreement for Rhodesia is signed in London by Lord Carrington, Sir Ian Gilmour, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Bishop Abel Muzorewa and S.C. Mundawarara.

    

1988 A bomb explodes on board Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, killing 270. 1992 A Dutch DC-10, flight Martinair MP 495, crashes at Faro Airport, killing 56 people. 1994 Mexican volcano Popocatepetl, dormant for 47 years, erupts gases and ash. 1995 The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control. 1999 The Spanish Civil Guard intercepts a van loaded with 950 kg of explosives that ETA intended to use to blow up Torre Picasso in Madrid.

2004 Iraq War: A suicide bomber killed 22 at the forward operating base next to the main U.S. military airfield at Mosul, the single deadliest suicide attack on American soldiers.

DECEMBER 22
    
69 Emperor Vitellius is captured and murdered at the Gemonian stairs in Rome. 1573 The Battle of Mikatagahara in Japan ends. 1769 Sino-Burmese War (17651769) ends with an uneasy truce. 1790 The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies. 1807 The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.

1808 Ludwig van Beethoven conducts and performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).

1809 The Non-Intercourse Act, lifting the Embargo Act except for the United Kingdom and France, is passed by the U.S. Congress.

      

1851 The first freight train is operated in Roorkee, India. 1864 Savannah, Georgia falls to General William Tecumseh Sherman, concluding his "March to the Sea". 1885 Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, became the first Prime Minister of Japan. 1890 Cornwallis Valley Railway begins operation between Kingsport and Kentville, Nova Scotia. 1894 The Dreyfus affair begins in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason. 1920 The GOELRO economic development plan is adopted by the 8th Congress of Soviets of the Russian SFSR. 1937 The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.

733

1939 Indian Muslims observe a "Day of Deliverance" to celebrate the resignations of members of the Indian National Congress over their not having been consulted over the decision to enter World War II with Britain.

  

1940 World War II: Himar is captured by the Greek army. 1942 World War II: Adolf Hitler signs the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon. 1944 World War II: Battle of the Bulge German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium, prompting the famous one word reply by GeneralAnthony McAuliffe: "Nuts!"

1944 World War II: The People's Army of Vietnam is formed to resist Japanese occupation of Indo-China, now Vietnam.

     

1947 The Constituent Assembly of Italy approves the Constitution of Italy. 1951 The Selangor Labour Party is founded in Selangor, Malaya. 1956 Colo is born, the first gorilla to be bred in captivity. 1963 The cruise ship Lakonia burns 180 miles north of Madeira with the loss of 128 lives. 1964 First flight of the SR-71 (Blackbird). 1965 In the United Kingdom, a 70 mph speed limit is applied to all rural roads including motorways for the first time. Previously, there had been no speed limit.

1974 Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohli vote to become the independent nation of Comoros. Mayotte remains under French administration.

 

1974 The house of former British Prime Minister Ted Heath is attacked by members of the Provisional IRA. 1978 The pivotal Third Plenum of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is held in Beijing, with Deng Xiaoping reversing Mao-era policies to pursue a program for Chinese economic reform.

1984 Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American would-be muggers on an express train in Manhattan, New York City.

 

1988 Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, is assassinated. 1989 After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceau escu's Communist dictatorship.

1989 Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

   

1990 Final independence of Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia after termination of trusteeship. 1990 The Parliament of Croatia adopts the current Constitution of Croatia. 1992 The Archives of Terror are discovered. 1997 Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas aremassacred by paramilitary forces.

1997 Hussein Aidid relinquishes the disputed title of President of Somalia by signing the Cairo Declaration, in Cairo, Egypt. It is the first major step towards reconciliation in Somaliasince 1991.

734

1999 Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509, a Boeing 747-200F crashes shortly after take-off from London Stansted Airport due to pilot error. All 4 crew members are killed.

2001 Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, hands over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by President Hamid Karzai.

2001 Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.

2008 An ash dike ruptured at a solid waste containment area in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion gallons (4.2 million m ) of coal fly ash slurry.

2010 The repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning on homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama.

DECEMBER 23

962 Byzantine-Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops stormed the city of Aleppo

 

1493 Georg Alt's German translation of Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle is published. 1688 As part of the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England flees England to Paris after being deposed in favour of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.

1783 George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.

1793 The Battle of Savenay, decisive defeat of the royalist counter-revolutionaries in Revolt in the Vende during the French Revolution.

          

1823 A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, is published anonymously. 1893 The opera Hnsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed. 1913 The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve. 1914 World War I: Australian and New Zealand troops arrive in Cairo, Egypt. 1916 World War I: Battle of Magdhaba Allied forces defeat Turkish forces in Egypt's Sinai peninsula. 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 becomes law in the UK. 1921 Visva-Bharati University is inaugurated. 1936 Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. 1937 First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber. 1938 Discovery of the first modern coelacanth in South Africa. 1940 World War II: Greek submarine Papanikolis ( -2) sinks the Italian motor ship Antonietta.

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1941 World War II: After 15 days of fighting, the Japanese Imperial Army occupies Wake Island. 1947 The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. 1948 Seven Japanese convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are executed at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.

  

1958 Dedication of Tokyo Tower, the world's highest self-supporting iron tower. 1968 The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after eleven months of internment in North Korea. 1970 The North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City is topped out at 1,368 feet (417 m), making it the tallest building in the world.

   

1972 A 6.5 magnitude earthquake strikes the Nicaraguan capital of Managua killing more than 10,000. 1972 The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, having survived by cannibalism. 1979 Soviet war in Afghanistan: Soviet forces occupy Kabul, the Afghan capital. 1982 The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces it has identified dangerous levels of dioxin in the soil of Times Beach, Missouri.

1986 Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

 

1990 History of Slovenia: In a referendum, 88% of Slovenia's population vote for independence from Yugoslavia. 2002 A MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25, making it the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat.

2003 PetroChina Chuandongbei natural gas field explosion, Guoqiao, Kai County, Chongqing, China, killing at least 234.

2005 Chad declares a state of war against Sudan following a December 18 attack on Adr, which left about 100 people dead.

DECEMBER 24

563 The Byzantine church Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is dedicated for the second time after being destroyed by earthquakes.

   

1294 Pope Boniface VIII is elected Pope, replacing St. Celestine V, who had resigned. 1777 Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook. 1814 The Treaty of Ghent is signed ending the War of 1812. 1826 The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy begins that night, wrapping up the following morning.

 

1851 Library of Congress burns. 1865 The Ku Klux Klan is formed.

736

1906 Radio: Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast; consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.

     

1914 World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins. 1924 Albania becomes a republic. 1929 Assassination attempt on Argentine President Hiplito Yrigoyen. 1939 World War II: Pope Pius XII makes a Christmas Eve appeal for peace. 1941 World War II: Kuching is conquered by Japanese forces. 1942 World War II: French monarchist, Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, assassinates Vichy French Admiral Franois Darlan in Algiers.

  

1943 World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander. 1951 Libya becomes independent from Italy. Idris I is proclaimed King of Libya. 1953 Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge is destroyed by a lahar at Tangiwai, in the Central North Island of New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River, and killing 153 people.

 

1955 NORAD Tracks Santa for the first time in what will become an annual Christmas Eve tradition. 1966 A Canadair CL-44 chartered by the United States military crashes into a small village in South Vietnam, killing 129.

1968 The crew of the USS Pueblo is released by North Korea after being held for 11 months on suspicion of spying.

1968 Apollo Program: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed 10 lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures that became the famous Christmas Eve Broadcast, one of the most watched programs in history.

1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act is passed, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to elect their own local government.

  

1974 Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Australia. 1979 The first European Ariane rocket is launched. 1980 Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, an incident called "Britain's Roswell".

 

1997 The Sid El-Antri massacre (or Sidi Lamri) in Algeria kills 50-100 people. 2000 The Texas 7 hold up a sports store in Irving, Texas. Police officer Aubrey Hawkins is murdered during the robbery.

2003 The Spanish police thwart an attempt by ETA to detonate 50 kg of explosives at 3:55 p.m. inside Madrid's busy Chamartn Station.

2008 Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, begins a series of attacks on Democratic Republic of the Congo, massacring more than 400.

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DECEMBER 25
  
274 Emperor Aurelian makes Sol Invictus to an official cult, it becomes the state religion of Rome. 333 Emperor Constantine the Great elevates his youngest son Constans to the rank of Caesar. 350 Vetranio meets Constantius II at Naissus (Serbia) and is forced to abdicated his title (Caesar). Constantius allows him to live as a private citizen on a state pension.

 

800 Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome. 1000 The foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary: Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.

   

1066 William the Conqueror is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London. 1100 Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity. 1130 Count Roger II of Sicily is crowned the first King of Sicily. 1261 John IV Lascaris of the restored Eastern Roman Empire is deposed and blinded by orders of his coruler Michael VIII Palaeologus.

1553 Battle of Tucapel: Mapuche rebels under Lautaro defeats the Spanish conquistadors and executes the governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia.

  

1599 The city of Natal, Brazil is founded. 1691 Jagannath Temple, Ranchi is built. 1643 Christmas Island found and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Company vessel, the Royal Mary.

1776 George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey.

    

1818 The first performance of "Silent Night" takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. 1826 The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy concludes after beginning the previous evening. 1837 Battle of Lake Okeechobee: United States forces defeated by Seminole Native Americans. 1868 U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers. 1914 World War I: Known as the Christmas truce, German and British troops on the Western Front temporarily cease fire.

    

1926 Emperor Taish of Japan dies. His son, Prince Hirohito succeeds him as Emperor Sh wa. 1927 The Vietnamese Nationalist Party is founded. 1932 A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Gansu, China kills 275 people. 1941 Admiral Chester W Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet 1941 World War II: Battle of Hong Kong ends, beginning the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong.

738

1946 The first in Europe artificial, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction is initiated within Soviet nuclear reactor F-1.

 

1947 The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect. 1950 The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.

1963 Turkish Cypriot Bayrak Radio begins transmitting in Cyprus after Turkish Cypriots are forcibly excluded from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.

 

1965 The Yemeni Nasserite Unionist People's Organisation is founded in Taiz 1968 Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneouver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

1968 42 Dalits are burned alive in Kilavenmani village, Tamil Nadu, India, a retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit labourers.

   

1974 Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Northern Territory Australia. 1974 Marshall Fields drives a vehicle through the gates of the White House, resulting in a four-hour standoff. 1977 Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. 1989 Nicolae Ceau escu, former communist dictator of Romania and his wife Elena are condemned to death and executed under a wide range of charges.

 

1990 The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web. 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.

2000 Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a bill into law that officially establishes a new National Anthem of Russia, with music adopted from the anthem of the Soviet Union that was composed by Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov.

2003 The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express Spacecraft on December 19, disappears shortly before its scheduled landing.

2004 Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.

 

2007 A tiger at the San Francisco Zoo escapes from its enclosure and attacks three people, killing one. 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab unsuccessfully attempts a terrorist attack against the US while on board a flight to Detroit Metro Airport Northwest Airlines Flight 253

DECEMBER 26
 
1135 Coronation of King Stephen of England. 1481 Battle of Westbroek: Holland defeats troops of Utrecht.

739

      

1613 Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, marries Frances Howard. 1776 American Revolutionary War: The British are defeated in the Battle of Trenton. 1790 Louis XVI of France gives his public assent to Civil Constitution of the Clergy during the French Revolution. 1792 The final trial of Louis XVI of France begins in Paris. 1793 Second Battle of Wissembourg: French defeat Austrians. 1793 The wedding of Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Prussia and Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz takes place. 1799 Four thousand people attend George Washington's funeral where Henry Lee declares him as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

  

1805 Austria and France sign the Treaty of Pressburg. 1806 Battles of Pultusk and Golymin: Russian forces hold French forces under Napoleon. 1811 A theater fire in Richmond, Virginia kills the Governor of Virginia George William Smith and the president of the First National Bank of VirginiaAbraham B. Venable.

1846 Trapped in snow in the Sierra Nevadas and without food, members of the Donner Party resort to cannibalism.

1860 The first ever inter-club football match takes place between Hallam F.C. and Sheffield F.C. at the Sandygate Road ground in Sheffield, England.

1861 American Civil War: The Trent Affair: Confederate diplomatic envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Britain.

 

1862 American Civil War: The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou begins. 1862 Four nuns serving as volunteer nurses on board USS Red Rover are the first female nurses on a U.S. Navy hospital ship.

  

1862 The largest mass-hanging in U.S. history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Native Americans die. 1870 The 12.8-km long Frjus Rail Tunnel through the Alps is completed. 1871 Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera, Thespis. It does modestly well, but the two would not collaborate again for four years.

1883 The Harbour Grace Affray between Irish Catholics and Protestant Orangemen causes five deaths in Newfoundland.

    

1898 Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium. 1919 Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox is sold to the New York Yankees by owner Harry Frazee. 1925 Turkey adopts the Gregorian Calendar. 1933 FM radio is patented. 1941 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

740

1943 World War II: German warship Scharnhorst is sunk off of Norway's North Cape after a battle against major Royal Navy forces.

   

1944 World War II: Patton's Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium. 1945 CFP franc and CFA franc are created. 1948 Cardinal Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy. 1966 The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

1972 Vietnam War: As part of Operation Linebacker II, 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.

    

1975 The Tupolev Tu-144 goes into service in Soviet Union. 1976 The Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) is founded. 1980 Aeroflot puts the Ilyushin Il-86 into service. 1982 Time Magazine's Man of the Year is for the first time a non-human, the personal computer. 1986 The first long-running American television soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, airs its final episode after 35 years on the air.

 

1991 The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the USSR. 1994 Four Armed Islamic Group hijackers seize control of Air France Flight 8969. When the plane lands at Marseille, a French Gendarmerie assault team boards the aircraft and kills the perpetrators.

1996 Six-year-old beauty queen JonBent Ramsey is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado.

  

1996 Start of the largest strike in South Korean history. 1997 The Soufriere Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat explodes, creating a small tsunami offshore. 1998 Iraq announces its intention to fire upon U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones.

 

1999 The storm Lothar sweeps across Central Europe, killing 137 and causing US$1.3 billion in damage. 2003 A magnitude 6.6 earthquake devastates southeast Iranian city of Bam, killing tens of thousands and destroying the citadel of Arg- Bam.

2004 A 9.3 magnitude earthquake creates a tsunami causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing over 230,000 people including over 1700 on a moving train.

 

2004 Orange Revolution: The final run-off election is held under heavy international scrutiny. 2005 A gang-related shooting on a busy shopping street in Toronto kills one and injures six.

741

2006 A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit Hengchun, Pingtung, Taiwan, killing two people and causing severe communication disruptions in southeast Asia.

2006 An oil pipeline in Lagos, Nigeria explodes, killing at least 260.

DECEMBER 27
 
537 The Hagia Sophia is completed. 1512 The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regards to native Indians in the New World.

 

1657 The Flushing Remonstrance is signed. 1703 Portugal and England sign the Methuen Treaty which gives preference to Portuguese imported wines into England.

1814 Destruction of schooner Carolina, the last of Commodore Daniel Patterson's make-shift fleet that fought a series of delaying actions that contributed to Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

1831 Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate the theory of evolution.

 

1836 The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing 8 people. 1845 Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Williamson Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

 

1918 The Great Poland Uprising against the Germans begins. 1922 Japanese aircraft carrier H sh becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.

    

1923 Namba Daisuke, a Japanese student, tries to assassinate the Prince Regent Hirohito. 1932 Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City. 1939 Erzincan, Turkey is hit by an earthquake, killing 30,000. 1942 The Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia is founded. 1945 The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations.

1949 Indonesian National Revolution: The Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesian independence. End of the Dutch East Indies

1968 Apollo Program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.

 

1978 Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship. 1978 The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in the South Pole recorded temperatures of 7.5 F ( 13.6 C), making it the highest temperature to ever be recorded in the South Pole.

742

     

1979 The Soviet Union invades the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. 1985 Palestinian guerrillas kill eighteen people inside Rome and Vienna airports. 1996 Taliban forces retake the strategic Bagram air base which solidifies their buffer zone around Kabul. 1997 Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland. 2001 The People's Republic of China is granted permanent normal trade relations with the United States. 2002 Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya.

2002 The company Clonaid announces that it has successfully cloned a human being, although it has never presented any verifiable evidence.

2004 Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.

 

2007 Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a shooting incident. 2008 Israel launches 3-week operation on Gaza - Operation Cast Lead

DECEMBER 28
  
1065 Westminster Abbey is consecrated. 1308 The reign of Emperor Hanazono, emperor of Japan, begins. 1612 Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star.

1768 King Taksin's coronation achieved through conquest as a king of Thailand and established Thonburi as a capital.

1795 Construction of Yonge Street, formerly recognized as the longest street in the world, begins in York, Upper Canada (present-day Toronto,Ontario).

 

1832 John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign. 1835 Osceola leads his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the United States Army.

    

1836 South Australia and Adelaide are founded. 1836 Spain recognizes the independence of Mexico. 1846 Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state. 1867 United States claims Midway Atoll, the first territory annexed outside Continental limits. 1879 The Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75.

1885 Indian National Congress a political party of India is founded in Bombay, British India.

743

1895 The Lumire brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, marking the debut of the cinema.

1895 Wilhelm Rntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays.

  

1908 A magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily killing over 75,000. 1912 The first municipally owned streetcars take to the streets in San Francisco, California. 1918 Constance Markiewicz while detained in Holloway prison, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons.

 

1935 Pravda publishes a letter by Pavel Postyshev, who revives New Year tree tradition in the Soviet Union. 1943 World War II After eight days of brutal house-to-house fighting, the battle of Ortona concludes with the victory of the1st Canadian Infantry Division over the German 1st Parachute Division and the capture of the Italian town of Ortona.

    

1944 Maurice Richard becomes the first player to score 8 points in one game of NHL ice hockey. 1945 The United States Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance. 1948 The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida. 1950 The Peak District becomes the United Kingdom's first National Park. 1958 "Greatest Game Ever Played" Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the first ever National Football League sudden death overtime game at New York's Yankee Stadium.

  

1973 The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States. 1974 Senegalese marxist group Reenu-Rew founds the political movement And-Jf at a clandestine congress. 1978 With the crew investigating a problem with the landing gear, United Airlines Flight 173 runs out of fuel and crashes in Portland, Oregon, killing 10. As a result, United Airlinesinstituted the industry's first crew resource management program.

  

1989 A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people. 2000 U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announces it is going out of business after 128 years. 2009 43 people die in a suicide bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, where Shia Muslims are observing the Day of Ashura.

DECEMBER 29

1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

1778 American Revolutionary War: 3,500 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia.

744

 

1786 French Revolution: The Assembly of Notables is convened. 1812 The USS Constitution under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures the HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three hour battle.

 

1813 British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812. 1835 The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1845 According with International Boundary delimitation, U.S.A annexes the Mexican state of Texas, following the Manifest Destiny doctrine. For others, the Republic of Texas, which had been independent since the Texas Revolution of 1836, is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.

   

1851 The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts. 1860 The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS Warrior is launched. 1876 The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster occurs, leaving 64 injured and 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio. 1890 United States soldiers kill more than 200 Oglala Lakota people with four Hotchkiss guns in the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1911 Sun Yat-sen becomes the provisional President of the Republic of China; he formally takes office on January 1, 1912.

  

1911 Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty. 1914 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, is serialised in The Egoist. 1930 Sir Muhammad Iqbal's presidential address in Allahabad introduces the Two-Nation Theory and outlines a vision for the creation of Pakistan.

   

1934 Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. 1937 The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution. 1939 First flight of the Consolidated B-24. 1940 World War II: In The Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, killing almost 200 civilians.

1949 KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

1959 Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology; the Lisbon Metro begins operation.

1972 An Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 (a Lockheed Tristar) crashes on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101.

 

1975 A bomb explodes at La Guardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and injuring 74. 1989 Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

745

1992 Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, tries to resign amidst corruption charges, but is then impeached.

1996 Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union sign a peace accord ending a 36year civil war.

1997 Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's 1.25 million chickens to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.

  

1998 Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million lives. 2001 A fire at the Mesa Redonda shopping center in Lima, Peru, kills at least 291. 2003 The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

DECEMBER 30

1066 Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.

  

1460 Wars of the Roses: Battle of Wakefield. 1816 The Treaty of St. Louis is proclaimed. 1853 Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

1853 A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an Iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in southLondon.

     

1862 The USS Monitor sinks off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. 1896 Jos Rizal is executed by firing squad in Manila. 1897 Natal annexes Zululand. 1903 A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois kills 600. 1905 Former Governor Frank Steunenberg is assassinated near his home in Caldwell, Idaho. 1906 The All India Muslim League is founded in Dacca, East Bengal, British India Empire, which later laid down the foundations of Pakistan.

      

1916 The last coronation in Hungary is performed for King Charles IV and Queen Zita. 1919 Lincoln's Inn in London admits its first female bar student. 1922 The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed. 1924 Edwin Hubble announces the existence of other galaxies. 1927 The Ginza Line, the first subway line in Asia, opens in Tokyo, Japan. 1936 The United Auto Workers union stages its first sit-down strike. 1943 Subhas Chandra Bose raises the flag of Indian independence at Port Blair.

746

 

1944 King George II of Greece declares a regency, leaving the throne vacant. 1947 King Michael of Romania is forced to abdicate by the Soviet Union-backed Communist government of Romania.

1948 The Cole Porter Broadway musical, Kiss Me, Kate (1,077 performances), opens at the New Century Theatre and becomes the first show to win the Best Musical Tony Award.

   

1965 Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines. 1972 Vietnam War: The United States halts heavy bombing of North Vietnam. 1977 For the second time, Ted Bundy escapes from his cell in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. 1981 In the 39th game of his 3rd NHL season Wayne Gretzky scores 5 goals giving him 50 on the year setting a new NHL record previously held by Maurice Richard and Mike Bossy who earlier had each scored 50 goals in 50 games.

  

1993 Israel and the Vatican establish diplomatic relations. 1996 In the Indian state of Assam, a passenger train is bombed by Bodo separatists, killing 26. 1996 Proposed budget cuts by Benjamin Netanyahu spark protests from 250,000 workers who shut down services across Israel.

1997 In the worst incident in Algeria's insurgency, the Wilaya of Relizane massacres, 400 people from four villages are killed.

2000 Rizal Day Bombings: A series of bombs explode in various places in Metro Manila, Philippines within a period of a few hours, killing 22 and injuring about a hundred.

 

2004 A fire in the Repblica Cromagnon nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina kills 194. 2005 Tropical Storm Zeta forms in the open Atlantic Ocean, tying the record for the latest tropical cyclone ever to form in the North Atlantic basin.

2006 Madrid Barajas International Airport is bombed.

DECEMBER 31
 
406 Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul. 535 Byzantine General Belisarius completes the conquest of Sicily, defeating the Ostrogothic garrison of Syracuse, and ending his consulship for the year.

1225 The Ly Dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the enthronement of the boy emperor Tran Thai Tong, husband of the last Ly monarch, Ly Chieu Hoang, starting the Tran Dynasty.

1229 James I of Aragon the Conqueror enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma, Spain) thus consummating the Christian reconquest of the island of Majorca.

 

1600 The British East India Company is chartered. 1660 James II of England is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France.

747

   

1687 The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope. 1695 A window tax is imposed in England, causing many householders to brick up windows to avoid the tax. 1759 Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at 45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness. 1775 American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British forces repulse an attack by Continental Army General Richard Montgomery.

  

1831 Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City. 1857 Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, Ontario, then a small logging town, as the capital of Canada. 1862 American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.

  

1862 American Civil War: The Battle of Stones River is fought near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. 1879 Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, NJ. 1904 The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in New York, New York.

         

1906 Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution of 1906. 1909 Manhattan Bridge opens. 1923 The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC. 1944 World War II: Hungary declares war on Nazi Germany. 1946 President Harry Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II. 1951 The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $13.3 billion USD in foreign aid to rebuild Europe. 1955 The General Motors Corporation becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over $1 billion USD in a year. 1960 The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom. 1963 The Central African Federation officially collapses and splits into Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia. 1965 Jean-Bdel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begins a coup d'tat against the government of President David Dacko.

1981 A coup d'tat in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.

   

1983 The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. 1983 In Nigeria a coup d'tat led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Nigerian Second Republic. 1986 A fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 97 and injures 140. 1991 All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.

1992 Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

748

1994 This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13 and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively.

 

1994 The first Chechen war: Russian army began a New Year's storm of Grozny 1998 The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.

1999 Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.

1999 Five hijackers, who had been holding 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane, leave the plane with two Islamic clerics that they had demanded be freed.

1999 The United States Government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties.

2004 The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).