Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/All
Today's anniversaries[edit]
November 19: International Men's Day; World Toilet Day
- 1794 – The United States and Great Britain signed the Jay Treaty, the basis for ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
- 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Inmates at the Janowska concentration camp near what is now Lviv, Ukraine, staged a failed uprising, after which the SS liquidated the camp, resulting in at least 6,000 deaths.
- 1985 – Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan (both pictured) held the first of five summit meetings between them in Geneva.
- 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige split in half off the coast of Galicia, after spilling an estimated 17.8 million US gallons (420,000 bbl) in the worst environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
Nicolas Poussin (d. 1665) · Mikhail Kalinin (b. 1875) · James Ensor (d. 1949)
Contents
- 1 Today's anniversaries
- 2 Selected anniversaries for January
- 3 Selected anniversaries for February
- 4 Selected anniversaries for March
- 5 Selected anniversaries for April
- 6 Selected anniversaries for May
- 7 Selected anniversaries for June
- 8 Selected anniversaries for July
- 9 Selected anniversaries for August
- 10 Selected anniversaries for September
- 11 Selected anniversaries for October
- 12 Selected anniversaries for November
- 13 Selected anniversaries for December
Selected anniversaries for January[edit]
- 1739 – Bouvet Island (pictured) in the South Atlantic Ocean, the most remote island in the world, was discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
- 1801 – Pursuant to the Acts of Union 1800, Great Britain and Ireland merged to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- 1914 – The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line in the U.S. state of Florida became the first scheduled airline using a winged aircraft.
- 1957 – George Town, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang, was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II.
- 1965 – The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which later helped the country become a republic, was founded.
- 2007 – Adam Air Flight 574 crashed into the sea off Polewali, Indonesia, killing all 102 people on board, when the pilots inadvertently disconnected the autopilot.
Henry of Marcy (d. 1189) · Betsy Ross (b. 1752) · Vidya Balan (b. 1979)
January 2: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Roman Catholic Church)
- 1680 – Trunajaya rebellion: Amangkurat II of Mataram of Java and his bodyguards stabbed Trunajaya to death a week after the rebel leader surrendered to the Dutch.
- 1865 – Uruguayan War: Brazilian and Colorado Party forces captured the city of Paysandú from its Uruguayan defenders.
- 1941 – Second World War: Llandaff Cathedral (pictured) in Cardiff, Wales, was severely damaged by German bombing during the Cardiff Blitz.
- 1967 – Former actor Ronald Reagan began his career in government when he was sworn in as the 33rd Governor of California.
- 2004 – The Stardust space probe flew by the comet Wild 2 and collected particle samples from its coma, which were later returned to Earth.
William de St-Calais (d. 1096) · Queen Emma of Hawaii (b. 1836) · Beatrice Hicks (b. 1919)
- 1749 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, was published.
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under General George Washington defeated British troops at the Battle of Princeton (pictured).
- 1919 – Emir Faisal of Iraq signed an agreement with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East.
- 1976 – The multilateral International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, part of the International Bill of Human Rights, came into effect.
- 1990 – United States invasion of Panama: General Manuel Noriega, the deposed "strongman of Panama", surrendered to American forces.
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (d. 1670) · Clement Attlee (b. 1883) · Lynn Hill (b. 1961)
January 4: Colonial Martyrs Repression Day in Angola (1961)
- 1798 – After having been invested as Prince of Wallachia, Constantine Hangerli arrived in Bucharest to assume the throne.
- 1885 – Sino-French War: French troops under General François Oscar de Négrier defeated a numerically superior Qing Chinese force at Núi Bop in northern Vietnam.
- 1912 – The Boy Scout Association was incorporated throughout the then British Empire by royal charter.
- 1948 – Burma achieved independence from the British Empire, with Sao Shwe Thaik (pictured) as its first president.
- 2007 – Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government.
Louis Braille (b. 1809) · Johanna Westerdijk (b. 1883) · Johannes Brost (d. 2018)
- 1675 – Franco-Dutch War: The French Army fought against the armies of Austria and Brandenburg.
- 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross (pictured) was inaugurated as Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state.
- 1941 – Second World War: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces in Bardia, Libya, the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part.
- 1968 – Alexander Dubček came to power in Czechoslovakia, beginning a period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring that ended with a military intervention by the Warsaw Pact nations to halt reform.
- 2008 – Mikheil Saakashvili was decisively re-elected as President of Georgia in "the first genuinely competitive presidential election" in the history of the country.
Al-Mu'tasim (d. 842) · Joseph Erlanger (b. 1874) · Deepika Padukone (b. 1986)
January 6: Little Christmas in Ireland
- 1066 – Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king before the Norman conquest, was crowned King of England.
- 1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presented his theory of continental drift.
- 1941 – During his State of the Union Address, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his Four Freedoms as fundamental freedoms humans everywhere in the world ought to enjoy.
- 1953 – The first Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of socialist political parties in Asia, opened in Rangoon, Burma, with 177 delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
- 1994 – Two-time American Olympic figure skating medalist Nancy Kerrigan (pictured) was hit on the leg with a police baton by an assailant hired by the ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding.
Jane Dormer (b. 1538) · Jedediah Smith (b. 1799) · Sybil Plumlee (d. 2012)
January 7: Christmas (Julian calendar); Victory Day over Genocide in Cambodia
- 1610 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (pictured) made his first observation of the four Galilean moons through his telescope: Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, although he was not able to distinguish the latter two until the following day.
- 1948 – Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell, flying in pursuit of an alleged UFO, was killed when his P-51 Mustang crashed near Fort Knox, Kentucky.
- 1978 – An article titled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at to attack Ruhollah Khomeini, described as an Indian Sayyed.
- 1979 – The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, deposing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, which marked the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
- 2012 – A hot air balloon flight from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a power line while landing, causing it to catch fire, disintegrate and crash, killing all eleven people on board.
Johann Heinrich Zedler (b. 1706) · Joseph Dennie (d. 1812) · Helena Válková (b. 1951)
January 8: Coming of Age Day in Japan (2018)
- 1697 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy.
- 1889 – Statistician Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electric tabulating machine, the precursor to modern computers.
- 1936 – Reza Shah issued the Kashf-e hijab decree in Iran, ordering police to physically remove hijabs from any women in public.
- 1978 – Harvey Milk (pictured) took office on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay man elected into public office in the United States.
- 2010 – Gunmen from an offshoot of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda attacked the bus transporting the Togo national football team to the Africa Cup of Nations, killing three.
Athelm (d. 926) · Fanny Bullock Workman (b. 1859) · Bronislava Nijinska (b. 1891)
- 475 – Basiliscus became Byzantine Emperor after Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople.
- 1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition, planted the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km) from the South Pole (pictured), the furthest south anyone had ever reached at that time.
- 1917 – First World War: Troops of the British Empire defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rafa on the Sinai–Palestine border in present-day Rafah.
- 1972 – The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a 33-game winning streak, the longest of any team in American professional sports.
- 1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launched raids in the city of Kizlyar, Dagestan, which turned into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
Leonard Holliday (d. 1612) · Lady Randolph Churchill (b. 1854) · Makinti Napanangka (d. 2011)
- 1475 – Moldavian–Ottoman Wars: Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeated an Ottoman attack led by Hadım Suleiman Pasha, the Beylerbeyi of Rumelia, near Vaslui in present-day Romania.
- 1812 – New Orleans, the first steamship on the Mississippi River, arrived in its namesake city, to complete its maiden voyage.
- 1929 – The Adventures of Tintin, a series of popular comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé, first appeared in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle.
- 1966 – India and Pakistan signed the Tashkent Declaration to end the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
- 1993 – The Braer Storm, the strongest extratropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Atlantic, reached its peak intensity.
Carl Linnaeus (pictured) (d. 1778) · Issai Schur (b. 1875; d. 1941) · Yip Pin Xiu (b. 1992)
- 1693 – An intensity XI earthquake, the most powerful in Italian history, struck the island of Sicily.
- 1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named, by his son, Oberon and Titania.
- 1927 – Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, invited 36 people involved in the film industry to a banquet, where he announced the creation of what would become the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- 1946 – Albania was proclaimed the People's Republic of Albania, with Enver Hoxha (pictured) as the de facto head of state.
- 1986 – The Gateway Bridge was opened in Brisbane, Australia, the largest prestressed concrete, single box bridge in the world.
Min Bin (d. 1554) · Alice Paul (b. 1885) · Emile Heskey (b. 1978)
January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania (1964)
- 1554 – Bayinnaung, who later assembled the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, was crowned king of the Burmese Toungoo dynasty.
- 1895 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, was founded.
- 1921 – Seeking to restore confidence after the Black Sox Scandal, owners of Major League Baseball teams elected former United States district court judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (pictured) as the league's first commissioner.
- 1967 – Seventy-three-year-old psychology professor James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically frozen with intent of future resuscitation.
- 2010 – A 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti, affecting an estimated three million people.
John Winthrop (b. 1587/88) · Étienne Lenoir (b. 1822) · Nikolai Podgorny (d. 1983)
January 13: St. Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden
- 1435 – Sicut Dudum, forbidding the enslavement of the Guanche natives in Canary Islands by the Spanish, was promulgated by Eugene IV.
- 1847 – The Treaty of Cahuenga was signed, informally ending the fighting of the Mexican–American War in California.
- 1910 – The first public radio broadcast, a live performance of Cavalleria rusticana from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, was sent over the airwaves.
- 1972 – Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led a coup d'état to overthrow Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana.
- 2012 – The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on a reef (pictured) off the shore of Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, and partially sank.
Edmund Spenser (d. 1599) · George Fox (d. 1691) · Nate Silver (b. 1978)
January 14: National Forest Conservation Day in Thailand; Ratification Day in the United States (1784)
- 1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (audio featured), based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
- 1933 – Harold Larwood, of the England cricket team, employing the controversial tactic known as Bodyline, bowled a ball into the chest of the Australian cricket captain, Bill Woodfull, during play, an event that was once voted the most important event in cricket history.
- 1943 – Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and Henri Giraud met in Casablanca to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II.
- 1953 – Josip Broz Tito was inaugurated as the first President of Yugoslavia.
- 1978 – Austrian logician Kurt Gödel, who suffered from an obsessive fear of being poisoned, died of starvation after his wife was hospitalized and unable to cook for him.
Andrew III of Hungary (d. 1301) · Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (d. 1867) · Jess Fishlock (b. 1987) Jason Bateman (b. 1969)
January 15: Mattu Pongal (Tamils, 2018); John Chilembwe Day in Malawi; Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2018)
- 1885 – American photographer Wilson Bentley took the first known photograph of a snowflake by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope (process pictured).
- 1934 – At least 10,700 people died when an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar.
- 1951 – Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court.
- 1962 – The Derveni papyrus, which dates to 340 BC, making it the oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, was discovered in Macedonia, northern Greece.
- 1975 – Portugal signed the Alvor Agreement with UNITA, the MPLA, and the FNLA, ending the Angolan War of Independence.
Wang Jingchong (d. 950) · Marjorie Fleming (b. 1803) · Millie Knight (b. 1999)
- 1809 – Peninsular War: French forces under Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult attacked the amphibious evacuation of the British under Sir John Moore in Corunna, Galicia, Spain.
- 1862 – The beam of a pumping engine broke at the Hartley Colliery in Northumberland, England, and fell down the shaft, trapping the men below and resulting in the deaths of 204.
- 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker (entrance pictured), where he would eventually commit suicide.
- 1986 – The Internet Engineering Task Force, a standards organization that develops and promotes Internet Standards, held its first meeting, consisting of twenty-one United States-government-funded researchers.
- 2016 – After gunmen took hostages the previous night at a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, government commandos stormed the premises to bring the situation to an end.
Guru Har Rai (b. 1630) · Miguel Ángel Mancera (b. 1966) · Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri (d. 2003)
- 1773 – On James Cook's second voyage, his ship HMS Resolution became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle.
- 1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston, along with the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani (pictured).
- 1912 – Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition reached the South Pole, only to find that Roald Amundsen's team had beaten them by 33 days.
- 1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Renville Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesian Republicans was ratified, recognising a cease-fire along the "Van Mook Line".
- 1998 – The Drudge Report became the first news source to break the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public.
Thomas Fairfax (b. 1612) · Anne Brontë (b. 1820) · Barbara Jordan (d. 1996)
January 18: The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins
- 1866 – Wesley College, one of the largest schools in Australia by enrolment, was established in Melbourne.
- 1884 – Welsh physician William Price was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; he was acquitted in the subsequent trial, which led to the legalisation of cremation in the United Kingdom.
- 1943 – World War II: As part of Operation Iskra, the Soviet Red Army eased the Siege of Leningrad, opening a narrow land corridor to the city.
- 1958 – African Canadian Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, breaking the colour barrier in professional ice hockey.
- 1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe (pictured), who had had his gold medals stripped for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.
Tamar of Georgia (d. 1213) · Elena Arizmendi Mejia (b. 1884) · Bruce Chatwin (d. 1989)
- 649 – War against the Western Turks: The forces of Kucha surrendered after a siege, establishing Tang control over the northern Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang.
- 1795 – The Batavian Republic was established, a day after William V, Prince of Orange fled the Dutch Republic as a result of the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam.
- 1945 – World War II: Soviet forces liberated the Łódź Ghetto; only 877 Jews of the initial population of 164,000 remained there at that time.
- 1975 – A magnitude 6.8 Ms earthquake struck northern Himachal Pradesh in India, causing extensive damage to the region.
- 2012 – The Hong Kong-based file-sharing website Megaupload (founder Kim Dotcom pictured) was shut down by the FBI.
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (d. 1636) · Herbert Chapman (b. 1878) · Choor Singh (b. 1911)
- 1265 – Summoned by Simon de Montfort (pictured), the first English parliament held its first meeting in the Palace of Westminster.
- 1843 – Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, became the de facto first prime minister of the Empire of Brazil.
- 1945 – World War II: Germany began the evacuation of at least 1.8 million people from East Prussia, an operation which took nearly two months to complete.
- 1969 – Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, one of the events that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
- 2009 – During the Icelandic financial crisis, thousands of people gathered to protest at the parliament in Reykjavík.
Sebastian de Aparicio (b. 1502) · John Soane (d. 1837) · Agnes Mary Clerke (d. 1907)
January 21: World Religion Day (2018)
- 763 – The Abbasid Caliphate crushed the Alid revolt when one of the rebel leaders was mortally wounded in battle near Basra in what is now Iraq.
- 1789 – The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel, was published.
- 1941 – Sparked by the murder of a German officer the previous day in Bucharest, Romania, members of the Iron Guard engaged in a rebellion and pogrom, killing 125 Jews.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: The Vietnamese People's Army attacked Khe Sanh Combat Base, a U.S. Marines outpost in Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam, starting the Battle of Khe Sanh (U.S. Army soldiers pictured).
- 2011 – Demonstrations in Tirana to protest the alleged corruption of the Albanian government led to the killings of three demonstrators by the Republican Guard.
Yemelyan Pugachev (d. 1775) · John C. Frémont (b. 1813) · Freda Utley (d. 1978)
January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine in Ukraine (1919)
- 565 – Justinian the Great deposed Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, after the latter refused the Byzantine Emperor's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of Monophysites.
- 1689 – The Convention Parliament convened to justify the overthrow of James II, the last Roman Catholic King of England, who had vacated the throne when he fled to France in 1688.
- 1905 – Russian Revolution: Peaceful demonstrators, led by Father Gapon, a Russian Orthodox priest, were massacred outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
- 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first British Prime Minister from the Labour Party.
- 1970 – The Boeing 747 (pictured), the world's first widebody commercial airliner, entered service for Pan Am on the New York–London route.
John Donne (b. 1572) · Gisela Januszewska (b. 1867) · Ali Hassan Salameh (d. 1979)
- 1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history killed about 830,000 people in Shaanxi Province, China.
- 1793 – The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for the second time.
- 1915 – The Chilembwe uprising, regarded as a key moment in the history of Malawi, began as rebels, led by a minister, attacked local plantation owners.
- 1942 – World War II: Japan began its invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.
- 1968 – USS Pueblo (pictured) was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.
Muthu Coomaraswamy (b. 1834) · Mykola Leontovych (d. 1921) · Louisa Cadamuro (b. 1987)
- 1458 – The 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus was unanimously proclaimed King of Hungary after the Estates were persuaded to do so by his uncle Michael Szilágyi.
- 1848 – James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill (reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the California Gold Rush.
- 1915 – First World War: British Grand Fleet ships surprised a German High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, forcing the latter to retreat.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong during wider fighting around Long Binh and Biên Hòa.
- 1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
George Rooke (d. 1709) · Charles Boardman Hawes (b. 1889) · Maximilian Bircher-Benner (d. 1939)
January 25: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Orthodox Church); Tatiana Day in Russia
- 1533 – Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with future queen Elizabeth, secretly married Henry VIII of England, the second of his six marriages.
- 1890 – American journalist Nellie Bly completed a circumnavigation of the globe, inspired by Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, in a then-record 72 days.
- 1971 – Idi Amin seized power in a military coup d'état from President Milton Obote, beginning eight years of military rule in Uganda.
- 1993 – Five people were shot outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, resulting in two deaths.
- 2004 – Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity (artist's impression pictured) landed on Mars and rolled into Eagle crater, a small crater on the Meridiani Planum.
J. Marion Sims (b. 1813) · Virginia Woolf (b. 1882) · Mikhail Suslov (d. 1982)
January 26: Australia Day (1788); Republic Day in India (1950)
- 661 – The Rashidun Caliphate was effectively ended with the assassination of Ali, the last Rashidun caliph.
- 1700 – The Cascadia earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 9.0, took place off the Pacific coast of the American Northwest, as evidenced by Japanese records of tsunamis.
- 1841 – Commodore James Bremer took formal possession of Hong Kong Island for Great Britain at Possession Point.
- 1952 – Spontaneous anti-British riots erupted in Cairo following the killings of 50 Egyptian auxiliary police the day before.
- 1998 – In a nationally televised press conference (video featured), U.S. President Bill Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Lady Zhen (b. 183) · Charles George Gordon (d. 1885) · Olga Tufnell (b. 1905)
- 98 – Trajan (bust pictured) succeeded his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire reached its maximum extent.
- 1343 – Pope Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences.
- 1974 – The Brisbane River, which runs through the heart of Brisbane, broke its banks and flooded the surrounding areas.
- 1980 – With the assistance of Canadian government officials, six American diplomats who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis escaped to Zürich, Switzerland.
- 2010 – Porfirio Lobo Sosa became the new President of Honduras, ending the constitutional crisis that had begun in 2009 when Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from office.
Angela Merici (d. 1540) · John Perkins (d. 1812) · Mohamed Al-Fayed (b. 1929)
- 1568 – Delegates of the Three Nations of Transylvania adopted the Edict of Torda, allowing local communities to freely elect their preachers in an unprecedented act of religious tolerance.
- 1813 – The novel Pride and Prejudice by English author Jane Austen was published, using material from an unpublished manuscript that she originally wrote between 1796 and 1797.
- 1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet entitled "Now or Never" in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in northwest India that he termed "Pakstan".
- 1958 – The Lego Group, a Danish toy company, patented the design of Lego bricks (pictured).
- 1984 – Tropical Storm Domoina made landfall in southern Mozambique, causing some of the most severe flooding recorded in the region.
Paul Luther (b. 1533) · Colette (b. 1873) · Crew of Space Shuttle Challenger (d. 1986)
- 1845 – American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (illustrated) appeared in the The Evening Mirror, its first publication attributed to Poe.
- 1856 – Queen Victoria established the Victoria Cross, originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.
- 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Rennell Island, the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal Campaign, began.
- 1991 – The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the Gulf War, began with Iraq's invasion of the Saudi Arabian city of Khafji.
- 2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring nineteen others.
Salih ibn Wasif (d. 870) · Frederick Delius (b. 1862) · Geraldine Pittman Woods (b. 1921)
January 30: Martyrs' Day in India
- 1018 – The German–Polish War ended with the signing of the Peace of Bautzen between Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Piast ruler of Poland, Bolesław I.
- 1607 – Low-lying places around the coasts of the Bristol Channel of Britain were flooded, possibly by a tsunami, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths.
- 1948 – Nathuram Godse fatally shot Mahatma Gandhi (pictured), the political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement, at Birla House in Delhi.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: Forces of the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese People's Army launched the Tet Offensive to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.
- 2000 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Côte d'Ivoire shortly after takeoff, killing 169 on board.
Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis (d. 1770) · Franklin D. Roosevelt (b. 1882) · Barbara La Marr (d. 1926)
January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968); Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2018)
- 314 – Sylvester I, during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Emperor Constantine I, began his reign as pope.
- 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory in the Battle of Gembloux, leading to a break up of the United Seventeen Provinces into the Union of Arras (Catholic South) and Union of Utrecht (Protestant North).
- 1945 – Second World War: The British 3rd Commando Brigade's victory in the Battle of Hill 170 was important in causing the 28th Japanese Army to withdraw from the Arakan peninsula of Burma.
- 1957 – A Douglas DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima, California.
- 2013 – A gas leak underneath the Pemex Executive Tower in Mexico City caused an explosion (damage pictured) that killed at least 37 people and injured another 126.
Jost Bürgi (d. 1632) · Manuel Alberti (d. 1811) · Justin Timberlake (b. 1981)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for February[edit]
February 1: Black History Month begins in Canada and the United States; Fajr decade begins in Iran; National Freedom Day in the United States
- 1327 – Fourteen-year-old Edward III became King of England, but the country was ruled by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer.
- 1329 – The Teutonic Knights succeeded in their siege of a fortress in Samogitia, Lithuania, and baptized the defenders in the Catholic rite.
- 1968 – Photographer Eddie Adams took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the summary execution of Viet Cong prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém, which helped build opposition to the Vietnam War.
- 1978 – After having served 42 days in prison for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, Polish film director Roman Polanski fled the United States before the formal sentencing hearing.
- 2013 – The Shard (pictured), located in Southwark, London, and the tallest building in the European Union, opened to the public.
Thomas Campbell (b. 1763) · Clara Butt (b. 1872) · George Whipple (d. 1976)
February 2: Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States
- 1438 – Nine leaders of the Transylvanian peasant revolt were executed at Torda.
- 1709 – Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk (commemorative statue pictured) was rescued by English captain Woodes Rogers and the crew of the Duke after spending four years as a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Juan Fernández archipelago, providing the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
- 1913 – New York City's Grand Central Terminal, the world's largest train station in number of platforms, opened immediately after midnight.
- 1942 – The Osvald Group committed the first active event of the Norwegian resistance movement by blowing up Oslo East Station to protest the inauguration of Vidkun Quisling.
- 2012 – The passenger ferry MV Rabaul Queen capsized and sank in rough conditions in the Solomon Sea, resulting in at least 88 deaths.
Piotr Skarga (b. 1536) · Vincenzo Dimech (d. 1831) · Christie Brinkley (b. 1954)
February 3: Setsubun in Japan; Four Chaplains' Day in the United States
- 1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: British forces captured the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius after a brief skirmish.
- 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín (pictured) and his Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers were victorious against a royalist army in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
- 1916 – A fire destroyed the Centre Block, the main building of the Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario.
- 1933 – Adolf Hitler announced that the conquest of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, and its "ruthless Germanisation", were the geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.
- 1998 – Despite a large international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.
Caroline von Wolzogen (b. 1763) · Giuseppe Moretti (b. 1857) · C. N. Annadurai (d. 1969)
February 4: Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)
- 960 – Emperor Taizu (pictured) began his reign in China, initiating the Song dynasty that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
- 1899 – The Philippine–American War opened when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired upon a Filipino soldier in Manila.
- 1945 – World War II: U.S. Army forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps in the Philippines.
- 1998 – A magnitude 5.9 MW earthquake struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
- 2008 – The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into being.
Ceolnoth (d. 870) · Carl Michael Bellman (b. 1740) · Jenny Shipley (b. 1952)
- 1637 – The speculative bubble for rare tulip bulbs (catalog pictured) in the Dutch Republic burst, marking the decline of tulip mania.
- 1869 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, discovered the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the "Welcome Stranger".
- 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.
- 1958 – A Mark 15 nuclear bomb disappeared off the shores of Tybee Island, Georgia, after it was jettisoned during a practice exercise when the bomber carrying it collided in midair with a fighter plane.
- 2008 – Eighty-seven tornadoes occurred over the course of the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak across multiple U.S. states, causing 56 deaths and over $1 billion in damage.
Johan Ludvig Runeberg (b. 1804) · Peg Entwistle (b. 1908) · Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (d. 1983)
February 6: Sami National Day (Sami people); Ronald Reagan Day in most U.S. states
- 1778 – France and the United States signed the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, establishing military and commercial ties respectively between the two nations.
- 1819 – British official Stamford Raffles (pictured) signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a trading post for the British East India Company.
- 1840 – The British and the Māori signed the Treaty of Waitangi, considered as the founding document of New Zealand.
- 1958 – The aircraft carrying the Manchester United football team crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in West Germany, killing 8 players and 23 people in total.
- 1987 – Mary Gaudron was appointed as the first female Justice of the High Court of Australia.
Joseph Priestley (d. 1804) · Isabella Beeton (d. 1865) · Eva Braun (b. 1912)
- 1497 – Supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.
- 1795 – The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting the ability of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to sue U.S. states in federal courts, was ratified in order to overrule the Supreme Court decision in Chisholm v. Georgia.
- 1813 – Napoleonic Wars: Two evenly matched frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy fought for four hours, causing significant damage, but resulting in a stalemate.
- 1948 – Neil Harvey became the youngest Australian to score a century in Test cricket.
- 1997 – Steve Jobs (pictured) returned to Apple Inc. as a consultant after the company purchased his startup NeXT Software.
Bartholomäus Sastrow (d. 1603) · Desmond Doss (b. 1919) · Steve Nash (b. 1974)
February 8: Fat Thursday (Catholicism, 2018)
- 1601 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex led a failed rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I.
- 1879 – Enraged by a controversial umpiring decision, cricket spectators rioted and attacked the England cricket team during a match in Sydney, Australia.
- 1915 – Film director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (film poster pictured) was released, becoming one of the most influential and controversial films in the history of American cinema.
- 1971 – Trading began on NASDAQ, the world's first electronic stock exchange.
- 2010 – A freak storm in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan triggered a series of at least 36 avalanches that buried over 3.5 km (2.2 mi) of road, killed 171 people and trapped over 2,500 travellers.
Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid (b. 882) · Jules Verne (b. 1828) · Iris Murdoch (d. 1999)
February 9: Rio Carnival begins in Brazil (2018)
- 1799 – Quasi-War: The USS Constellation captured the French L'Insurgente in a single-ship action in the Caribbean Sea.
- 1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis (pictured) was named as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
- 1943 – World War II: Allied forces declared Guadalcanal secure, ending the Guadalcanal Campaign as a significant strategic victory for Allied forces fighting Japan in the Pacific War.
- 1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the unification of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force.
- 2016 – Two Meridian commuter trains were involved in a head-on collision at Bad Aibling in southeastern Germany that left 12 dead and 85 others injured.
Judith Quiney (d. 1662) · Alberto Vargas (b. 1896) · Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
- 1355 – A tavern dispute between Oxford University students and townsfolk turned into a riot that left about 90 people dead.
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: A French army led by Napoleon effectively destroyed a small Russian corps led by Zakhar Dmitrievich Olsufiev.
- 1930 – The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng launched the failed Yên Bái mutiny in the hope of ending French colonial rule in Vietnam.
- 1984 – Kenyan security forces massacred approximately 5,000 ethnic Somalis at the Wagalla Airstrip in Wajir County, Kenya.
- 2008 – The Namdaemun gate in Seoul, the first of South Korea's National Treasures, was severely damaged by arson (damage pictured).
Ary Scheffer (b. 1795) · Harold Macmillan (b. 1894) · Pope Pius XI (d. 1939)
- AD 55 – Britannicus, son of Claudius and heir to the Roman emperorship, died after being poisoned at a dinner party.
- 1826 – London University, later University College London (Main Building pictured), was founded as the first secular university in England.
- 1938 – The BBC aired an adaptation of Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., the first science fiction television programme ever broadcast.
- 1968 – After two black employees were killed on the job, black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S., agreed to begin a strike that lasted over two months.
- 2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.
Heraclius (d. 641) · Ellen Broe (b. 1900) · Kelly Rowland (b. 1981)
February 12: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2018)
- 1502 – Isabella I issued an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
- 1855 – Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the United States' first agricultural college.
- 1946 – The British Royal Navy concluded Operation Deadlight, its operation to scuttle German U-boats that had been captured during World War II.
- 1988 – While claiming the right of innocent passage through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea American cruiser USS Yorktown and destroyer USS Caron were bumped by Soviet warships (pictured).
- 1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and brutally murdered by two ten-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
Jan Ladislav Dussek (b. 1760) · Charles Darwin (b. 1809) · Anna Anderson (d. 1984)
February 13: Shrove Tuesday (Western Christianity, 2018)
- 1692 – Nearly forty men from the Clan MacDonald of Glen Coe, Scotland, were massacred early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new joint monarchs, William III and Mary II.
- 1815 – The Cambridge Union (building pictured), one of the oldest debating societies in the world, was founded at the University of Cambridge in England.
- 1945 – World War II: The Allies began their strategic bombing of Dresden, Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
- 1960 – African American college students staged the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation.
- 1978 – A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the site of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, killing three people and injuring eleven others.
Muhammad ibn Ra'iq (d. 942) · George Rogers Clark (d. 1818) · Faiz Ahmad Faiz (b. 1911)
February 14: Valentine's Day ; Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2018)
- 1779 – American Revolutionary War: A militia force of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia force that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta, Georgia.
- 1852 – Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
- 1943 – World War II: General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army launched a concerted attack against Allied positions in Tunisia.
- 1990 – The Voyager 1 space probe took an iconic photograph of Earth that later became famous as Pale Blue Dot (pictured).
- 2008 – Steven Kazmierczak opened fire into a crowded lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing 5 and injuring 21.
John Wilkins (b. 1614) · Margaret E. Knight (b. 1838) · Adnan Saidi (d. 1942)
February 15: National Flag of Canada Day; Statehood Day in Serbia (1804)
- 1823 – James McBrien made the first official discovery of gold in Australia at Fish River in New South Wales.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: British cavalry under Major-General John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley, present-day South Africa.
- 1965 – Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag (pictured), replacing the Canadian Red Ensign.
- 1976 – The current Constitution of Cuba, providing for a system of government and law based on those of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, was adopted by a national referendum.
- 2012 – A fire at the National Penitentiary at Comayagua, Honduras, killed 361 people, making it the deadliest prison fire ever.
Tiberios III/Leontios (d. 706) · Sophie Bryant (b. 1850) · Irena Sendler (b. 1910)
February 16: Day of the Shining Star in North Korea
- 1249 – Louis IX of France dispatched André de Longjumeau as his ambassador to the Mongol Empire.
- 1804 – United States Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia in Tripoli, denying her use to the Barbary States in the First Barbary War.
- 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence (pictured), proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania.
- 1943 – World War II: Norwegian commandos destroyed a factory to prevent the German nuclear weapon project from acquiring heavy water.
- 1996 – Two trains collided in Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S., killing 11 people and leading to the creation of comprehensive federal rules for passenger car design.
Coluccio Salutati (b. 1331) · Thomas Bracken (d. 1898) · Mary Amdur (d. 1998)
February 17: Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)
- 1621 – Myles Standish was elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony militia.
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon led a French army to a crushing victory in the Battle of Mormant, nearly destroying a Russian division.
- 1913 – In the U.S. National Guard's 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, the Armory Show opened (poster pictured), introducing Americans to avant-garde and modern art.
- 1978 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb at the La Mon restaurant near Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing twelve people and injuring thirty others.
- 2011 – Arab Spring: Bahrain security forces launched a pre-dawn raid on protesters at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, killing four of them, and in Libya, a "Day of Rage" took place with protests across the country against the government of Muammar Gaddafi.
María de las Mercedes Barbudo (d. 1849) · Karen O'Connor (b. 1958) · Ed Sheeran (b. 1991)
- 1268 – The Battle of Wesenberg took place between the combined forces of Novgorod and Pskov Republics and the Livonian Order with its allies, ending in the retreat of Russian forces from Estonia.
- 1873 – Vasil Levski (pictured), the national hero of Bulgaria, was executed in Sofia by Ottoman authorities for his efforts to establish an independent Bulgarian republic.
- 1932 – The Empire of Japan established Manchukuo, a puppet state in northeastern China during the Sino-Japanese War.
- 1943 – Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, delivered a speech calling for a "total war" to motivate the German people when the tide of World War II was turning against Germany.
- 2013 – Eight gunmen stole approximately US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound aircraft at Brussels Airport, Belgium.
Francesco Redi (b. 1626) · Kristijonas Donelaitis (d. 1780) · Swraj Paul, Baron Paul (b. 1931)
February 19: Family Day in various regions of Canada (2018); Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day) in the United States (2018)
- 1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the largest volcanic explosion in South America in historical times.
- 1811 – Peninsular War: An outnumbered French force under Édouard Mortier routed and nearly destroyed the Spanish at the Battle of the Gebora near Badajoz, Spain.
- 1910 – Old Trafford (pictured), a football stadium in Greater Manchester, England, hosted its first match between Manchester United and Liverpool.
- 1948 – The Southeast Asian Youth Conference, which is believed to have inspired armed communist rebellions in different Asian countries, opened in Calcutta, India.
- 1999 – U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon to Henry Ossian Flipper, the first African American graduate of West Point, who had been accused of embezzlement in 1881.
Dorothe Engelbretsdatter (d. 1716) · Émilie Gamelin (b. 1800) · Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama (b. 1938)
- 1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville was hissed at by the audience during its debut at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
- 1846 – Polish insurgents led an uprising in the Free City of Kraków to incite a fight for national independence that was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.
- 1864 – American Civil War: The Union suffered a one-in-three casualty rate at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida.
- 1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and turned into the cinder cone volcano Parícutin (pictured), which continued to erupt for nine years, growing 424 m (1,391 ft).
- 1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Alfred Escher (b. 1819) · P. G. T. Beauregard (d. 1893) · Gail Kim (b. 1977)
- 1543 – Led by the Ethiopian Emperor Galawdewos, the combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeated a Muslim army led by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army began an attempt to gain control of the Southwest with a major victory in the Battle of Valverde.
- 1919 – Bavarian socialist Kurt Eisner, who had organized the German Revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy and established Bavaria as a republic, was assassinated.
- 1958 – British artist Gerald Holtom unveiled a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that became internationally recognised as the peace sign.
- 1965 – Black nationalist Malcolm X (pictured) was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
Gaius Caesar (d. AD 4) · Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick (d. 1590) · Thelma Estrin (b. 1924)
- 1316 – The forces of the infante Ferdinand of Majorca fought against those loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut in the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece.
- 1876 – The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (pictured), named after philanthropist Johns Hopkins, opened.
- 1921 – After White Russian forces under Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg drove the Chinese out of Mongolia, the Bogd Khan was reinstalled as emperor.
- 1957 – The President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem survived a Viet Cong assassination attempt by a gunman in Buôn Ma Thuột.
- 2002 – Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan anti-Communist rebel and political party UNITA, was killed in a battle with Angolan government troops.
Peder Syv (b. 1631) · Elizabeth Keawepoʻoʻole Sumner (d. 1911) · Felix Frankfurter (d. 1965)
- 1778 – American Revolutionary War: Prussian military officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge as a volunteer for the Continental Army.
- 1854 – Britain signed the Orange River Convention to formally recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in the present-day Free State Province, South Africa.
- 1944 – In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of native Chechen and Ingush of North Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
- 1987 – Light from SN 1987A (remnant pictured), a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached the Earth.
- 2008 – A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber crashed on the runway shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in the most expensive crash in U.S. Air Force history.
George Frideric Handel (b. 1685) · César Ritz (b. 1850) · L. S. Lowry (d. 1976)
February 24: Independence Day in Estonia (1918)
- 303 – Roman emperor Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" was published, beginning the Diocletianic Persecution, the last and most severe episode of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
- 1809 – After standing only 15 years, London's Drury Lane theatre, the third building of that name, burned down (pictured).
- 1826 – The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in the history of British India.
- 1868 – Andrew Johnson became the first U.S. President to be impeached.
- 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Kasserine Pass, the first major engagement between American and Axis forces in Africa, ended with the Allied forces suffering heavy losses.
Arcangela Tarabotti (b. 1604) · Thomas Bowdler (d. 1825) · Alain Prost (b. 1955)
February 25: Ayyám-i-Há begins (Bahá'í calendar, 2018); Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)
- 1843 – Captain Lord George Paulet of the Royal Navy began a five-month occupation of land in the Hawaiian Islands.
- 1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human skull that a prominent geologist claimed was proof (later disproven) that humans had existed during the Pliocene age.
- 1948 – Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš (pictured) ceded control over the government to the Communist Party.
- 1951 – After being postponed since 1943 due to World War II, the first Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed at least 161 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
Ibn Battuta (b. 1304) · Andranik (b. 1865) · Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (d. 1934)
- 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols captured Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty, after besieging it for months.
- 1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba (return pictured), an island off the coast of Italy, where he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau one year earlier.
- 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
- 1935 – With the aid of a radio station in Daventry, England, and two receiving antennas, Scottish engineer and inventor Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the use of radar.
- 2008 – In the first significant cultural visit from the United States to North Korea since the Korean War, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed in East Pyongyang Grand Theatre.
John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford (d. 1462) · Herbert Henry Dow (b. 1866) · Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954)
- 380 – Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire as a result of the Edict of Thessalonica.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory in the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the arrests of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
- 1900 – FC Bayern Munich (logo pictured), Germany's most successful football club, was founded.
- 1962 – Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bombed the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed attempt to assassinate South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.
- 1988 – The Armenian community of Sumgait in Azerbaijan was the target of a violent pogrom.
Robert of Melun (d. 1167) · Joaquín Sorolla (b. 1863) · Leah Poulton (b. 1984)
February 28: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2018); Kalevala Day in Finland
- 202 BC – Rebel leader Liu Bang was enthroned as Emperor Gaozu of Han after overthrowing the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China.
- 1893 – USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, was launched.
- 1975 – A train at Moorgate station failed to stop at an underground terminal platform, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.
- 1997 – Two heavily armed bank robbers exchanged gunfire with officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, in one of the longest and bloodiest shootouts in American police history.
- 2013 – Pope Benedict XVI (pictured) became the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign from the papacy.
Guillaume Delisle (b. 1675) · Hortense Allart (d. 1879) · Henry James (d. 1916)
February 29: Leap day (Gregorian calendar)
- 1752 – Alaungpaya, a village chief in Upper Burma, founded the Konbaung Dynasty; by the time of his death, he had unified all of Myanmar, and driven out the French and the British.
- 1768 – A group of Polish nobles established the Bar Confederation to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence and against King Stanisław II Augustus.
- 1944 – The Admiralty Islands campaign during the Pacific War of World War II began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.
- 1960 – Morocco's deadliest earthquake struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
- 2012 – Construction of Tokyo Skytree (pictured), the world's tallest tower and second-tallest structure, was completed.
Oswald of Worcester (d. 992) · Gioachino Rossini (b. 1792)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for March[edit]
March 1: Purim (Judaism, 2018); Independence Day in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992); National Pig Day in the United States; Saint David's Day in Wales; Yap Day in Yap
- 1476 – War of the Castilian Succession: Although the Battle of Toro was militarily inconclusive, it assured Ferdinand and Isabella the throne of Castile, forming the basis for modern Spain.
- 1872 – Yellowstone National Park (bison pictured), the first national park in the world, was established with the majority of it in the U.S. state of Wyoming.
- 1921 – The Australian cricket team led by Warwick Armstrong became the first team to complete a whitewash in the Ashes, something that would not be repeated for 86 years.
- 2014 – A group of knife-wielding men and women attacked passengers at Kunming railway station in Kunming, China, leaving 31 victims and 4 perpetrators dead with more than 140 others injured.
Vladislaus II of Hungary (b. 1456) · Francesco Redi (d. 1697) · Nick Griffin (b. 1959)
March 2: The Nineteen-Day Fast begins (Bahá'í Faith, 2018); Shushan Purim in Jerusalem and Susa (Judaism, 2018)
- 1444 – The League of Lezhë, an alliance of the regional chieftains, was established in Venetian Albania with Skanderbeg as its commander.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot militia from Georgia and South Carolina attempted to resist the British action to seize and remove supply ships anchored at Savannah, Georgia.
- 1943 – World War II: Australian and American air forces attacked and destroyed a large convoy of the Japanese Navy in the Bismarck Sea north of Papua New Guinea.
- 1978 – Aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 28, Czechoslovak military pilot Vladimír Remek (pictured) became the first person from outside the Soviet Union or the United States to go into space.
Charles I, Count of Flanders (d. 1127) · Bedřich Smetana (b. 1824) · Gisela Januszewska (d. 1943)
March 3: Hinamatsuri in Japan
- 1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporated the Principality of Wales into England.
- 1875 – French composer Georges Bizet's opera Carmen (poster pictured), based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
- 1924 – The Free State of Fiume, a short-lived independent free state located in the modern city of Rijeka, Croatia, was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy.
- 1943 – Second World War: During a German aerial attack on London, 173 people were killed in a stampede while trying to enter Bethnal Green tube station, which was being used as an air-raid shelter.
- 1991 – Motorist Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles policemen, causing public outrage that increased tensions between the African American community and the police department over the issues of police brutality and social inequalities in the area.
Antony Bek (d. 1311) · Maurice Garin (b. 1871) · Johanna Wokalek (b. 1975)
- 306 – Roman Herculian guard Adrian of Nicomedia, who had converted to Christianity after being impressed with the faith of Christians that he had been torturing, was martyred.
- 1804 – Irish convicts who were involved at the Battle of Vinegar Hill during the 1798 Irish Rebellion began an uprising against British colonial authorities in New South Wales, Australia.
- 1918 – The first known case of the so-called Spanish flu was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
- 1933 – All three presidents of the Austrian National Council resigned, and Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (pictured) later used that pretext to create an authoritarian government.
- 2012 – A series of blasts occurred at an arms dump in Brazzaville, Congo, killing at least 250 people, injuring 2,300 others, and leaving more than 13,800 people homeless.
Hindal Mirza (b. 1519) · Mariano Moreno (d. 1811) · Harold Barrowclough (d. 1972)
March 5: Learn From Lei Feng Day in China
- 363 – Roman emperor Julian and his army set out from Antioch to attack the Sassanian Empire.
- 1824 – The First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in British Indian history, began.
- 1943 – The Gloster Meteor, the first operational jet fighter for the Allied Powers, made its maiden flight.
- 1963 – Country music stars Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed when their Piper PA-24 Comanche crashed shortly after takeoff in Camden, Tennessee, U.S.
- 1981 – The ZX81 (pictured), a pioneering British home computer, was launched by Sinclair Research and went on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.
Gerardus Mercator (b. 1512) · Marietta Piccolomini (b. 1834) · Lena Baker (d. 1945)
March 6: Independence Day in Ghana (1957)
- 961 – With the completion of the Siege of Chandax, the Muslim Emirate of Crete was conquered by the Byzantine Empire.
- 1836 – Texas Revolution: Mexican forces captured the Alamo (pictured) in San Antonio from the Texians after a 13-day siege.
- 1953 – Upon the death of Joseph Stalin, Georgy Malenkov became Premier of the Soviet Union.
- 1964 – In a radio broadcast, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad announced that American boxer Cassius Clay would change his name to Muhammad Ali.
- 1988 – In Operation Flavius, the Special Air Service killed three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers conspiring to bomb a parade of British military bands in Gibraltar.
William Claflin (b. 1818) · Camilla Collett (d. 1895) · Sheila Varian (d. 2016)
- 321 – Emperor Constantine I decreed that Sunday, the day honoring the sun god Sol Invictus (disc pictured), would be the Roman day of rest.
- 1277 – Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, promulgated a condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris.
- 1850 – In support of the Compromise of 1850, United States Senator Daniel Webster gave his "Seventh of March" speech, which was so unpopular among his constituency he was forced to resign.
- 1900 – The German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ship to send a wireless telegraph message to an onshore receiver.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam began Operation Truong Cong Dinh to sweep the area surrounding the Mekong Delta town of Mỹ Tho to root out Viet Cong forces in the area.
Ludwig Mond (b. 1839) · Boris Kustodiev (b. 1878) · E. Pauline Johnson (d. 1913)
March 8: International Women's Day
- 1618 – German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion.
- 1658 – After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the rest.
- 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche (pictured) became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
- 1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, U.S., killed all 171 miners working there.
- 1978 – BBC Radio 4 began transmitting Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other media formats.
Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge (d. 1819) · Gladys Bustamante (b. 1912) · Juvénal Habyarimana (b. 1937)
March 9: Birth of Fatimah al-Zahra/Mother's Day in Iran (2018)
- 1009 – The first known record of the name of Lithuania appeared in an entry in the annals of the Quedlinburg Abbey in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
- 1842 – Francisco Lopez woke from a nap under a tree (pictured) at Rancho San Francisco and made the first documented discovery of gold in California.
- 1910 – A seventeen-month-long strike action, which at its peak involved 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers across 65 mines, began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
- 1925 – The Royal Air Force began a bombardment and strafing campaign against the mountain strongholds of Mahsud tribesmen in South Waziristan.
- 1956 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, Soviet military troops suppressed mass demonstrations against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy.
Friederike Caroline Neuber (b. 1697) · Anna Laetitia Barbauld (d. 1825) · Jane Joseph (d. 1929)
- 1916 – The last in a series of letters was written wherein Britain would support Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire in return for launching a revolt.
- 1952 – Facing likely electoral defeat, former Cuban President Fulgencio Batista staged a coup d'état to resume control.
- 1968 – Vietnam War/Laotian Civil War: North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces overwhelmed the American, Laotian, Thai, and Hmong defenders of Lima Site 85.
- 2000 – The Nasdaq Composite stock market index peaked at 5048.62, the high point of the dot-com boom.
- 2008 – The New York Times revealed that Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer (pictured) had used a prostitution service.
Amy Spain (d. 1865) · Marie-Eugénie de Jésus (d. 1898) · Emily Osment (b. 1992)
March 11: Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2018)
- 222 – Disgusted with Roman emperor Elagabalus's disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and his mother and threw their mutilated bodies in the Tiber.
- 1843 – During a period of activity known as the Great Eruption, Eta Carinae briefly became the second brightest star in the night sky.
- 1966 – Indonesian President Sukarno (pictured) signed the Presidential Order Supersemar, giving General of the Army Suharto the authority to restore order during the recent mass killings.
- 1978 – After hijacking a bus north of Tel Aviv, members of Palestine Liberation Organization faction Fatah engaged in a shootout with the Israel Police, resulting in the deaths of 38 civilians and most of the perpetrators.
- 1993 – Janet Reno was confirmed by the Senate as the first female United States Attorney General.
Stanisław Koniecpolski (d. 1646) · Jane Meade Welch (b. 1854) · Ralph Abernathy (b. 1926)
March 12: National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2018); Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2018)
- 1622 – Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, were canonized by Pope Gregory XV.
- 1881 – Andrew Watson made his debut with the Scotland national football team and became the world's first black international footballer.
- 1933 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (pictured) broadcast the first of his "fireside chats" to address the nation directly.
- 1952 – British diplomat Hastings Ismay was appointed as the first Secretary General of NATO.
- 1971 – The Turkish Armed Forces executed a "coup by memorandum", forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel.
Tirso de Molina (d. 1648) · William Henry Perkin (b. 1838) · Lise Tréhot (d. 1922)
- 1781 – Astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus (pictured) while in the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset, thinking it was a comet.
- 1845 – German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular violin concertos of all time, received its world première in Leipzig.
- 1920 – The Kapp Putsch briefly ousted the Weimar Republic government from Berlin.
- 1964 – Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City, prompting research into the bystander effect due to the false story that neighbors witnessed the killing and did nothing to help her.
- 1988 – The Seikan Tunnel, the longest and deepest tunnel in the world at the time, opened between the cities of Hakodate and Aomori, Japan.
Daniel Lambert (b. 1770) · Benjamin Harrison (d. 1901) · Helen Renton (b. 1931)
March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhism); White Day in East Asia; Pi Day
- 1489 – Queen of Cyprus Catherine Cornaro (pictured) was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the island to the Republic of Venice.
- 1885 – The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's most frequently performed Savoy opera, debuted at the Savoy Theatre in London.
- 1910 – Oil prospectors in Kern County, California, drilled into a pressurized oil deposit, resulting in the largest accidental oil spill in history.
- 1978 – Israeli–Lebanese conflict: The Israel Defense Forces began Operation Litani, invading and occupying southern Lebanon, and pushing PLO troops north up to the Litani River.
- 1988 – China defeated Vietnam in a naval battle as the former attempted to establish oceanographic observation posts on the Spratly Islands.
George Wade (d. 1748) · Lucy Hobbs Taylor (b. 1833) · Diane Arbus (b. 1923)
- 44 BC – Dictator Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic was stabbed to death (pictured) by Marcus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators.
- 1875 – Archbishop of New York John McCloskey was named the first cardinal in the United States.
- 1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
- 1943 – World War II: German forces recaptured Kharkov after four days of house-to-house fighting against Soviet troops, ending the month-long Third Battle of Kharkov.
- 1990 – Iraqi authorities hanged freelance Iranian reporter Farzad Bazoft for spying for Israel.
Archibald Menzies (b. 1754) · Matthew Charlton (b. 1866) · Paul Pogba (b. 1993)
- 1621 – Samoset, a member of the Abenaki tribe, strolled into Plymouth Colony and greeted the Pilgrims in English (pictured).
- 1689 – The Royal Welch Fusiliers, one of the oldest line infantry regiments of the British Army, was founded.
- 1918 – Finnish Civil War: The Whites were victorious in the Battle of Länkipohja, after which they executed at least 70 Reds.
- 1988 – Using pistols and grenades, loyalist Michael Stone attacked the funeral of three Provisional IRA members who had been killed in Gibraltar ten days earlier, killing three attendees and injuring at least sixty others.
- 2014 – Annexation of Crimea: The Autonomous Republic of Crimea held a controversial referendum where voters overwhelmingly chose to join Russia as a federal subject.
Caroline Herschel (b. 1750) · Iso Rae (d. 1940) · Mary Meader (d. 2008)
- 1452 – Reconquista: The combined forces of Castile and Murcia defeated the Emirate of Granada at the Battle of Los Alporchones around the city of Lorca.
- 1891 – The transatlantic steamship Utopia accidentally collided with the battleship HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar, sinking in less than twenty minutes and killing 562 (wreckage pictured).
- 1955 – Ice hockey fans in Montreal rioted to protest the suspension of Montreal Canadiens star Maurice Richard for hitting an official.
- 1968 – Six thousand sheep were killed on ranches near Dugway Proving Ground in Utah as a result of the U.S. Army spraying a nerve agent.
- 2000 – Over 700 followers of the Ugandan sect Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God died in a mass murder committed by its leaders.
Emily Sartain (b. 1841) · Margaret Bondfield (b. 1873) · Shu Xiuwen (d. 1969)
- 1241 – First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongols overwhelmed the Polish armies of Sandomierz and Kraków provinces in the Battle of Chmielnik and plundered the abandoned city of Kraków.
- 1834 – The Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation to Australia for swearing an illegal oath to join their friendly society in Dorset, England.
- 1921 – The Polish–Soviet War, which determined the borders between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia, formally concluded with the signing of the Peace of Riga.
- 1938 – Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas created Pemex, the national petroleum company, by expropriating all foreign-owned oil reserves and facilities.
- 1990 – Thieves stole 13 works of art valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (pictured) in Boston, the largest-value theft of private property in history.
Matthew III Csák (d. 1321) · Edgar Cayce (b. 1877) · Vanessa Williams (b. 1963)
March 19: Cheti Chand in various parts of India (2018)
- 1279 – Emperor Bing, the last emperor of the Song dynasty, died during the Battle of Yamen, bringing the dynasty to an end after three centuries.
- 1865 – American Civil War: The last battle of the Carolinas Campaign, the Battle of Bentonville, began, which contributed to the ultimate Union victory in the war.
- 1911 – Socialist German politician Clara Zetkin established the first International Women's Day.
- 1987 – American televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as the head of The PTL Club in the midst of a sex scandal.
- 2008 – The gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B (artist's impression pictured), the farthest object that could be seen by the naked eye, was observed.
Jan Zamoyski (b. 1542) · Senda Berenson Abbott (b. 1868) · Lise Østergaard (d. 1996)
March 20: March equinox (16:15 UTC, 2018); Independence Day in Tunisia (1956)
- 235 – Maximinus Thrax succeeded to the throne of the Roman Empire, a so-called barracks emperor who gained power by virtue of his command of the army.
- 1852 – Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (pictured) was first published, profoundly affecting attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States.
- 1922 – The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley.
- 1987 – The antiretroviral drug zidovudine (AZT) became the first antiviral drug approved for use against HIV and AIDS.
- 1993 – The Troubles: The second of two bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA in Warrington, England, killed two children.
Adrienne Lecouvreur (d. 1730) · Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (b. 1870) · Willie Brown (b. 1934)
- 1556 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, one of the founders of Anglicanism, was burnt at the stake in Oxford, England, for heresy.
- 1918 – First World War: The German Army opened the Spring Offensive with Operation Michael, attempting to break through the Allied lines and to seize ports on the English Channel.
- 1952 – The first major rock and roll concert, the Moondog Coronation Ball, was held at the Cleveland Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
- 1968 – War of Attrition: The Israel Defense Forces clashed with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Jordanian Armed Forces during the Battle of Karameh (aftermath pictured).
- 2006 – A man using a hammer smashed the statue of Phra Phrom in the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, and was subsequently beaten to death by bystanders.
Absalon (d. 1201) · Alice Henry (b. 1857) · Emily Infeld (b. 1990)
- 238 – Because of his father's advanced age, Gordian II was proclaimed joint Roman emperor with Gordian I.
- 1765 – The Parliament of Great Britain passed the Stamp Act, requiring that many printed materials in the Thirteen Colonies in British America carry a tax stamp.
- 1943 – World War II: Almost the entire population of the village of Khatyn in Belarus was massacred by Nazi forces, with participation from their Ukrainian and Belarusian collaborators.
- 1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov (pictured) of the Soyuz programme returned from the Mir space station after 437 days in space, setting a record for the longest spaceflight.
- 2004 – Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian imam who was a founder and the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by a missile from an Israeli helicopter gunship as he left early morning prayers.
Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh (b. 1615) · Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (b. 1822) · James Black (d. 2010)
- 1848 – Scottish settlers on the John Wickliffe, captained by William Cargill, arrived at what is now Port Chalmers in the Otago Region of New Zealand.
- 1888 – Led by William McGregor, ten football clubs met in London for the purpose of founding the Football League, the oldest league competition in world football.
- 1908 – American diplomat Durham Stevens, an employee of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was assassinated in San Francisco by two Korean American immigrants unhappy with his recent support of the increasing Japanese presence in Korea.
- 1968 – The My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam.
- 1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed into a hillside in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, after the pilot's 16-year-old son, while seated at the controls, had unknowingly disabled the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.
- 2001 – The Russian Federal Space Agency deorbited the 15-year-old space station Mir (pictured), causing it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere and break up over the Pacific Ocean.
Pierre-Simon Laplace (b. 1749) · Said Nursî (d. 1960) · Kangana Ranaut (b. 1986)
March 24: World Tuberculosis Day
- 1603 – King James VI of Scotland (pictured) acceded to the thrones of England and Ireland, becoming James I of England and unifying the crowns of the kingdoms for the first time.
- 1860 – Rōnin samurai of the Mito Domain assassinated Japanese Chief Minister Ii Naosuke, upset with his role in the opening of Japan to foreign powers.
- 1921 – The 1921 Women's Olympiad, the first international women's sports event, opened at the International Sporting Club of Monaco in Monte Carlo.
- 1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act came into effect, which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years.
- 2008 – The Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party, led by Jigme Thinley, won 45 out of 47 seats in the National Assembly of Bhutan in the country's first-ever general election.
Wulfred (d. 832) · Fanny Crosby (b. 1820) · Maria Radner (d. 2015)
March 25: Rama Navami (Hinduism, 2018); Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day
- 1410 – The Yongle Emperor launched the first of his military campaigns against the Mongols, resulting in the fall of the Mongol khan Bunyashiri.
- 1807 – The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
- 1917 – Following the overthrow of the Russian tsar Nicholas II, Georgia's bishops unilaterally restored the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
- 1948 – Meteorologists at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, United States, issued the world's first tornado forecast after noticing conditions similar to another tornado that had struck five days earlier.
- 1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (pictured) was shot and killed by his nephew Faisal bin Musaid.
Sophie Blanchard (b. 1778) · Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas (d. 1927) · Melita Norwood (b. 1912)
March 26: Independence Day in Bangladesh (1971)
- 590 – Byzantine emperor Maurice proclaimed his son Theodosius as his co-emperor.
- 1351 – War of the Breton Succession: Thirty knights each from France and England fought to determine who would rule the Duchy of Brittany, which later was celebrated as a noble display of the ideals of chivalry.
- 1885 – Feeling that Canada had failed to address the protection of their rights, the Métis people, led by Louis Riel, began the North-West Rebellion.
- 1953 – Jonas Salk announced the successful test of his polio vaccine on a small group of adults and children (vaccination pictured).
- 1971 – East Pakistan declared its independence from Pakistan to become Bangladesh, starting the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Conrad Gessner (b. 1516) · James Hutton (d. 1797) · Eazy-E (d. 1995)
- 1850 – San Diego, the first European settlement in what is now California, was incorporated as a city.
- 1899 – Philippine–American War: For the only time during the course of the war, Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo personally led troops against the U.S. in the Battle of Marilao River.
- 1941 – Encouraged by the British Special Operations Executive, a group of pro-Western Serb-nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers planned and conducted a coup d'état after Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.
- 1958 – First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev also took over the role of Premier.
- 1998 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil (chemical structure pictured), better known by the trade name Viagra, for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
Rosa Campbell Praed (b. 1851) · Kick Kelly (d. 1926) · Mariah Carey (b. 1969 or 1970)
March 28: Serfs Emancipation Day in Tibet
- 193 – Praetorian Guards assassinated Roman emperor Pertinax and sold the Imperial office in an auction to Didius Julianus.
- 1814 – War of 1812: Off the coast of Valparaíso, Chile, two Royal Navy ships easily captured two American ones.
- 1933 – After an on-board fire that may have been the first incident of airliner sabotage, the Imperial Airways biplane City of Liverpool broke apart in mid-air, killing fifteen people.
- 1942 – Second World War: In occupied France, British naval forces disabled the port of Saint-Nazaire (HMS Campbeltown pictured).
- 2003 – Invasion of Iraq: In a friendly fire incident, two members of the United States Air Force attacked the United Kingdom's Blues and Royals regiment, killing one soldier and injuring five.
Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova (b. 1743) · Terence MacSwiney (b. 1879) · Sybil Irving (d. 1973)
March 29: Boganda Day in the Central African Republic; Martyrs' Day in Madagascar (1947)
- 1430 – Ottoman–Venetian Wars: After an eight-year siege, the Ottoman Empire captured the city of Thessalonica from the Republic of Venice.
- 1800 – William Matthews was ordained as the first British America-born Catholic priest.
- 1871 – The Royal Albert Hall in Albertopolis, London, was officially opened by Queen Victoria.
- 1974 – A group of farmers in Shaanxi province, China, discovered a vast collection of terracotta statues (pictured) depicting the armies of the first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang.
- 2010 – Islamist Chechen separatists set off two bombs on the Moscow Metro, killing 40 and injuring 102 others.
John Tyler (b. 1790) · Charles-Valentin Alkan (d. 1888) · Helene Deutsch (d. 1982)
March 30: Land Day (Palestinians)
- 1822 – The United States merged East Florida and West Florida to create the Florida Territory.
- 1918 – Fighting began during the March Days revolt in Baku, Azerbaijan, resulting in over 14,000 deaths.
- 1950 – Usmar Ismail (pictured) began filming Darah dan Doa, formally recognised as the first Indonesian film.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: North Vietnamese forces began the Easter Offensive in an attempt to gain as much territory and destroy as many units of the South Vietnamese Army as possible.
- 2009 – Twelve gunmen attacked the Manawan Police Academy in Lahore, Pakistan, and held it for several hours before security forces could retake it.
Anna Sewell (b. 1820) · Stefan Banach (b. 1892) · Philip Showalter Hench (d. 1965)
March 31: First day of Passover (Judaism, 2018); Cesar Chavez Day in various U.S. states
- 1822 – Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began the massacre of over 20,000 Greeks on the island of Chios.
- 1899 – Philippine–American War: Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces.
- 1910 – Six English towns amalgamated to form a single county borough called Stoke-on-Trent, the first union of its type.
- 1964 – Brazilian Armed Forces led an overthrow of Brazilian President João Goulart (pictured) and established a military government that lasted for 21 years.
- 1995 – American singer-songwriter, Selena, known as "The Queen of Tejano music", was murdered in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar.
Guru Angad (b. 1504) · Franz Abt (d. 1885) · J. P. Morgan (d. 1913)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for April[edit]
April 1: Easter (Western Christianity, 2018); Iranian Islamic Republic Day; Edible Book Day
- 528 – The unnamed daughter of Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei became the first female in Chinese history to ascend to the imperial throne and was dethroned the next day.
- 1833 – Mexican Texans met at San Felipe de Austin to begin the Convention of 1833.
- 1918 – The United Kingdom's Royal Air Force was founded.
- 1924 – As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler (pictured) was sentenced to five years in prison for treason.
- 1978 – By presidential decree, the Philippine College of Commerce was converted to a chartered state university and renamed the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
Joseph de Maistre (b. 1753) · Frederick Denison Maurice (d. 1872) · Cynthia Lennon (d. 2015)
- 1513 – Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León (pictured) sighted Florida, becoming the first European known to do so, purportedly while searching for the Fountain of Youth in the New World.
- 1863 – In Richmond, Virginia, U.S., about 5,000 people, mostly poor women, rioted in protest of the exorbitant price of bread.
- 1973 – The Liberal Movement broke away from the Liberal and Country League in South Australia.
- 1992 – Bosnian War: At least 48 civilians were killed in the town of Bijeljina.
- 2002 – Operation Defensive Shield: Approximately 200 Palestinian militants fled the advancing Israel Defense Forces into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, starting a month-long standoff.
Maria Sibylla Merian (b. 1647) · Clément Ader (b. 1841) · Ranjitsinhji (d. 1933)
- 1043 – Edward the Confessor (depicted on seal) was crowned King of England, the last king of the House of Wessex.
- 1559 – Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain signed a treaty to end the Italian War of 1551–1559.
- 1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 1948 – An uprising began on Jeju Island, eventually leading to the deaths of between 14,000 and 30,000 individuals due to fighting between its various factions, and the violent suppression of the rebellion by the South Korean army.
- 2008 – Texas law enforcement authorities raided the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' YFZ Ranch, eventually removing 533 women and children from the premises.
Ernst Chladni (d. 1827) · Thomas C. Kinkaid (b. 1888) · Pál Teleki (d. 1941)
- 1859 – Bryant's Minstrels premiered the popular American song "Dixie" in New York City as part of their blackface minstrel show.
- 1968 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured) was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1988 – Governor of Arizona Evan Mecham was removed from office after being convicted in his impeachment trial.
- 1990 – The current flag of Hong Kong was adopted for post-colonial use during the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress.
- 2013 – A building collapsed on tribal land in Mumbra, a suburb of Thane in Maharashtra, India, causing 74 deaths.
William Strachey (b. 1572) · Maya Angelou (b. 1928) · Karen Spärck Jones (d. 2007)
April 5: Feast Day of Vincent Ferrer; Hansik in South Korea
- 1081 – The Komnenian dynasty came to full power when Alexios I Komnenos was crowned Byzantine Emperor.
- 1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first fully fledged law regulating copyright, received royal assent and went into effect five days later in Great Britain.
- 1936 – Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hit Tupelo, Mississippi, U.S., killing at least 216 people.
- 1986 – The Libyan secret service bombed a discotheque in West Berlin, killing 3 people and injuring 229 others.
- 1998 – Japan's Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (pictured), linking Awaji Island and Kobe, opened to traffic, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world to date with a main span length of 1,991 metres (6,532 ft).
Al-Mu'tadid (d. 902) · Thure de Thulstrup (b. 1848) · Olek (b. 1978)
- 1712 – In New York City, a group of 23 slaves set a building on fire and escaped, but were soon recaptured.
- 1812 – Peninsular War: After a three-week siege, the Anglo-Portuguese Army, under the Earl of Wellington, captured Badajoz, Spain, and forced the surrender of the French garrison.
- 1886 – Vancouver, one of British Columbia's youngest cities, was incorporated.
- 1945 – Second World War: The Battle of Slater's Knoll on Bougainville Island concluded with a decisive victory for the Australian Army's 7th Brigade.
- 2005 – Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani (pictured) was elected by the Iraqi National Assembly as the first non-Arab President of Iraq.
Basil of Trebizond (d. 1340) · James Mill (b. 1773) · Donald Wills Douglas Sr. (b. 1892)
April 7: National Beer Day in the United States
- 1724 – Johann Sebastian Bach debuted the St John Passion, a musical representation of the Passion, at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.
- 1788 – American pioneers established the town of Marietta (now in Ohio), the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.
- 1896 – An Arctic expedition led by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (pictured) reached 86°13.6'N, almost three degrees beyond the previous Farthest North mark.
- 1948 – The United Nations established the World Health Organization to act as a coordinating authority on international public health.
- 2010 – Violent protests in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek resulted in the collapse of the Kurmanbek Bakiyev government.
Toussaint Louverture (d. 1803) · John Bernard Flannagan (b. 1895) · Dave Arneson (d. 2009)
- 876 – Forces of the Abbasid Caliphate decisively defeated those of the Saffarid emir Ya'qub ibn Laith, forcing the latter to halt his advance into Iraq.
- 1740 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Royal Navy captured the Spanish ship of the line Princesa (pictured) and mustered her into British service.
- 1943 – Otto and Elise Hampel were executed in Berlin for their resistance activities against the Third Reich.
- 1968 – BOAC Flight 712 had an engine fire shortly after take-off from London Heathrow, leading to the deaths of five people on board, including flight attendant Jane Harrison, who was later awarded a posthumous George Cross for heroism.
- 2008 – On board Soyuz TMA-12, Yi So-yeon became the first Korean to go into space.
Thomas of Tolentino (d. 1321) · Mary Stuart (b. 1605) · Betty Ford (b. 1918)
April 9: Vimy Ridge Day in Canada; Day of National Unity in Georgia (1989)
- 1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made the oldest known recording of an audible human voice, when he recorded himself singing "Au clair de la lune" (audio featured).
- 1866 – The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the United States' first federal law to affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law, was enacted.
- 1940 – During the German invasion of Norway, Vidkun Quisling seized control of the government in a Nazi-backed coup d'état.
- 1948 – Fighters from the Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, killing over 100.
- 2003 – Invasion of Iraq: Coalition forces captured Baghdad and the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square was toppled.
Samuel Fritz (b. 1654) · Isambard Kingdom Brunel (b. 1806) · Vilhelm Bjerknes (d. 1951)
April 10: Siblings Day in the United States
- 1815 – Mount Tambora in Indonesia began one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in recorded history, killing at least 71,000 people, and affecting worldwide temperatures for the next two years.
- 1858 – Big Ben (pictured), the bell in the Palace of Westminster's clock tower in London, was cast after the original bell had cracked during testing.
- 1944 – The Holocaust: Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz; their report was one of the earliest and most detailed descriptions of the mass killings in the camp.
- 1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: At least 40 Armenian civilians were massacred in Maraga, Azerbaijan.
- 2009 – Fijian President Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced that he had suspended the constitution and assumed all governance in the country after it was ruled that the government of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was illegal.
Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg (d. 1704) · Samuel Hahnemann (b. 1755) · Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri (b. 1917)
- 1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition, and forcing Napoleon to abdicate as ruler of France and sending him into exile on Elba.
- 1913 – The Nevill Ground's pavilion was destroyed (damage pictured) in the only suffragette arson attack on a cricket ground.
- 1968 – Rudi Dutschke, the most prominent leader of the German student movement, survived an assassination attempt, which led to the largest protests to that date in Germany.
- 1993 – Inmates at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, Ohio, U.S., rioted and took over the facility for 11 days.
Anawrahta (d. 1077) · Arthur Shrewsbury (b. 1856) · Joseph Merrick (d. 1890)
April 12: Yuri's Night; Cosmonautics Day in Russia; Yom HaShoah (2018) in Israel
- 627 – King Edwin of Northumbria was converted to Christianity by Bishop Paulinus of York, who had previously saved his life.
- 1807 – The Froberg mutiny at Fort Ricasoli in Malta came to a close when the rebels blew up 600 barrels of gunpowder and escaped, although they were later caught.
- 1861 – Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
- 1910 – SMS Zrínyi (pictured), one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched.
- 1994 – Husband-and-wife law partners Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel posted the first massive commercial spam on Usenet.
Charles VII of Sweden (d. 1167) · Alexander Ostrovsky (b. 1823) · Keiko Fukuda (b. 1913)
- 1111 – Henry V, the last ruler of the Salian dynasty, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act was granted royal assent, removing the most substantial restrictions on Catholics in the United Kingdom.
- 1943 – World War II: German news announced the discovery of a mass grave in Katyn, Russia, of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile and the USSR.
- 1958 – In the midst of the Cold War, American pianist Van Cliburn (pictured) won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
- 1984 – Indian forces launched Operation Meghdoot, a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan.
Catherine de' Medici (b. 1519) · Thomas Jefferson (b. 1743) · Henry De la Beche (d. 1855)
April 14: Bengali New Year, Vaisakhi (Sikhism), Tamil New Year, and other New Year festivals in Asia (2018); Day of the Georgian language in Georgia (1978)
- 1561 – In Nuremberg, there was a mass sighting of celestial phenomena (illustration pictured) where observers described an "aerial battle" between odd-shaped objects.
- 1908 – The first Hauser Dam in the U.S. state of Montana failed and caused severe flooding and damage downstream.
- 1945 – The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division deliberately destroyed the German town of Friesoythe on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes.
- 2014 – Boko Haram kidnapped 276 female students from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria.
Christiaan Huygens (b. 1629) · Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom (b. 1857) · L. L. Zamenhof (d. 1917)
April 15: Day of the Sun in North Korea
- 1638 – A rebellion by Catholic Japanese peasants in Shimabara over increased taxes was put down by the Tokugawa shogunate, resulting in greater enforcement of the policy of national seclusion.
- 1738 – Serse (audio featured), an opera by Baroque composer George Frideric Handel loosely based on Xerxes I of Persia, premiered in London.
- 1936 – A group of Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine killed two Jews at a roadblock, an act widely viewed as the beginning of the violence within the Arab revolt.
- 1958 – On Walter O'Malley's initiative, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants played in the first Major League Baseball game on the U.S. West Coast.
- 1994 – At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities signed an agreement to establish the World Trade Organization.
Guru Arjan (b. 1563) · Mikhail Lomonosov (d. 1765) · Emma Watson (b. 1990)
April 16: Patriots' Day in various U.S. states (2018)
- 1818 – The United States Senate ratified the Rush–Bagot Treaty, which laid the basis for a demilitarized boundary between the U.S. and British North America.
- 1847 – New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief was accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in the Petre settlement of New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign.
- 1912 – American Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1917 – Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd from Switzerland, and joined the Bolshevik movement in Russia.
- 2014 – The South Korean ferry MV Sewol sank 1.5 km (0.93 mi) offshore of Donggeochado, Jindo County, with around 300 of the 476 onboard killed.
Molly Brant (d. 1796) · Ponnambalam Ramanathan (b. 1851) · Khalil al-Wazir (d. 1988)
April 17: Evacuation Day in Syria (1946); Tax Day in the United States (2018)
- 1080 – The death of Harald III allowed his brother Canute IV, who later became the first Dane to be canonized, to become King of Denmark.
- 1362 – Lithuanian Crusade: After a month-long siege, the Teutonic Order captured and destroyed Kaunas Castle (reconstruction pictured) in Lithuania.
- 1907 – The first of three dreadnought battleships for Brazil was laid down, sparking a vastly expensive South American naval arms race.
- 1951 – The Peak District was designated the first national park in the United Kingdom.
- 1973 – George Lucas began writing a 13-page film treatment entitled The Star Wars.
Marino Faliero (d. 1355) · Cap Anson (b. 1852) · Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu (d. 1954)
April 18: Yom Hazikaron in Israel (2018)
- 1738 – By royal decree, Philip V of Spain established the Real Academia de la Historia.
- 1915 – World War I: French aviator Roland Garros landed his aircraft behind enemy lines and was taken prisoner.
- 1938 – Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, made his debut in Action Comics #1, the first true superhero comic book.
- 1958 – Controversial American poet Ezra Pound (pictured) was released from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he had been incarcerated for twelve years.
- 1996 – Israeli forces shelled Qana, Lebanon, during Operation Grapes of Wrath, killing at least 100 civilians and injuring more than 110 others at a UN compound.
Stephen Lekapenos (d. 963) · Ludwig Levy (b. 1854) · Bertha Isaacs (b. 1900)
April 19: Feast of Saint Alphege (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Israel (2018)
- 797 – Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was captured, blinded, and imprisoned by the supporters of his mother Irene.
- 1713 – With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the Habsburg lands.
- 1903 – A two-day anti-Jewish riot began in Kishinev, Bessarabia (now in Moldova), causing the death of nearly 50 Jews and focusing worldwide negative attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia.
- 1927 – American actress Mae West (pictured) was sentenced to ten days in jail for "corrupting the morals of youth" for her play Sex.
- 1971 – The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
Uesugi Kenshin (d. 1578) · Sydney Barnes (b. 1873) · Denis O'Brien (b. 1958)
April 20: Ridván begins at sunset (Bahá'í Faith); 4/20 (cannabis culture)
- 1535 – The appearance of sun dogs over Stockholm, Sweden, inspired the painting Vädersolstavlan, the oldest colour depiction of the city.
- 1818 – Four days after the Court of King's Bench in England upheld a murder suspect's right to trial by battle in Ashford v Thornton, the plaintiff declined to fight, allowing the defendant to go free.
- 1968 – British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in his removal from the Shadow Cabinet.
- 1978 – Soviet fighters shot at Korean Air Lines Flight 902 after it violated Soviet airspace, forcing it to make an emergency landing due to damage.
- 2008 – American Danica Patrick (pictured) won the Indy Japan 300, becoming the first woman to win an IndyCar auto race.
Cædwalla of Wessex (d. 689) · John Abernethy (d. 1831) · Nina Davuluri (b. 1989)
- 43 BC – Forces led by Mark Antony fought the Battle of Mutina against those of Decimus Brutus, one of Julius Caesar's assassins.
- 1509 – Henry VIII became King of England, following the death of his father Henry VII, eventually becoming a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy.
- 1925 or 1926 – Al-Baqi cemetery, former site of the mausoleum (pictured) of four of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam, was demolished by Wahhabis.
- 1970 – In response to a dispute over wheat production quotas, the Principality of Hutt River proclaimed its secession from Western Australia.
- 2010 – Ukraine and Russia signed the Kharkiv Pact to extend the Russian lease on naval facilities in Crimea.
Bajkam (d. 941) · Jan Boeckhorst (d. 1668) · Ignatius Zakka I Iwas (b. 1931)
- 1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew landed in present day Brazil and claimed the land for Portugal.
- 1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim (pictured) a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km2) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma, entirely founding the brand-new Oklahoma City.
- 1915 – The Germans released chlorine gas in the Second Battle of Ypres, causing over 6,000 casualties, with many deaths within ten minutes by asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in World War I.
- 1948 – Civil War in Mandatory Palestine: The Jewish paramilitary group Haganah captured Haifa from the Arab Liberation Army.
- 2013 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested two men who were plotting to commit terrorist attacks against Via Rail Canada operations.
Germaine de Staël (b. 1766) · James Hargreaves (d. 1778) · Wilhelm Cauer (d. 1945)
April 23: Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama and Mississippi (2018)
- 1516 – The best-known version of the Reinheitsgebot, the German Beer Purity Law, was adopted across the entirety of Bavaria.
- 1661 – Charles II, King of England, Ireland, and Scotland, was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
- 1918 – First World War: The British Royal Navy conducted an unsuccessful raid on the German-occupied port of Bruges-Zeebrugge in Belgium.
- 1951 – American journalist William N. Oatis was arrested for espionage by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia.
- 1985 – The Coca-Cola Company replaced its flagship soft drink, Coca-Cola, with "New Coke" (pictured), which generated so much negative response that the company put the previous formula back on the market less than three months later.
William Shakespeare (d. 1616) · Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (d. 1792) · Kathy Lynch (b. 1957)
April 24: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
- 1479 BC – Thutmose III became the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, with his aunt Hatshepsut as co-regent.
- 1800 – The Library of Congress (building pictured), the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
- 1914 – The Franck–Hertz experiment, the first electrical measurement to clearly demonstrate quantum mechanics, was presented to the German Physical Society.
- 1980 – Eight U.S. servicemen died in Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt to rescue the captives in the Iran hostage crisis.
- 2013 – A building in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,134 people, making it the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern history.
Xu Guangqi (b. 1562) · G. Stanley Hall (d. 1924) · Kelly Clarkson (b. 1982)
- 799 – Pope Leo III was attacked by partisans of his predecessor Adrian I, but was rescued and taken to Charlemagne, as described in the epic Karolus magnus et Leo papa.
- 1846 – An open conflict between the military forces of the United States and Mexico began over the disputed border of Texas north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River, later serving as a primary justification for the Mexican–American War.
- 1915 – First World War: Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Anzac Cove while British and French troops landed at Cape Helles to begin the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.
- 1990 – Violeta Chamorro (pictured) took office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman elected in her own right as a head of state in the Americas.
- 2015 – A 7.8 MW earthquake struck Nepal, resulting in 8,964 deaths and 21,952 injuries.
Naresuan (d. 1605) · Georg Sverdrup (b. 1770) · Dinesh D'Souza (b. 1961)
April 26: World Intellectual Property Day
- 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Republic of Florence, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici and killed his brother Giuliano during High Mass.
- 1865 – U.S. Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in rural northern Virginia, ending a twelve-day manhunt.
- 1958 – Service ended on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue Line, one of the first major electrified train lines in the U.S. (train pictured).
- 1970 – The World Intellectual Property Organization came into being when its convention entered into force.
- 1994 – Just prior to landing at Nagoya International Airport, the copilot of China Airlines Flight 140 inadvertently selected the wrong throttle setting, causing the plane to crash and killing 264 of the 271 people on board.
Chen Jingxuan (d. 893) · Ludwig Wittgenstein (b. 1889) · Srinivasa Ramanujan (d. 1920)
April 27: King's Day in the Netherlands
- 395 – Aelia Eudoxia married Byzantine emperor Arcadius without the knowledge or consent of Rufinus, the Praetorian prefect who had intended for his own daughter to wed the emperor.
- 1521 – Filipino natives led by chieftain Lapu-Lapu killed Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan at the Battle of Mactan (pictured).
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British Army regulars defeated Patriot militias in the Battle of Ridgefield, galvanizing resistance in the Connecticut Colony.
- 1967 – The Expo 67 world's fair opened in Montreal, with 62 nations participating and more than 50 million visitors ultimately attending.
- 1993 – Thirty people died, including players and staff of the Zambia football team and the crew, in a plane crash en route to play a World Cup qualifying match against Senegal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (d. 1882) · Draža Mihailović (b. 1893) · Sheila Scott (b. 1922)
April 28: Workers' Memorial Day
- 1253 – Nichiren (pictured), a Japanese monk, expounded Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō for the first time and declared it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.
- 1789 – About 1,300 miles (2,100 km) west of Tahiti, Fletcher Christian, acting lieutenant on board the Royal Navy ship Bounty, led a mutiny against the commander, William Bligh.
- 1941 – Presaging a campaign of genocide against Serbs of Croatia, members of the Ustashe movement massacred around 190 people in Gudovac.
- 1988 – Aloha Airlines Flight 243 experienced an explosive decompression in flight between Hilo and Honolulu, Hawaii, with one fatality as a flight attendant was ejected from the aircraft.
Hertha Ayrton (b. 1854) · Penélope Cruz (b. 1974) · Regina Martínez Pérez (d. 2012)
April 29: Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare; Pesach Sheni (Judaism, 2018)
- 1770 – British explorer James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour (replica pictured), the first European ship to land in eastern Australia, reached the coast of Botany Bay near present-day Sydney.
- 1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.
- 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
- 1992 – The acquittal of policemen who had beaten African-American motorist Rodney King sparked six days of civil unrest in Los Angeles, during which 63 people were killed.
- 2015 – The ringleaders of the Bali Nine were executed in Indonesia for attempting to smuggle 8.3 kilograms (18 lb) of heroin to Australia.
Thomas Cooper (d. 1594) · Georgia Hopley (b. 1858) · Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (b. 1882)
April 30: Consumer Protection Day in Thailand; Reunification Day in Vietnam
- 313 – By defeating the armies of his rival Maximinus II, Roman emperor Licinius unified the eastern half of the empire under his rule.
- 1598 – King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, granting freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
- 1803 – The United States purchased France's claim to the Louisiana Territory (flag raising ceremony pictured) for 78 million francs, or less than US$.03 per acre ($.07/ha).
- 1943 – Second World War: The Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph began Operation Mincemeat to deceive Germany about the upcoming invasion of Sicily.
- 2009 – A gunman went on a shooting spree at the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy, a public university in Baku, killing 12 people before committing suicide.
Marie of the Incarnation (d. 1672) · Eugen Bleuler (b. 1857) · Roger L. Easton (b. 1921)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for May[edit]
May 1: Beltane in Ireland and Scotland
- 1753 – Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum, which, with his earlier work Systema Naturae, is considered the beginning of modern botanical nomenclature.
- 1794 – War of the Pyrenees: France regained nearly all the land it lost to Spain the previous year with its victory in the Second Battle of Boulou.
- 1884 – Moses Fleetwood Walker (pictured), the last African American in Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson, played his first game for the Toledo Blue Stockings.
- 1974 – Argentine President Juan Perón expelled the Montoneros from a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, forcing the group to become clandestine and later a target of the Dirty War.
- 1985 – Labor groups in the Philippines established the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a political coalition and communist front, in order to challenge the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Honora Sneyd (d. 1780) · Anna Jarvis (b. 1864) · Ulric Cross (b. 1917)
May 2: Birth of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Shia Islam, 2018); Flag Day in Poland
- 1194 – King Richard I of England gave the city of Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.
- 1559 – Scottish clergyman John Knox returned from exile to lead the Scottish Reformation.
- 1964 – Vietnam War: An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos led USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.
- 1995 – Croatian War of Independence: Serb forces began firing rockets on the Croatian capital of Zagreb, killing 7 and injuring around 200 others.
- 2008 – The Chaitén volcano (pictured) in Chile began to erupt for the first time since around 1640.
Liu Zong (d. 821) · Giacomo Meyerbeer (d. 1864) · B. B. Lal (b. 1921)
May 3: Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2018); National Day of Prayer in the United States (2018)
- 1491 – Nkuwu Nzinga of the Kingdom of Kongo was baptised as João I by Portuguese missionaries.
- 1848 – The Benty Grange helmet, a boar-crested Anglo-Saxon helmet similar to those in Beowulf, was discovered in Derbyshire, England.
- 1913 – Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian feature-length film, was released.
- 1920 – Relying on the 11th Red Army operating in neighboring Azerbaijan, Bolsheviks attempted to stage a coup d'etat in Georgia.
- 1999 – A Doppler on Wheels team measured the fastest winds recorded on Earth (301 ±20 mph, or 484 ±32 km/h) in a tornado near Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, U.S.
Elizabeth Bacon (d. 1621) · Richard D'Oyly Carte (b. 1844) · Sugar Ray Robinson (b. 1921)
- 1493 – Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter caetera, establishing a line of demarcation dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal.
- 1780 – The first running of the Epsom Derby took place, won by Diomed, owned by Charles Bunbury.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy engaged Allied naval forces at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other.
- 1988 – A fire at an industrial plant in Henderson, Nevada, U.S., caused tons of Space Shuttle fuel to explode (pictured), resulting in two deaths, 372 injuries, and $100 million in damage.
- 2000 – Ken Livingstone took office as the first Mayor of London.
John Nevison (d. 1684) · Julia Gardiner Tyler (b. 1820) · Kanō Jigorō (d. 1938)
May 5: Children's Day in Japan; Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the United States
- 553 – The Second Council of Constantinople, considered by many Christian churches to have been the fifth Christian Ecumenical Council, began to discuss the topics of Nestorianism and Origenism, among others.
- 1654 – Cromwell's Act of Grace, which pardoned the people of Scotland for any crimes they may have committed during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, was proclaimed in Edinburgh.
- 1940 – World War II: A squad of 250 Norwegian volunteers in Hegra Fortress finally surrendered to a vastly superior Nazi force after a 25-day siege.
- 1961 – Project Mercury: Aboard the American spacecraft Freedom 7, Alan Shepard (pictured) made a sub-orbital flight, becoming the second person to travel into outer space.
- 2010 – A series of demonstrations in Athens and general strikes across Greece began in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the debt crisis.
Guru Amar Das (b. 1479) · August Wilhelm von Hofmann (d. 1892) · Adele (b. 1988)
- 1782 – Construction began on the Grand Palace (pictured) of Bangkok, the official residence of the King of Thailand.
- 1882 – The Irish civil servants Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish were stabbed to death by members of the radical Irish National Invincibles as they walked through Phoenix Park in Dublin.
- 1941 – American entertainer Bob Hope performed the first of his many shows for the United Service Organizations.
- 1954 – At Oxford's Iffley Road Track, English runner Roger Bannister became the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.
- 2010 – Major stock indexes in the United States dropped nearly 9% and rebounded very quickly, exacerbated by high-frequency traders using algorithms which have since been outlawed.
James Tyrrell (d. 1502) · Jean Senebier (b. 1742) · Martin Brodeur (b. 1972)
- 1697 – Stockholm's royal castle, dating back to the 13th century, was destroyed in a huge fire; the plans for the current royal palace was presented within a year.
- 1895 – Alexander Stepanovich Popov (pictured) presented his radio receiver, refined as a lightning detector, to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society.
- 1931 – New York City Police engaged in a two-hour-long shootout with Francis Crowley that was witnessed by 15,000 bystanders before he finally surrendered.
- 1960 – Cold War: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that his country was holding American pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union six days earlier.
- 2010 – A team of researchers presented a complete draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, demonstrating that today's modern humans have Neanderthal ancestors.
Bajo Pivljanin (d. 1685) · William Bainbridge (b. 1774) · Rendra Karno (b. 1920)
May 8: World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day; Miguel Hidalgo's Birthday in Mexico; Parents' Day in South Korea
- 1842 – A train derailed and caught fire (pictured) in Paris, killing between 52 and 200 people.
- 1924 – Lithuania signed the Klaipėda Convention, making the Klaipėda Region (taken from East Prussia) into an autonomous region under Lithuanian rule.
- 1945 – A parade to celebrate the end of World War II turned into a riot, followed by widespread disturbances and killings in and around Sétif, French Algeria.
- 1963 – In Huế, South Vietnam, soldiers opened fire into a crowd of Buddhist protesting against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesākha, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
- 1987 – A British Army Special Air Service unit ambushed a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit in Loughgall, Northern Ireland, killing eight IRA members and a civilian.
Thomas Drury (b. 1551) · Helena Blavatsky (d. 1891) · Beatrice Worsley (d. 1972)
May 9: Liberation Day in the Channel Islands (1945)
- 328 – Athanasius became the Patriarch of Alexandria.
- 1877 – Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Mihail Kogălniceanu (pictured) made a speech in Parliament that declared Romania was discarding Ottoman suzerainty.
- 1901 – The first Parliament of Australia opened in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, exactly 26 years before it moved to Canberra's Provisional Parliament House, and exactly 87 years before it moved into the Parliament House in Canberra.
- 1918 – First World War: Germany repelled Britain's second attempt to blockade the Belgian port of Ostend.
- 1997 – Alexis Herman was sworn in as the first female U.S. Secretary of Labor.
Gaspard Monge (b. 1746) · Gopal Krishna Gokhale (b. 1866) · Anthony Wilding (d. 1915)
- 28 BC – The first precisely dated observation of a sunspot was made by Han dynasty astronomers during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: A small force of Patriots led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in New York, without significant injury or incident.
- 1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five companions completed one of history's greatest small-boat journeys (launch pictured) when they arrived at South Georgia after sailing 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) in a lifeboat.
- 1941 – World War II: Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the British government.
- 1997 – A 7.3 Mw earthquake struck Iran's Khorasan Province, killing at least 1,567, injuring around 2,300, and damaging or destroying more than 15,000 homes, to leave 50,000 homeless.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (b. 1727) · Felix Manalo (b. 1886) · Shen Congwen (d. 1988)
- 1792 – Merchant sea captain Robert Gray (pictured) became the first recorded European to navigate the Columbia River in what is now the Pacific Northwest United States.
- 1813 – William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth departed westward from Sydney on an expedition to become the first Europeans confirmed to cross the Blue Mountains.
- 1910 – Glacier National Park, located in the U.S. state of Montana, was designated a national park.
- 1998 – India began conducting the Pokhran-II nuclear weapons test, its first since the Smiling Buddha test 24 years earlier.
- 2010 – David Cameron took office as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed the country's first coalition government since the Second World War.
Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen (b. 1720) · Frederick Russell Burnham (b. 1861) · Douglas Adams (d. 2001)
May 12: Jerusalem Day in Israel (2018)
- 1588 – Day of the Barricades: Under the leadership of Henry I, Duke of Guise (pictured), Catholic Parisians arose in protest against the moderate policies of Henry III.
- 1888 – North Borneo was established as a British protectorate.
- 1968 – The 1st Australian Task Force began the defence of Fire Support Base Coral in the largest unit-level action of the Vietnam War for the Australian Army.
- 1998 – Four students were shot and killed at Trisakti University in Indonesia, leading to widespread riots and eventually the fall of Suharto.
- 2008 – In Postville, Iowa, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the largest-ever raid of a workplace and arrested nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.
Fergus of Galloway (d. 1161) · Johann Baptist Wanhal (b. 1739) · Yogi Berra (b. 1925)
- 1862 – Robert Smalls escaped from slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, by commandeering the CSS Planter and sailing it from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. blockade.
- 1888 – Princess Isabel of the Empire of Brazil signed the Lei Áurea into law, formally abolishing slavery in Brazil.
- 1913 – Russian-American Igor Sikorsky flew the world's first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft, the Russky Vityaz, which he designed himself.
- 1958 – Australian Ben Carlin (pictured) became the only person to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 80,000 km (50,000 mi) by land and sea.
- 2008 – Nine bombs placed by the previously unknown terrorist group Indian Mujahideen exploded in 15 minutes in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, killing 80 and injuring more than 200 people.
Cornelis Schut (b. 1597) · Antonia Ferrín Moreiras (b. 1914) · H. Trendley Dean (d. 1962)
May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Roman Catholicism)
- 1264 – Second Barons' War: King Henry III was defeated at the Battle of Lewes and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
- 1868 – Boshin War: Troops of the Tokugawa shogunate withdrew from the Battle of Utsunomiya Castle and retreated north towards Nikkō and Aizu.
- 1943 – Second World War: Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland, killing 268 people aboard.
- 1948 – David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the present-day Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, officially establishing the state of Israel in parts of the former British Mandate of Palestine.
- 1973 – The NASA space station Skylab (pictured) was launched from Cape Canaveral.
Sambhaji (b. 1657) · Fanny Imlay (b. 1794) · Marjory Stoneman Douglas (d. 1998)
May 15: Feast day of Saint Mo Chutu (Irish Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities
- 1602 – English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold led the first recorded European expedition to visit Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts.
- 1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets (pictured) from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union Army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
- 1911 – Mexican Revolution: A force of Maderistas captured Torreón and proceeded to massacre 303 of the city's Chinese residents.
- 1948 – The Australian cricket team, on tour in England, set a first-class world record that still stands by scoring 721 runs in a day against Essex.
- 1966 – Disapproving of his handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on the forces of General Tôn Thất Đính and ousted him from the position.
Mleh, Prince of Armenia (d. 1175) · Levi Lincoln Sr. (b. 1749) · Mohamed Brahmi (b. 1955)
- 1866 – The United States Congress authorized the minting of the country's first copper-nickel five-cent piece, the Shield nickel.
- 1918 – The Sedition Act was passed in the United States, forbidding Americans from using "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during the ongoing World War I.
- 1959 – The Triton Fountain (pictured) in Valletta, one of Malta's most important Modernist landmarks, was turned on for the first time.
- 1961 – The Military Revolution Committee, led by Park Chung-hee, carried out a bloodless coup against the government of Yun Bo-seon, ending the Second Republic of South Korea.
- 1975 – Based on the results of a referendum held about one month earlier, Sikkim abolished its monarchy and was annexed by India, becoming its 22nd state.
Andrew Bobola (d. 1657) · Maria Gaetana Agnesi (b. 1718) · Henri-Edmond Cross (d. 1910)
May 17: Ramadan begins (Islam, 2018)
- 1521 – English nobleman Edward Stafford, whose father had been beheaded for rebelling against King Richard III, was himself executed for treason against King Henry VIII.
- 1642 – The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal founded a permanent mission known as Ville-Marie, which eventually grew into the city of Montreal.
- 1902 – The Antikythera mechanism (fragment pictured), the oldest known surviving geared mechanism, was discovered among artifacts retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.
- 1977 – The first Chuck E. Cheese's location, the first family restaurant to integrate food, animated entertainment, and an indoor arcade, opened in San Jose, California, U.S.
- 2000 – Following the killings of two English football fans in the previous month by Galatasaray supporters, British and Turkish hooligans attacked each other on the day of the UEFA Cup Final.
Martin Delrio (b. 1551) · Samuel Clarke (d. 1729) · Enya (b. 1961)
May 18: Flag and Universities Day in Haiti; Day of Revival, Unity, and the Poetry of Magtymguly in Turkmenistan
- 1388 – During the Battle of Buir Lake, General Lan Yu led a Chinese army forward to crush the Mongol hordes of Toghus Temur, the Khan of Northern Yuan.
- 1896 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding the legality of racial segregation in public transportation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
- 1944 – The Soviet Union forcibly deported the entire population of Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR and elsewhere in the country.
- 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians (pictured), soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.
- 2006 – The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.
John George Children (b. 1777) · Thomas Midgley Jr. (b. 1889) · Ian Curtis (d. 1980)
May 19: Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day in Greece; Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey; Ho Chi Minh's birthday in Vietnam
- 715 – The papacy of Gregory II began; his conflict with Byzantine emperor Leo III eventually led to the establishment of the popes' temporal power.
- 1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer with the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the freezing point of water and 100 its boiling point.
- 1845 – Captain Sir John Franklin (pictured) and his ill-fated Arctic expedition departed from Greenhithe, England; 129 men would die on the expedition.
- 1997 – The Sierra Gorda Biosphere, which encompasses the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, was established as a result of grassroots efforts.
- 2015 – A corroded oil pipeline in Santa Barbara County, California, burst, spilling 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the U.S. West Coast.
Claude Vignon (b. 1593) · Mariam-uz-Zamani (d. 1623) · Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (d. 1994)
May 20: Day of Remembrance in Cambodia; National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908); Sanja Matsuri ends in Tokyo (2018)
- 794 – According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the order of King Offa of Mercia.
- 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a patent for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim overalls, allowing their company to start manufacturing blue jeans.
- 1882 – The Triple Alliance was created between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy.
- 1983 – A team of researchers led by French virologist Luc Montagnier (pictured) published their discovery of HIV, but were not then certain that it caused AIDS.
- 2012 – The first of two major earthquakes struck Northern Italy, resulting in seven deaths.
Gero (d. 965) · William Fargo (b. 1818) · Yoshihiko Noda (b. 1957)
May 21: Victoria Day in Canada (2018)
- 1403 – King Henry III of Castile sent an embassy to the court of Timur (Tamerlane) to discuss a potential alliance between Timur and Castile against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1856 – A crowd of about 800 pro-slavery Americans ransacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
- 1894 – The Manchester Ship Canal, linking Manchester in North West England to the Irish Sea, officially opened, becoming the world's largest navigation canal at the time.
- 1911 – Mexican President Porfirio Díaz and the revolutionary Francisco Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to end the fighting between the forces of both men, concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution.
- 1998 – Indonesian President Suharto (pictured) resigned as a result of the collapse of support for his three-decade-long rule.
Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (d. 1524) · Tudor Arghezi (b. 1880) · Linda Laubenstein (b. 1947)
May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity
- 853 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: The Byzantine navy began to sack and plunder the port city of Damietta on the Nile Delta, whose garrison was absent at the time.
- 1762 – The Trevi Fountain (pictured) in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
- 1849 – Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President ever to hold a patent.
- 1958 – Ethnic rioting broke out in Ceylon, targeted mostly at the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, resulting in up to 300 deaths over the next five days.
- 2014 – Prayut Chan-o-cha, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government, following six months of political crisis.
Constantine X Doukas (d. 1067) · Mary Cassatt (b. 1844) · Apolo Ohno (b. 1982)
- 1555 – Giovanni Pietro Carafa became Pope Paul IV, beginning a short but tumultuous papacy, during which the Papal States suffered a serious military defeat.
- 1706 – War of the Spanish Succession: Led by the Duke of Marlborough, the allied forces of England, the Dutch Republic, and Denmark–Norway defeated the Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army in Ramillies, present-day Belgium.
- 1873 – The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to, and assert Canadian sovereignty over, the Northwest Territories.
- 1951 – Delegates of the 14th Dalai Lama and the government of the newly established People's Republic of China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
Elias Ashmole (b. 1617) · Margaret Fuller (b. 1810) · David Lewis (d. 1981)
May 24: Aldersgate Day (Methodism)
- 1689 – The Act of Toleration became law in England, granting freedom of worship to nonconformists under certain circumstances, but deliberately excluding Catholics.
- 1883 – New York City's Brooklyn Bridge (pictured) opened – the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
- 1956 – The first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Lugano, Switzerland.
- 1970 – On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, drilling began on the Kola Superdeep Borehole, eventually reaching 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), making it the deepest hole ever drilled and the deepest artificial point on the earth.
- 2014 – A gunman opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people.
Robert Hues (d. 1632) · Cathinka Buchwieser (b. 1789) · Huguette Clark (d. 2011)
May 25: Africa Day (1963); First National Government in Argentina (1810); Independence Day in Jordan (1946); Towel Day
- 1644 – Ming general Wu Sangui let the invading Manchus pass through the Great Wall of China (pictured), allowing them to capture Beijing, leading to the foundation of the Qing dynasty.
- 1738 – King George II of Great Britain negotiated a cease-fire between the British colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, ending Cresap's War.
- 1816 – The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published one of his most famous poems, "Kubla Khan".
- 1979 – Six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared on his way to school in New York City, and later became one of the first missing children to have his picture featured on milk cartons.
- 2013 – Naxalite insurgents of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) attacked a convoy of Indian National Congress leaders in the state of Chhattisgarh, causing at least 27 deaths.
Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville (b. 1818) · Gustav Holst (d. 1934) · Bülent Arınç (b. 1948)
May 26: Independence Day in Georgia (1918);
- 946 – King Edmund I of England was killed while attending St Augustine's Day Mass.
- 1637 – Pequot War: An allied Puritan and Mohegan force attacked a fortified Pequot village in the Connecticut Colony, killing between 400 and 700 people.
- 1906 – Vauxhall Bridge (pictured) in London opened, crossing the River Thames between Vauxhall and Westminster.
- 1938 – The House Un-American Activities Committee was established to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities by people or organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties.
- 1991 – Lauda Air Flight 004 experienced an uncommanded thrust reverser deployment of an engine and broke apart in mid-air, killing all 223 people on board.
Bede (d. 735) · John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (b. 1650) · Imi Lichtenfeld (b. 1910)
- 1153 – Malcolm IV was crowned King of Scotland at the age of twelve.
- 1813 – War of 1812: The troops of the U.S. Army and vessels of the U.S. Navy cooperated in a successful amphibious assault to capture Fort George in Upper Canada.
- 1874 – The first group of nomadic pastoralists known as Trekboere set out on the Dorsland Trek, departing South Africa for Angola.
- 1940 – World War II: Ninety-seven soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were executed by German troops after surrendering.
- 1958 – The F-4 Phantom II (pictured), the principal air superiority jet fighter for both the U.S. Navy and Air Force, made its first flight.
- 2001 – Members of the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf kidnapped 20 tourists in Palawan, Philippines, triggering a hostage crisis that lasted over a year.
Diego Ramírez de Arellano (d. 1624) · Julia Ward Howe (b. 1819) · Mal Evans (b. 1935)
May 28: Memorial Day in the United States (2018)
- 585 BC – According to Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse abruptly ended the Battle of Halys between the Lydians and the Medes.
- 1754 – French and Indian War: Led by 22-year-old George Washington, a company of colonial militia from Virginia ambushed a force of 35 Canadiens in the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
- 1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated in his accession to the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when he was summoned to Buckingham Palace to "kiss hands".
- 1987 – Mathias Rust, a West German aviator, flew his Cessna 172 through the Soviet air defense system and landed in Red Square, Moscow.
- 2003 – As a result of criticism of his conduct, Peter Hollingworth (pictured) resigned from his post as Governor-General of Australia.
Germain of Paris (d. 576) · Louis Agassiz (b. 1807) · Kylie Minogue (b. 1968)
- 1453 – With the conquest of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans.
- 1913 – During the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience.
- 1918 – World War I: Armenian forces (pictured) defeated Ottoman troops at the Battle of Sardarabad, not only stopping the Turkish invasion but also preventing the complete destruction of the Armenian nation.
- 1953 – New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
- 1954 – The first annual Bilderberg Group meeting of leaders from European countries and the United States opened in Oosterbeek, Netherlands.
Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (b. 1627) · Patrick Henry (b. 1736) · John Barrymore (d. 1942)
May 30: Lod Massacre Remembrance Day in Puerto Rico
- 1431 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc (pictured) was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, after being convicted of heresy.
- 1536 – Jane Seymour, a former lady-in-waiting, became Queen of England by marrying King Henry VIII.
- 1815 – The East Indiaman ship Arniston was wrecked during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, present-day South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives.
- 1948 – A dike holding the Columbia River broke, causing a flood that destroyed Vanport, Oregon, U.S., only five years after the city was built.
- 1998 – A 6.5 Mw earthquake struck northern Afghanistan, killing at least 4,000 people, destroying more than 30 villages, and leaving 45,000 people homeless in the Afghan provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
Antonina Houbraken (b. 1686) · José de la Borda (d. 1778) · Albert Norden (d. 1982)
May 31: World No Tobacco Day; Feast of the Visitation (Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism)
- 1795 – French Revolution: The Revolutionary Tribunal, a court instituted by the National Convention for the trial of political offenders, was suppressed.
- 1902 – The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging.
- 1941 – The United Kingdom completed its re-occupation of Iraq, returning 'Abd al-Ilah (pictured) to power as regent for Faisal II.
- 2005 – An article in the magazine Vanity Fair revealed that the secret informant known as "Deep Throat", who provided information about the Watergate scandal, was former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt.
Nur Jahan (b. 1577) · Jane Joseph (b. 1894) · Timothy Leary (d. 1996)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for June[edit]
- 1495 – An entry in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland made the first recorded mention of Scotch whisky.
- 1813 – War of 1812: Mortally wounded during a battle against the Royal Navy frigate HMS Shannon, American commander James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake ordered his crew "Don't give up the ship!", today a popular battle cry.
- 1916 – Louis Brandeis became the first Jew to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
- 1943 – Eight German Junkers Ju 88s shot down British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 over the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Spain and France, killing actor Leslie Howard (pictured) and several other notable passengers.
Kitabatake Chikafusa (d. 1354) · Tiedemann Giese (b. 1480) · Helen Keller (d. 1968)
- 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptured British-held Diamond Rock (pictured), an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France.
- 1886 – Grover Cleveland became the only U.S. President to marry in the White House when he wed Frances Folsom.
- 1953 – Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.
- 1962 – One of the most violent football matches ever took place at the World Cup when police had to intervene multiple times as Chile defeated Italy in a group match.
- 2010 – A gunman went on a shooting spree in Cumbria, England, killing 12 people and injuring 11 others before committing suicide.
Rutger von Ascheberg (b. 1621) · Ogata Kōrin (d. 1716) · Gilbert Baker (b. 1951)
June 3: Feast day of Saint Charles Lwanga and the Uganda Martyrs (Roman Catholic Church, Church of England, Lutheranism)
- 1658 – Pope Alexander VII appointed François de Laval as vicar apostolic of New France.
- 1943 – Off-duty U.S. sailors fought with Mexican American youths in Los Angeles, spawning the Zoot Suit Riots.
- 1968 – American artist Andy Warhol (pictured) and two others were shot and wounded at his New York City studio "The Factory" by radical feminist Valerie Solanas.
- 2012 – Dana Air Flight 992, a passenger flight from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria, suffered dual engine failure and crashed into a building, resulting in the deaths of all 153 on board and 10 more on the ground.
Staurakios (d. 800) · Garret Hobart (b. 1844) · Flora MacDonald (b. 1926)
June 4: Queen's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2018); Western Australia Day (2018)
- 1561 –The spire of Old St Paul's Cathedral in London was destroyed by fire, probably caused by lightning.
- 1792 – Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver (pictured) claimed Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest for Great Britain.
- 1944 – A United States Navy task group captured German submarine U-505, the first warship to be captured by U.S. forces on the high seas since the War of 1812.
- 1967 – A chartered aircraft owned by British Midland Airways crashed near Stockport, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom, killing 72 of the 84 passengers and crew on board.
- 1998 – Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Przemysł I of Greater Poland (d. 1257) · Miguel de Azcuénaga (b. 1754) · W. H. R. Rivers (d. 1922)
June 5: Naksa Day in Palestinian communities
- 663 – The Daming Palace (reconstructed gate pictured) became the government seat and royal residence of the Tang empire during Emperor Gaozong's reign.
- 1832 – The June Rebellion, an anti-monarchist uprising, broke out in Paris.
- 1899 – Filipino army general Antonio Luna was assassinated in the midst of the Philippine–American War.
- 1968 – Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan fatally shot U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
- 1997 – Anticipating a coup attempt, President Pascal Lissouba of the Congo ordered the detainment of his rival Denis Sassou Nguesso, thus initiating a second civil war.
Johann Kuhnau (d. 1722) · John Couch Adams (b. 1819) · Stephen Crane (d. 1900)
- 1674 – Shivaji (pictured), who led a resistance to free the Maratha from the Sultanate of Bijapur and the Mughal Empire, was crowned the first Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire.
- 1813 – War of 1812: The British ambushed an American encampment near present-day Stoney Creek, Ontario, capturing two senior officers.
- 1944 – World War II: The Invasion of Normandy, the largest amphibious military operation in history, began with Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy in France.
- 1985 – The remains of Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician notorious for human experiments performed on Auschwitz inmates, were exhumed in Embu das Artes, Brazil.
- 2004 – During a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament, President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam announced that Tamil was to be made the first legally recognised classical language of India.
Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) · John A. Macdonald (d. 1891) · Angie Ballard (b. 1982)
- 1692 – An estimated 7.5 MW earthquake caused Port Royal, Jamaica, to sink below sea level and killed approximately 5,000 people.
- 1788 – Citizens of Grenoble threw roof tiles onto royal soldiers, an event sometimes credited as the beginning of the French Revolution.
- 1810 – Journalist Mariano Moreno (pictured) published Argentina's first newspaper, the Gazeta de Buenos Ayres.
- 1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Nationalist government destroyed dikes holding the Yellow River in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of Japanese forces, causing a flood that killed at least 400,000 people.
- 1998 – Three white supremacists murdered African American James Byrd Jr. by chaining him behind a pickup truck and dragging him along an asphalt road in Jasper, Texas.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (b. 1757) · Joseph von Fraunhofer (d. 1826) · Prince (b. 1958)
June 8: International Quds Day (2018); Night of Decree (Shia Islam, 2018)
- 218 – With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeated the forces of Roman emperor Macrinus.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army won a resounding victory at the Battle of Cross Keys, one of the two decisive battles in Jackson's Valley Campaign.
- 1929 – Margaret Bondfield (pictured) became the first female member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom when she was named Minister of Labour by Ramsay MacDonald.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road after being burned by napalm.
- 2008 – A Japanese man drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, then proceeded to stab at least 12 people before being apprehended.
Muhammad (d. 632) · William of York (d. 1154) · Bonnie Tyler (b. 1951)
June 9: Queen's Official Birthday in the United Kingdom and Tuvalu (2018)
- 747 – Abu Muslim initiated an open revolt against Umayyad rule, which was carried out under the sign of the Black Standard.
- 1523 – Simon de Colines, a Parisian printer, was fined for printing Biblical commentary by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples without obtaining prior approval.
- 1928 – Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith (pictured) and his crew landed their Southern Cross aircraft in Brisbane, completing the first ever trans-Pacific flight from the United States mainland to Australia.
- 1965 – The Viet Cong commenced combat with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the Battle of Dong Xoai, one of the largest battles in the Vietnam War.
- 2010 – A boy wearing a bomb committed a suicide attack at a wedding in Arghandab District, Kandahar, Afghanistan, killing at least 40 people and injuring 70 others.
Władysław IV Vasa (b. 1595) · Victoria Woodhull (d. 1927) · Sonam Kapoor (b. 1985) · Chandrashekhar Agashe (d. 1956)
- 1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick Barbarossa drowned in the Saleph River in Anatolia.
- 1692 – Bridget Bishop became the first person executed for witchcraft in the Salem witch trials.
- 1878 – The League of Prizren was officially founded "to struggle in arms to defend the wholeness of the territories of Albania".
- 1918 – World War I: Italian torpedo boats sank the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS Szent István (pictured) off the Dalmatian coast.
- 2008 – War in Afghanistan: An airstrike by the United States resulted in the deaths of eleven paramilitary members of the Pakistan Army Frontier Corps and eight Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Princess Caroline of Great Britain (b. 1713) · Sessue Hayakawa (b. 1886) · Margaret Abbott (d. 1955)
June 11: Night of Decree (Sunni Islam, 2018)
- 1345 – Inspecting a new prison without being escorted by his bodyguard, the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, was lynched by the prisoners.
- 1775 – The Battle of Machias, the first naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War, commenced in and around the port of Machias in what is now eastern Maine.
- 1917 – Alexander (pictured) was crowned King of Greece, succeeding his father Constantine, who had abdicated.
- 1955 – More than 80 people were killed by debris after cars driven by Pierre Levegh and Lance Macklin collided during the 23rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.
- 2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologised to the First Nations for past governments' policies of forced assimilation.
James Francis Edward Keith (b. 1696) · Ernie Nevers (b. 1903) · A. Thurairajah (d. 1994)
June 12: Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Loving Day in the United States
- 1240 – The Disputation of Paris began in the court of King Louis IX, in which four rabbis defended the Talmud against Nicholas Donin's accusations of blasphemy.
- 1775 – Governor Thomas Gage of the Province of Massachusetts Bay offered a general pardon to colonists who remained loyal to Britain.
- 1954 – Dominic Savio (pictured), who was 14 years old when he died, was canonised by Pope Pius XII, making him the youngest non-martyr saint in the Roman Catholic Church until 2017.
- 1978 – American serial killer David Berkowitz, popularly known as the "Son of Sam", was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison for each of six killings.
- 2001 – Robert Edward Dyer was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment for conducting a six-month long letter bomb campaign against the British supermarket chain Tesco.
John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel (d. 1435) · Thomas C. Hart (b. 1877) · Christine Sinclair (b. 1983)
- 1805 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition became the first European Americans to sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River.
- 1935 – In one of the biggest upsets in championship boxing, underdog James J. Braddock (pictured) defeated Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
- 1952 – Soviet warplanes shot down a Swedish military Douglas DC-3A-360 Skytrain carrying out signals intelligence gathering operations, which was followed by the shootdown of a Catalina flying boat searching for the Skytrain three days later.
- 1982 – Fahd became King of Saudi Arabia, succeeding his half-brother Khalid upon the latter's death.
- 2013 – Some of the closest advisors and collaborators of Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas were arrested for corruption.
Veronica Gambara (d. 1550) · W. B. Yeats (b. 1865) · Carolyn Eisele (b. 1902)
June 14: Flag Day in the United States; Liberation Day in the Falkland Islands (1982)
- 1381 – During the Peasants' Revolt in England, rebels entered the Tower of London, killing the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, whom they found inside.
- 1846 – Anglo-American settlers in Sonoma, California, began a rebellion against Mexico, proclaiming the California Republic and eventually raising a homemade flag with a bear and star.
- 1888 – The Kingdom of Sarawak, on the northwestern part of the island of Borneo, was made a British protectorate.
- 1940 – Second World War: Four days after the French government fled Paris, German forces occupied the French capital, a major accomplishment in the operation Fall Rot.
- 2017 – A fire destroyed Grenfell Tower (pictured) in Kensington, London, killing 72 people.
Henry Vane the Younger (d. 1662) · Leonidas Polk (d. 1864) · Emmeline Pankhurst (d. 1928)
- 1520 – Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine to censure propositions from Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and threaten him with excommunication.
- 1815 – The Duchess of Richmond held a ball in Brussels, Belgium, that was described as "the most famous ball in history".
- 1919 – After nearly 16 hours, the Vickers Vimy flown by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown crash-landed in County Galway, Ireland, to complete the first non-stop transatlantic flight.
- 1978 – King Hussein of Jordan married American Lisa Halaby, who became known as Queen Noor of Jordan (pictured).
- 2012 – Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.
Georg Joseph Vogler (b. 1749) · James K. Polk (d. 1849) · Choi Hong Hi (d. 2002)
June 16: International Surfing Day (2018)
- 1755 – After a two-week siege, the French commander of Fort Beauséjour surrendered to the British, marking the end of Father Le Loutre's War.
- 1883 – More than 180 out of 1,100 children died in the Victoria Hall stampede in Sunderland, England, when they ran down the stairs to collect gifts after a variety show.
- 1904 – Irish author James Joyce (pictured) began his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and subsequently used the date to set the actions for his 1922 novel Ulysses.
- 1960 – The thriller/horror film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on a novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, was released.
- 2012 – Liu Yang became the first Chinese woman in space, as a member of the Shenzhou 9 crew.
Johannes Tauler (d. 1361) · Mary Katherine Goddard (b. 1738) · Sydney Chapman (d. 1970)
- 1397 – The three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were joined into the Kalmar Union, a personal union under Erik of Pomerania.
- 1579 – Explorer Francis Drake landed in a region of present-day California, naming it New Albion and claiming it for England.
- 1843 – New Zealand Wars: An armed posse of Europeans set out from Nelson to arrest Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha and clashed with Māori, resulting in 26 deaths.
- 1940 – Second World War: Britain's worst maritime disaster occurred when at least 3,000 people were killed as a result of the troopship RMS Lancastria's sinking by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France.
- 2015 – A white supremacist committed a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people during a prayer service (memorial service pictured).
Carl Van Vechten (b. 1880) · Carmen Casco de Lara Castro (b. 1918) · Annie S. Swan (d. 1943)
- 618 – Li Yuan (pictured) declared himself to be emperor of a new Chinese dynasty known as Tang, which lasted for three centuries.
- 1178 – Five Canterbury monks observed what was possibly the formation of the Giordano Bruno crater, a small lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon.
- 1812 – The United States declared war against the United Kingdom, officially beginning the War of 1812.
- 1954 – Carlos Castillo Armas led a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored invasion force across the Guatemalan border, setting in motion the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.
- 1994 – The Troubles: Ulster Volunteer Force members attacked a crowded bar in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, with assault rifles, killing six.
Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464) · Max Immelmann (d. 1916) · Michael Hastings (d. 2013)
June 19: Juneteenth in some parts of the United States
- 1800 – War of the Second Coalition: General Jean Victor Marie Moreau led French forces to victory in the Battle of Höchstädt, opening the Danube passageway to Vienna.
- 1816 – The Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, rival fur-trading companies, engaged in a violent confrontation in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
- 1953 – Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (pictured) were executed as spies who passed U.S. nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.
- 1970 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international law treaty, was signed, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions.
Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall (d. 1312) · Mary Tenney Gray (b. 1833) · Nick Drake (b. 1948)
June 20: Flag Day in Argentina
- 451 – Flavius Aetius, with the help of Roman foederati, defeated Attila in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, and halted the invasion of Gaul by the Huns and their allies.
- 1837 – Victoria (pictured) succeeded to the British throne, starting a reign that lasted for more than 63 years.
- 1921 – Workers at the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills in the city of Madras, India, began a four-month strike.
- 1943 – Rioting between blacks and whites began on Belle Isle, Detroit, Michigan, and continued for three days.
- 1975 – The film Jaws was released, becoming the prototypical summer blockbuster and establishing the modern Hollywood business model.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (b. 1743) · Juan Larrea (d. 1847) · Frank Lampard (b. 1978)
June 21: June solstice (10:07 UTC, 2018); Fête de la Musique; National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada
- 1734 – A black slave known as Marie-Joseph Angélique, having been convicted of setting the fire that destroyed much of Montreal, was tortured and then hanged in New France.
- 1854 – Crimean War: During the first Battle of Bomarsund, Irish sailor Charles Davis Lucas threw an artillery shell off his ship before it exploded, earning him the first Victoria Cross.
- 1898 – In a bloodless event during the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam from Spain.
- 1948 – The Manchester Baby (replica pictured), the world's first stored-program computer, ran its first computer program.
- 1963 – Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was elected as Pope Paul VI.
Salomon Schweigger (d. 1622) · Claude Auchinleck (b. 1884) · Maureen Connolly (d. 1969)
- 1593 – Ottoman forces were crushingly defeated by the Habsburgs at Sisak (now in Croatia), triggering the Long War.
- 1813 – War of 1812: After learning of a forthcoming American attack, Laura Secord (pictured) set out on a 32 km (20 mi) journey from Queenston, Ontario, Upper Canada, on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon.
- 1948 – Over 800 West Indian immigrants disembarked the British troopship HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury, England, becoming known as the "Windrush generation".
- 1986 – Argentine footballer Diego Maradona scored both the "Hand of God goal" and the "Goal of the Century" against England during the quarter-final match of the FIFA World Cup.
- 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw struck a region of northwestern Iran, killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others, and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response.
Sayf al-Dawla (b. 916) · Howard Staunton (d. 1874) · Judy Garland (d. 1969)
June 23: Grand Duke's Official Birthday in Luxembourg
- 1594 – Anglo-Spanish War: During the Action of Faial, an English attempt to capture a Portuguese carrack, reputedly one of the richest ever to set sail from the Indies, caused it to explode with all the treasure lost.
- 1894 – Led by French historian Pierre de Coubertin (pictured), an international congress at the Sorbonne in Paris founded the International Olympic Committee to reinstate the ancient Olympic Games.
- 1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin died after being beaten into a coma in Highland Park, Michigan, U.S., by two automotive workers who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.
- 2013 – A group of militants stormed a high-altitude mountaineering base camp in Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan, and killed 11 people; 10 climbers and one local guide.
Li Congyi and Consort Dowager Wang (d. 947) · Aymer de Valence (d. 1324) · Frances McDormand (b. 1957)
- 1340 – Hundred Years' War: The English fleet commanded by Edward III almost totally destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys.
- 1571 – Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi established a council to govern the city of Manila (Manila Cathedral pictured), now the capital of the Philippines.
- 1943 – An attempt by white U.S. Army military police to arrest black servicemen at a pub in Bamber Bridge, England, turned into a firefight, leaving one dead and seven injured.
- 1973 – A fire was started at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., causing 32 deaths.
- 2010 – Julia Gillard assumed office as the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
Mustafa I (b. 1591) · Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (b. 1850) · Minor White (d. 1976)
June 25: Statehood Day in Croatia and Slovenia
- 1658 – Anglo-Spanish War: English colonial forces repelled a Spanish attack in the largest battle ever fought on the island of Jamaica.
- 1940 – World War II: The evacuation of nearly 200,000 Allied soldiers from French ports was completed.
- 1967 – More than an estimated 400 million people viewed Our World, the first live international satellite television production.
- 1978 – The rainbow flag (most common version pictured) representing gay pride first flew in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.
- 2013 – In response to a Freedom of Information request, the CIA admitted the existence of Area 51, the secretive military airfield in Nevada that has become a focus of various UFO and conspiracy theories.
Niels, King of Denmark (d. 1134) · David Douglas (b. 1799) · Sonia Sotomayor (b. 1954)
June 26: Day of the National Flag in Romania
- 1295 – Przemysł II was crowned King of Poland, the first coronation of a Polish ruler in 219 years.
- 1848 – French authorities suppressed the June Days uprising (pictured), in which workers rioted in response to plans to close the National Workshops.
- 1918 – World War I: The 26-day Battle of Belleau Wood near the Marne River in France ended with American forces finally clearing that forest of German troops.
- 1945 – At a conference in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations signed a charter establishing the United Nations.
- 2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the 14th Amendment.
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (b. 1699) · Daoud Corm (b. 1852) · Richie Powell (d. 1956)
- 678 – Pope Agatho, later venerated as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, began his pontificate.
- 1899 – A. E. J. Collins (pictured) scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket until 2016.
- 1954 – The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant was connected to the electrical grid, becoming the world's first nuclear power plant to produce electricity industrially.
- 1994 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan, killing 8 and injuring over 500 others.
- 2008 – Robert Mugabe was re-elected as President of Zimbabwe with an overwhelming majority after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters.
Ranjit Singh (d. 1839) · Rosalie Allen (b. 1924) · Svetlana Kuznetsova (b. 1985)
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The South Carolina militia repelled a British attack on Charleston.
- 1841 – Giselle (Anna Pavlova pictured in the title role), a ballet by French composer Adolphe Adam, was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
- 1911 – The first meteorite to suggest signs of aqueous processes on Mars fell to Earth in Abu Hummus, Egypt.
- 1978 – In Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, the U.S. Supreme Court barred quota systems in college admissions but declared that affirmative action programs giving advantage to minorities are constitutional.
- 2016 – Gunmen attacked Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, killing 45 people and injuring more than 230 others.
Primož Trubar (d. 1586) · Paul Broca (b. 1824) · Yvonne Sylvain (b. 1907)
- 1149 – Second Crusade: An army led by Nur ad-Din Zangi destroyed the forces of Antioch led by Prince Raymond.
- 1659 – Russo-Polish War: The hetman of Ukraine Ivan Vyhovsky and his allies defeated the armies of Russian Tsardom led by Aleksey Trubetskoy at the Battle of Konotop in the present-day Sumy Oblast of Ukraine.
- 1914 – During the second day of the anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo (aftermath pictured), numerous buildings owned by ethnic Serbs were vandalized and looted.
- 1950 – In one of the greatest upsets in tournament history, the United States defeated England during the 1950 FIFA World Cup.
- 1985 – The European Economic Community adopted the Flag of Europe, a flag previously adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955.
Rembert Dodoens (b. 1517) · Ralph Allen (d. 1764) · Kim Little (b. 1990)
June 30: Armed Forces Day in the United Kingdom (2018)
- 1559 – During a jousting match, King Henry II of France was mortally wounded when fragments of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery pierced his eye.
- 1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, making him one of the world's most famous tightrope walkers.
- 1894 – London's Tower Bridge (pictured), a combined bascule and suspension bridge over the River Thames, opened.
- 1960 – The Belgian Congo received its independence from colonial rule, beginning a period of instability that ended in the dictatorship of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu in 1965.
- 1985 – Ryan White, a poster child for HIV/AIDS in the U.S., was denied re-admittance to his school, having developed it due to his treatments for hemophilia.
William Oughtred (d. 1660) · Alberto Henschel (d. 1882) · Assia Djebar (b. 1936)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for July[edit]
July 1: Seventeenth of Tammuz (Judaism, 2018); Canada Day; Republic Day in Ghana (1960); Independence Day in Rwanda (1962)
- 1770 – Lexell's Comet passed closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.015 AU.
- 1943 – Tokyo City was dissolved, with its territory divided into the special wards of the newly created Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building pictured).
- 1999 – Legislative governance of Scotland was transferred from the Scottish Office in Westminster to the Scottish Parliament.
- 2008 – Rioting erupted in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in response to allegations of fraud surrounding the recent legislative elections.
Ygnacio del Valle (b. 1808) · Tanya Savicheva (d. 1944) · Princess Diana (b. 1961)
- 706 – In China, the bodies of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Empress Wu Zetian were interred in the Qianling Mausoleum, the only imperial Tang dynasty tombs that were untouched by grave robbers.
- 1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield was fatally shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C.
- 1900 – Finlandia, a tone poem by Jean Sibelius which forms the basis of one of the national songs of Finland, was first performed in Helsinki.
- 1950 – A mentally ill Buddhist monk set fire to the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji (restoration pictured), destroying what is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Japan.
- 2013 – The International Astronomical Union announced that the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto would be named Kerberos and Styx respectively.
Denmark Vesey (d. 1822) · Harriet Brooks (b. 1876) · Ernest Hemingway (d. 1961)
July 3: Independence Day in Belarus
- 324 – Roman emperor Constantine the Great defeated former colleague Licinius in the Battle of Adrianople.
- 1754 – French and Indian War: George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania, the only military surrender in his entire career.
- 1938 – On the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Eternal Light Peace Memorial (pictured).
- 1970 – The Troubles: The British Army imposed the Falls Curfew on Belfast, Northern Ireland, which resulted in greater Irish republican resistance.
- 1988 – United States Navy warship USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
William Jones (d. 1749) · Leoš Janáček (b. 1854) · Bo Xilai (b. 1949)
July 4: Republic Day in the Philippines (1946); Independence Day in the United States (1776)
- 1054 – Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance of a "guest star", later identified as the supernova that created the Crab Nebula.
- 1776 – In Philadelphia, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence (signing pictured), announcing that the thirteen American colonies were no longer a part of the British Empire.
- 1918 – World War I: An Allied force led by the Australian general John Monash was victorious in the Battle of Hamel, demonstrating the effectiveness of combined arms techniques in trench warfare.
- 1943 – The aircraft carrying Władysław Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, crashed, killing him and fifteen others, leading to several conspiracy theories.
- 1954 – In what is known as "The Miracle of Bern", West Germany defeated Hungary 3–2 to win the FIFA World Cup.
Philippe de Monte (d. 1603) · Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (b. 1715) · Geraldo Rivera (b. 1943)
- 1594 – The Portuguese governor of Ceylon Pedro Lopes de Sousa began a failed attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Kandy.
- 1775 – The Second Continental Congress of Britain's Thirteen Colonies adopted the Olive Branch Petition in the hopes of avoiding war with Great Britain.
- 1937 – The Hormel Foods Corporation introduced Spam, the canned precooked meat product that would eventually enter into pop culture, folklore, and urban legend.
- 1948 – Aneurin Bevan, the Health Minister of the United Kingdom, launched the National Health Service, one of the major social reforms following the Second World War.
- 2012 – The Shard (pictured) in London was inaugurated as the tallest building in Europe, with a height of 310 m (1,020 ft), but was surpassed by Moscow's Mercury City Tower four months later.
Sarah Siddons (b. 1755) · W. T. Stead (b. 1849) · Albrecht Kossel (d. 1927)
July 6: Independence Day in Malawi (1964); Statehood Day in Lithuania (1253); the Festival of San Fermín begins in Pamplona, Spain
- 1483 – The last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, Richard III (pictured), was crowned King of England.
- 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: A Royal Navy squadron attempted to eliminate a smaller French Navy squadron at Algeciras before they could join their Spanish allies.
- 1940 – The Story Bridge in Brisbane, the longest cantilever bridge in Australia, was opened by Sir Leslie Wilson, Governor of Queensland.
- 1978 – A sleeping car train at Taunton, England, caught fire, killing 12 people and causing British Rail to install state-of-the art fire prevention measures.
- 2013 – Gunmen attacked a secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe State, Nigeria, killing at least 42 people, mostly students.
Eino Leino (b. 1878) · Nancy Reagan (b. 1921) · Jagjivan Ram (d. 1986)
- 1575 – Anglo-Scottish Wars: In the last major battle between England and Scotland, a "Truce Day" at Carter Bar near Redesdale degenerated into a fight where the English side were routed.
- 1834 – In New York City, four nights of rioting against abolitionists began, fueled by rumors that they were encouraging miscegenation.
- 1937 – The Peel Commission published a report stating the British Mandate for Palestine had become unworkable and recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states.
- 1963 – The police of Ngô Đình Nhu, brother and chief political adviser of President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm, attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest during the Buddhist crisis.
- 2005 – Suicide bombers killed 52 people in a series of four explosions on London's public transport system (emergency responders pictured).
Momchil (d. 1345) · Mary Surratt (d. 1865) · Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (b. 1905)
- 1663 – King Charles II of England granted John Clarke the Rhode Island Royal Charter, described by one historian as "the grandest instrument of human liberty ever constructed."
- 1879 – Led by George W. De Long, the ill-fated Jeannette Expedition departed San Francisco to reach the North Pole by pioneering a route through the Bering Strait.
- 1898 – American con artist and gangster Soapy Smith (pictured) was killed in Skagway, Alaska, when an argument with fellow gang members turned into an unexpected gunfight.
- 1962 – Following student protests at Rangoon University, Burmese General Ne Win ordered the demolition of the school's Students Union building.
- 2014 – In response to the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers, Israel launched a military operation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Alberto Bolognetti (b. 1538) · Käthe Kollwitz (b. 1867) · Sky Ferreira (b. 1992)
July 9: Independence Day in Argentina (1816)
- 1572 – Nineteen Catholic friars and clerics were hanged in Gorkum during the 16th-century religious wars in the Low Countries.
- 1868 – The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, including the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, was ratified by the minimum required twenty-eight states.
- 1943 – World War II: The Allies began their invasion of Sicily (American tank pictured), a large scale amphibious and airborne operation, followed by six weeks of land combat.
- 1958 – A 525 m (1,722 ft) high megatsunami, the highest ever recorded, struck Lituya Bay, Alaska, U.S.
- 2008 – Under the belief that Israel and the United States were planning to attack its nuclear program, Iran conducted the Great Prophet III missile test and war games exercise.
Jan van Eyck (d. 1441) · Elizabeth of Austria (b. 1526) · Tom Hanks (b. 1956)
- 1553 – Four days after the death of her predecessor, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey (pictured) was officially proclaimed Queen of England, beginning her reign as "The Nine Days' Queen".
- 1806 – Indian sepoys mutinied against the East India Company at Vellore Fort, killing at least 100 British troops.
- 1940 – The Luftwaffe began attacks on British convoys in the English Channel to start the Battle of Britain.
- 1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of American oil magnate J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome.
- 2011 – The Russian river cruise liner Bulgaria was caught in a storm in Tatarstan on the Volga River and sank in several minutes, resulting in 122 deaths.
Camille Pissarro (b. 1830) · Ima Hogg (b. 1882) · Calogero Vizzini (d. 1954)
- 1804 – U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton during a duel (pistols pictured) in Weehawken, New Jersey.
- 1833 – Noongar warrior Yagan, wanted for leading attacks on white colonists in Western Australia, was killed, becoming a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers.
- 1848 – London Waterloo station, Britain's busiest railway station by passenger usage, was opened by the London and South Western Railway.
- 1991 – Shortly after takeoff from King Abdulaziz International Airport, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 caught fire and crashed, killing all 261 people on board.
- 2011 – An explosion at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base killed 13 people, including the head of the Cyprus Navy.
Nicole Oresme (d. 1382) · Annie Armstrong (b. 1850) · Alessia Cara (b. 1996)
- 927 – Æthelstan, King of England, secured the submission of four northern rulers: Constantine II of Scotland, Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, Ealdred of Bamburgh, and Owain ap Dyfnwal of Strathclyde
- 1843 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, proclaimed a revelation recommending polygamy.
- 1918 – An explosion in the ammunition magazine of the Japanese battleship Kawachi (pictured) resulted in the loss of over 600 officers and crewmen.
- 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: Israel Defense Forces officer Yitzhak Rabin signed the order to expel Palestinians from the towns of Lod and Ramla.
- 1971 – The Australian Aboriginal Flag, one of the official flags of Australia, was flown for the first time.
Margaret Theresa of Spain (b. 1651) · Gertrude Bell (d. 1926) · Sanjay Manjrekar (b. 1965)
- 1863 – Four days of rioting began in New York City by opponents of new laws passed by the United States Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War.
- 1878 – At the conclusion of the Congress of Berlin, the major powers in Europe signed the Treaty of Berlin, redrawing the map of the Balkans.
- 1962 – In an unprecedented action, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (pictured) dismissed seven members of his Cabinet.
- 2008 – War in Afghanistan: Taliban guerrillas attacked NATO troops in the far eastern province of Nuristan.
Afonso, Prince of Portugal (d. 1491) · Margaret Murray (b. 1863) · Kenneth Clark (b. 1903)
July 14: Bastille Day in France (1789); Festino of Saint Rosalia begins in Palermo, Italy
- 1789 – French Revolution: Parisians stormed the Bastille (pictured), freeing its inmates and taking the prison's large quantities of arms and ammunition.
- 1791 – The Priestley Riots began, in which Joseph Priestley and other religious Dissenters were driven out of Birmingham, England.
- 1958 – Faisal II, the last king of Iraq, was overthrown by a military coup d'état led by Abd al-Karim Qasim.
- 2003 – In an effort to discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an op-ed critical of the invasion of Iraq, his wife Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative was leaked to and published by Washington Post columnist Robert Novak.
- 2015 – The New Horizons probe became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto.
James O'Hara, 2nd Baron Tyrawley (d. 1774) · Kate M. Gordon (b. 1861) · Alphonse Mucha (d. 1939)
- 1410 – The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald, the decisive engagement of the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War.
- 1815 – Aboard HMS Bellerophon, Napoleon surrendered to Royal Navy Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland to finally end the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1916 – William Boeing incorporated the Pacific Aero Products Co., which was later renamed Boeing.
- 1983 – Armenian extremist organization ASALA bombed the Turkish Airlines check-in counter at Orly Airport, killing 8 and injuring 55, as part of its campaign for the recognition of and reparations for the Armenian Genocide.
- 2006 – The online social networking and news service Twitter was launched (early sketch pictured).
Jean-Antoine Houdon (d. 1828) · Betty Wagoner (b. 1930) · Donald Mackay (d. 1977)
July 16: Marine Day in Japan (2018)
- 1232 – A local mosque elected Muhammad ibn Al-Ahmar, who later established the last Muslim state in Spain, as ruler of Arjona.
- 1790 – U.S. President George Washington signed the Residence Act, selecting a new permanent site along the Potomac River for the capital of the United States, which later became Washington, D.C.
- 1994 – Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 began hitting the planet Jupiter (impact site pictured), with the first one causing a fireball which reached a peak temperature of about 24,000 K.
- 2008 – A tainted milk powder scandal broke in China which ultimately involved an estimated 300,000 victims, the vast majority infants, with 54,000 hospitalized with kidney problems and 6 deaths.
An-Nasir Ahmad of Egypt (d. 1344) · Ellen G. White (d. 1915) · Albert Kesselring (d. 1960)
July 17: Constitution Day in South Korea (1948)
- 1771 – Dene men, acting as guides to Samuel Hearne on his exploration of the Coppermine River in present-day Nunavut, Canada, massacred a group of about 20 Copper Inuit.
- 1863 – The New Zealand Wars resumed as British forces in New Zealand led by General Duncan Cameron began their Invasion of the Waikato.
- 1918 – RMS Carpathia, which had rescued the survivors of the RMS Titanic sinking in 1912, was sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of five crew.
- 1945 – Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Joseph Stalin (all pictured), leaders of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union respectively, met in Potsdam to decide what should be done with post-war Germany.
- 1998 – A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake devastated several villages in Papua New Guinea, killing more than 2,100 people, and destroying the homes of thousands more.
Dorothea Dix (d. 1887) · Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio (b. 1918) · Wong Kar-wai (b. 1958)
- 1290 – Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England.
- 1806 – A gunpowder magazine explosion in Birgu, Malta, killed an estimated 200 people.
- 1949 – Francisco Javier Arana, Chief of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, was killed in a shootout with supporters of President Juan José Arévalo.
- 1966 – Angered by racism and poverty, African American residents of the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, began to riot for six days.
- 2014 – Silvio Berlusconi (pictured), the former Prime Minister of Italy, who had previously been found guilty of paying for an underage prostitute, had his conviction overturned on appeal.
Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) · Clare Stevenson (b. 1903) · Priyanka Chopra (b. 1982)
- 998 – Arab–Byzantine wars: After an initial Byzantine victory in the Battle of Apamea, a lone Kurdish rider managed to kill Byzantine commander Damian Dalassenos, allowing Fatimid troops to turn the tide of the battle.
- 1843 – SS Great Britain (pictured), the first ocean-going ship that had both an iron hull and a screw propeller, was launched in Bristol, England.
- 1903 – French cyclist Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France.
- 1989 – After suffering an uncontained failure of an engine which destroyed all of its hydraulic systems, United Airlines Flight 232 broke up during an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, U.S., killing 111 people.
- 2014 – Unidentified gunmen perpetrated an armed assault against an Egyptian military checkpoint in the Libyan Desert, killing at least 22 border guards.
Philippa of Lancaster (d. 1415) · Giuseppe Castiglione (b. 1688) · Khawaja Nazimuddin (b. 1894)
July 20: Independence Day in Colombia (1810)
- 792 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: Bulgarian forces under Kardam routed the Byzantines, forcing them to retreat to Constantinople.
- 1807 – French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce received a patent for their Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines.
- 1922 – The German protectorate of Togoland was divided into the League of Nations mandates of French Togoland and British Togoland.
- 1968 – The first Special Olympics games (athletes at 2013 games pictured) were held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
- 2001 – Twenty-three-year-old Italian anti-globalist Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by a police officer while protesting during the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italy.
Ibn Muqla (d. 940) · Miron Cristea (b. 1868) · Chris Cornell (b. 1964)
- 230 – Pope Pontian began his pontificate, succeeding Urban I.
- 905 – Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured during his attempt to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I and blinded.
- 1925 – American high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty (trial pictured) of violating Tennessee's Butler Act by teaching evolution in class.
- 1973 – Mossad agents mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter as a result of an assassination attempt in Lillehammer, Norway, believing he had been involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
- 2012 – Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç became the first person in history to complete a solo human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.
Charles Tristan, marquis de Montholon (b. 1783) · Russell Lee (b. 1903) · Rilwanu Lukman (d. 2014)
July 22: Feast day of Mary Magdalene; Tisha B'Av (Judaism, 2018); Parents' Day in the United States (2018); Pi Approximation Day
- 838 – Arab–Byzantine wars: The forces of the Abbasid Caliphate defeated Byzantine Empire troops, led by Emperor Theophilos himself, at the Battle of Anzen near present-day Dazman, Turkey.
- 1793 – Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie inscribed his name on a rock near Dean Channel (pictured) after becoming the first recorded person to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico.
- 1975 – Stanley Forman took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo Fire Escape Collapse, which spurred action to improve the safety of fire escapes across the United States.
- 2005 – London metropolitan police killed Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian immigrant, after misidentifying him as being involved in the previous day's failed bombing attempts on the city.
Mary Wriothesley, Countess of Southampton (b. 1552) · Emma Lazarus (b. 1849) · Indra Lal Roy (d. 1918)
July 23: Revolution Day in Egypt (1952)
- 1829 – William Austin Burt was awarded a patent for the typographer, the first practical typewriting machine.
- 1860 – The trial in the Eastbourne manslaughter began, which became an important legal precedent in the United Kingdom for discussions of corporal punishment in schools.
- 1921 – The Communist Party of China was founded at the inaugural National Congress in Shanghai.
- 1968 – In Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., a shootout between police and a Black Power group began, which sparked three days of rioting.
- 2001 – Megawati Sukarnoputri (pictured) became the first female president of Indonesia after the People's Consultative Assembly removed Abdurrahman Wahid.
John Day (d. 1584) · Vera Rubin (b. 1928) · Olivia Manning (d. 1980)
July 24: Pioneer Day in Utah (1847)
- 1701 – French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac established Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit (pictured), which later grew into the city of Detroit.
- 1910 – Ottoman forces captured the city of Shkodër to put down the Albanian revolt of 1910.
- 1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne was signed to settle the Anatolian part of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, establishing the boundaries of modern Turkey.
- 1998 – A gunman entered the United States Capitol and opened fire, killing two police officers.
- 2014 – Fifty minutes after departing Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Air Algérie Flight 5017 disappeared from radar, and its wreckage was found the next day in Mali, with no survivors of the 116 people aboard.
Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury (b. 1660) · Martin Van Buren (d. 1862) · Kini Kapahu Wilson (d. 1962)
- 306 – Constantine the Great was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops after the death of Constantius Chlorus.
- 1861 – American Civil War: The United States Congress passed the Crittenden–Johnson Resolution, asserting that the war was solely to prevent the dissolution of the nation, although this was repealed five months later.
- 1893 – The Corinth Canal (pictured), which bisects the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, was formally opened, connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea's Saronic Gulf.
- 1978 – Two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists were killed in a police ambush at Cerro Maravilla in Ponce.
- 2000 – Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde en route from Paris to New York City, crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all one hundred passengers and nine crew members, as well as four people on the ground.
Maxfield Parrish (b. 1870) · Erika Steinbach (b. 1943) · Louise Brown (b. 1978)
- 1533 – During the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, conquistador Francisco Pizarro executed the last independent emperor, Atahualpa, in Cajamarca.
- 1887 – L. L. Zamenhof published Unua Libro, the first publication to describe Esperanto, a constructed international language.
- 1918 – Emmy Noether (pictured) introduced what became known as Noether's theorem, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy, at Göttingen, Germany
- 1968 – In South Vietnam, after coming second to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in a rigged presidential election in 1967, Trương Đình Dzu was jailed by a military court for illicit currency transactions.
- 2016 – In one of the most deadly crimes committed in modern Japanese history, a former employee went on a knife rampage at a care home for disabled people in Sagamihara, killing 19 people and wounding 26 others.
Justin Holland (b. 1819) · Howard Vernon (d. 1921) · Ana María Matute (b. 1925)
July 27: Tu B'Av (Judaism, 2018)
- 678 – Sclaveni attackers were forced to give up their siege of the Byzantine city of Thessalonica, being unable to penetrate the city's defenses.
- 1214 – Philip II of France decisively won the Battle of Bouvines, the conclusive battle of the 1213–1214 Anglo-French War.
- 1949 – The de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner to reach production, made its maiden flight.
- 1953 – An armistice was signed (pictured) to end hostilities in the Korean War, officially making the division of Korea indefinite by creating an approximately 4 km (2.5 mi) wide demilitarized zone across the Korean Peninsula.
- 2002 – A Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi Su-27 aircraft crashed during an aerobatics presentation at an airshow near Lviv, Ukraine, killing 77 people and injuring over 500 others.
Conrad II of Italy (d. 1101) · Elizabeth Plankinton (b. 1853) · Alfred Duraiappah (d. 1975)
- 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after having been arrested the previous day.
- 1821 – Peruvian War of Independence: Argentine general José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from Spain.
- 1939 – During an excavation of a ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England, archæologists discovered a helmet (pictured) likely belonging to King Rædwald of East Anglia.
- 1996 – The remains of the prehistoric Kennewick Man were discovered on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, U.S.
- 2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army announced an end to its armed campaign to overthrow British rule in Northern Ireland and create a United Ireland.
Lucy Burns (b. 1879) · Baruch Samuel Blumberg (b. 1925) · Ahmed Sofa (d. 2001)
- 1148 – The Siege of Damascus ended in a decisive victory for the Muslims, leading to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.
- 1818 – French physicist Augustin Fresnel (pictured) submitted his "Memoir on the Diffraction of Light", providing strong support for the wave theory of light.
- 1914 – The first shots of World War I were fired by the Austro-Hungarian river monitor SMS Bodrog upon Serbian defences near Belgrade.
- 1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law, establishing a new federal non-military space agency known as NASA.
- 1981 – An estimated worldwide television audience of 750 million people watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Ivan Aivazovsky (b. 1817) · Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil (b. 1846) · Edward Gierek (d. 2001)
- 1656 – Led by King Charles X Gustav, the armies of Sweden and Brandenburg defeated the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth near Warsaw.
- 1865 – Off the coast of Crescent City, California, U.S., the steamship Brother Jonathan (pictured) struck an uncharted rock and sank, killing 225 people; its cargo of a large number of gold coins was not retrieved until 1996.
- 1930 – Uruguay defeated Argentina at Estadio Centenario in Montevideo to win the first Football World Cup.
- 1981 – Amid widespread economic crisis and food shortages in Poland, up to 50,000 people, mostly women and children, took part in the largest of the hunger demonstrations in Łódź.
- 2014 – At least 151 people were killed when heavy rains triggered a landslide in Pune district, Maharashtra, India.
Emily Brontë (b. 1818) · Harold Davidson (d. 1937) · Katherine Reutter (b. 1988)
July 31: Feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola; Ka Hae Hawaiʻi Day (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii
- 1200 or 1201 – John Komnenos the Fat briefly seized the throne of the Byzantine Empire from Alexios III Angelos, but he was caught that night and executed.
- 1777 – The Second Continental Congress passed a resolution allowing French nobleman the Marquis de Lafayette to enter the American revolutionary forces as a major general.
- 1954 – A team of Italian climbers became the first to reach the summit of K2 (pictured), the world's second-highest mountain.
- 1975 – The Troubles: In a botched paramilitary attack, three members of the popular Miami Showband and two Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen were killed in County Down, Northern Ireland.
- 1991 – Soviet Special Purpose Police Unit troops killed seven Lithuanian customs officials in Medininkai in the most serious attack of their campaign against Lithuanian border posts.
Roger Wilbraham (d. 1616) · Jean-Gaspard Deburau (b. 1796) · Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (d. 1948)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for August[edit]
August 1: Lughnasadh/Imbolc (Gaels and neopagans in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres respectively)
- 902 – Led by Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, the Aghlabids captured the Byzantine stronghold of Taormina, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
- 1715 – Introduced during a time of civil disturbance in Great Britain, the Riot Act came into force, authorising authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled.
- 1907 – Robert Baden-Powell (pictured) held the first Scout camp at Brownsea Island in Dorset, England, beginning the Scouting movement.
- 1981 – At 12:01 AM (ET), "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles became the first music video broadcast on the American cable television network MTV.
- 2004 – Nearly 400 people died in a supermarket fire in Asunción, Paraguay, when exits were locked to prevent people from stealing merchandise.
Æthelwold of Winchester (d. 984) · Maria Mitchell (b. 1818) · Alan Moore (b. 1914)
August 2: Republic Day in Macedonia
- 216 BC – Second Punic War: Outnumbered Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated a Roman army, near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy.
- 1790 – The first United States Census was conducted, with the United States residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.
- 1914 – World War I: Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (pictured), and Prime Minister Paul Eyschen surrendered to the invading German army and the nation remained occupied for the rest of the war.
- 1932 – At the California Institute of Technology, Carl David Anderson proved the existence of antimatter when he discovered the positron.
- 1990 – Iraq invaded Kuwait, overrunning the Kuwaiti military within two days, and eventually sparking the outbreak of the Gulf War seven months later.
Bertha Lutz (b. 1894) · Betsy Bloomingdale (b. 1922) · Jean-Pierre Melville (d. 1973)
- 1857 – Indian Rebellion of 1857: An eight-day siege of a fortified outbuilding occupied by 68 people by a force of over 10,000 ended when a relief party dispersed the besieging forces.
- 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaimed a republic, which existed for only ten days before Ottoman forces destroyed the town.
- 1913 – A strike in Wheatland, California, orchestrated by agricultural workers degenerated into a riot, becoming one of the first major farm labor confrontations in California.
- 1936 – African American athlete Jesse Owens (pictured) won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination at the Olympics.
- 2005 – President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while he was attending the funeral of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
Thomas Francis Meagher (b. 1823) · George Inness (d. 1894) · Nadia Ali (b. 1980)
August 4: Constitution Day in the Cook Islands (1965)
- 1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: A combined Anglo-Dutch fleet under the command of George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles captured Gibraltar (pictured) from Spain.
- 1783 – An eruption of Mount Asama, one of the most active volcanoes in Japan, killed roughly 1,400 people and exacerbated a famine, resulting in another 20,000 deaths.
- 1914 – World War I: Adhering to the terms in the 1839 Treaty of London, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in response to the latter's invasion of Belgium.
- 1964 – A second U.S. Navy destroyer was reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin, leading Congress to authorize the use of military force in Southeast Asia.
- 1995 – The Croatian Army initiated Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence and the largest European land battle since the Second World War.
Henry I of France (d. 1060) · John Venn (b. 1834) · David Lange (b. 1942)
August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian Defenders in Croatia
- 1278 – King Alfonso X of Castile was forced to abandon the Siege of Algeciras, the first of many on the city during the Spanish Reconquista.
- 1600 – Scottish nobleman John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, was killed during what was most likely a failed attempt to kidnap King James VI.
- 1888 – Bertha Benz made the first long-distance automobile trip, driving 106 km (66 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in a Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
- 1916 – First World War: The British Empire's Sinai and Palestine Campaign began with a victory in the Battle of Romani.
- 1962 – Actress and model Marilyn Monroe (pictured) was found dead in her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, an event that has become the center of one of the most debated conspiracy theories.
Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe (d. 1799) · Ivar Aasen (b. 1813) · Soichiro Honda (d. 1991)
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest battles in the North American theater of the war, was fought about 6 mi (9.7 km) east of Fort Stanwix, New York.
- 1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.
- 1997 – On approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport in Guam, Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard.
- 2008 – Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi (pictured) was ousted from power by a group of high-ranking generals that he had dismissed from office several hours earlier.
- 2011 – Following the killing of a man by the Metropolitan Police of London, thousands of mostly young males rioted in several London boroughs and in cities and towns across England.
James Henry Greathead (b. 1844) · William McCrea (b. 1948) · Vera Farmiga (b. 1973)
- 768 – The papacy of Stephen III, who convened the Lateran Council of 769, began.
- 1679 – Le Griffon (pictured), a barque built by René-Robert de La Salle, began its journey to be the first sailing ship to navigate the upper Great Lakes.
- 1933 – Iraqi troops slaughtered 600–3,000 Assyrians during the Simele massacre in the Dahuk and Mosul districts.
- 1998 – Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,000 others.
- 2008 – Fighting between the Georgian and South Ossetian separatist forces escalated to the six-day Russo-Georgian War.
Jin Shengtan (d. 1661) · Huntley Wright (b. 1868) · Rebecca Kleefisch (b. 1975)
- 1264 – Reconquista: In the early stages of the Mudéjar revolt of 1264–1266, Muslim rebels captured the alcázar of the city of Jerez, holding it for about two months.
- 1576 – The cornerstone of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory Uraniborg (pictured) was laid on the island of Hven.
- 1918 – The Battle of Amiens began in Amiens, France, marking the start of the Allied Powers' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
- 1988 – A series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots, which became known as the 8888 Uprising, began against the one-party state of the Burma Socialist Programme Party.
- 2008 – A EuroCity train en route to Prague struck a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the track near Studénka station and derailed, killing 8 people and injuring 64 others.
Seo Hui (d. 998) · James Tissot (d. 1902) · Esther Williams (b. 1921)
August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa
- 1902 – Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- 1945 – World War II: USAAF bomber Bockscar dropped a "Fat Man" atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan (pictured).
- 1956 – An estimated 20,000 women marched on Pretoria, South Africa, to protest the introduction of the Apartheid pass laws for black women in 1952.
- 1988 – Wayne Gretzky was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in one of the most controversial player transactions in ice hockey history.
- 2001 – A suicide bomber attacked a Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, killing 15 people and wounding 130 others.
Michael the Brave (d. 1601) · Eileen Gray (b. 1878) · Philip Larkin (b. 1922)
- 1755 – The first wave of the Expulsion of the Acadians from the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces by the British began with the Bay of Fundy Campaign at Chignecto.
- 1793 – The Louvre (Louvre Pyramid pictured), today the world's most visited museum, officially opened in Paris with an exhibition of 537 paintings and 184 objets d'art.
- 1897 – German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovered an improved way of synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
- 1953 – First Indochina War: The French Union withdrew its forces from Operation Camargue against the Viet Minh in central modern-day Vietnam.
- 1988 – Japanese American internment: The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 became law, authorizing US$20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee.
Madeleine of Valois (b. 1520) · Suzanne Collins (b. 1962) · Jennifer Paterson (d. 1999)
August 11: Independence Day in Chad (1960)
- 106 – The region of Dacia, comprising parts of modern Romania, became a province of the Roman Empire.
- 1492 – The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Pope Innocent VIII.
- 1952 – King Talal of Jordan was forced to abdicate due to health reasons and was succeeded by his eldest son Hussein.
- 1973 – At a party in the recreation room of a New York City apartment building, DJ Kool Herc (pictured) began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip-hop music.
- 2012 – At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.
Hamnet Shakespeare (buried 1596) · William W. Chapman (b. 1808) · Jacqueline Fernandez (b. 1985)
- 1099 – The First Crusade concluded with the Battle of Ascalon and Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah retreating to Egypt.
- 1883 – The last known quagga (example pictured), a subspecies of the plains zebra, died at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
- 1914 – World War I: Despite the Belgian victory in the Battle of Halen, they were ultimately unable to stop the German invasion of Belgium.
- 1948 – About 600 unarmed Pashtuns in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, protesting the arrests of the leaders of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, were massacred by police and militia forces.
- 1990 – American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered near Faith, South Dakota, U.S.
Abraham Zacuto (b. 1452) · Lord Castlereagh (d. 1822) · George Soros (b. 1930)
- 554 – As a reward for over 60 years of service to the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Justinian I granted Liberius extensive estates in Italy.
- 1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: The Duke of Marlborough led Allied forces to a crucial victory in the Battle of Blenheim.
- 1868 – A major earthquake near Arica, Peru (now in Chile), caused an estimated 25,000 casualties, and the subsequent tsunami caused considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand.
- 1918 – Opha May Johnson (pictured) became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.
- 1977 – Members of the UK's far-right National Front party (NF) clashed with anti-NF demonstrators in Lewisham, London, resulting in 214 arrests and at least 111 injuries.
Al-Muktafi (d. 908) · George Grove (b. 1820) · Jules Massenet (d. 1912)
August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)
- 1842 – American Indian Wars: American general William J. Worth declared the Second Seminole War to be over.
- 1901 – Gustave Whitehead allegedly made a successful powered flight of his Number 21 aircraft in Fairfield, Connecticut, U.S.; if true, this predates the Wright brothers by two years.
- 1941 – After a secret meeting in Newfoundland, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (both pictured) issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post-World War II world despite the fact that the United States had yet to enter the war.
- 1973 – The current Constitution of Pakistan came into effect.
- 2010 – The inaugural Youth Olympic Games opened in Singapore for athletes between 14 and 18 years old.
Doc Holliday (b. 1851) · Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (b. 1892) · Hugh Trumble (d. 1938)
August 15: Independence Day in India (1947)
- 718 – Forces of the Umayyad Caliphate abandoned their year-long siege of Constantinople, causing the caliphate to give up its goal of conquering the Byzantine Empire.
- 1511 – Afonso de Albuquerque captured the city of Malacca, giving Portugal control over the Strait of Malacca, through which all sea-going trade between China and India was concentrated.
- 1907 – Raphael Morgan was ordained as what is believed to be the first Black Orthodox clergyman in America.
- 1948 – The Republic of Korea was established with Syngman Rhee (pictured) as its first president.
- 1998 – A car bomb attack carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army killed 29 people and injured approximately 220 others in Omagh, Northern Ireland.
Nikephoros Phokas Barytrachelos (d. 1022) · Charles Comiskey (b. 1859) · Rosalía Mera (d. 2013)
- 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: King Henry VIII of England and his Imperial allies defeated French cavalry, who were then forced to retreat.
- 1812 – War of 1812: American General William Hull surrendered Fort Detroit without a fight to a combined British–Native American force.
- 1906 – An estimated 8.2 MW earthquake hit Valparaíso, Chile, killing 3,882 people.
- 1962 – The Beatles fired drummer Pete Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr (pictured).
- 2015 – Suicide bombers assassinated Pakistani politician Shuja Khanzada and killed at least 21 others at his home.
- 2018 RUSSELL Morrison retires from football after 22 seasons with Oxley United.
John II of Trebizond (d. 1297) · Ramakrishna (d. 1886) · Angela Bassett (b. 1958)
August 17: Qixi Festival (Chinese calendar, 2018); Independence Day in Indonesia (1945)
- 1424 – Hundred Years' War: The allied English–Burgundian force gained a strategically important victory in the bloody Battle of Verneuil (pictured) in Normandy, France.
- 1560 – The Scottish Parliament approved a Protestant confession of faith to initiate the Scottish Reformation and disestablish Catholicism as the national religion.
- 1916 – World War I: Romania signed a secret treaty with the Entente Powers to enter the war in return for territorial considerations.
- 1945 – Animal Farm, George Orwell's satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, was first published.
- 2008 – Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, setting the record for the most golds won by an individual in a single games.
Matthew Boulton (d. 1809) · Gene Stratton-Porter (b. 1863) · Korrie Layun Rampan (b. 1953)
- 1572 – French Wars of Religion: Margaret of Valois (pictured) married Huguenot King Henry of Navarre, in an attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics.
- 1868 – Astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen discovered helium while analysing the chromosphere of the sun during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India.
- 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in America.
- 1948 – Australia won the fifth Test of the 1948 Ashes series, becoming the first Test cricket team to go undefeated in England, earning them the nickname "The Invincibles".
- 2008 – President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf resigned under impeachment pressure.
Knut Alvsson (d. 1502) · Baji Rao I (b. 1700) · Ruth Norman (b. 1900)
- 1745 – Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands to begin the Jacobite rising of 1745.
- 1964 – Over 17,000 fans saw the Beatles on the opening date of the group's first nationwide U.S. tour.
- 1978 – The Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, was set on fire (damage pictured), leading to the death of at least 420 people.
- 1991 – A Hasidic man accidentally struck two Guyanese immigrant children with his car in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York City, initiating three days of rioting.
- 2005 – Thunderstorms in southern Ontario, Canada, spawned at least three tornadoes that caused over C$500 million in damage.
Edward Boscawen (b. 1711) · Gustave Caillebotte (b. 1848) · Linus Pauling (d. 1994)
August 20: Day of Arafah (Islam, 2018); Day of Restoration of Independence in Estonia (1991); St. Stephen's Day in Hungary
- 636 – Rashidun forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid took control of Syria and Palestine in the Battle of Yarmouk, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests after the death of Muhammad.
- 1710 – War of the Spanish Succession: The Spanish-Bourbon army commanded by the Marquis de Bay was soundly defeated by a multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg.
- 1909 – Pluto was photographed for the first time at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, U.S., 21 years before it was officially discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.
- 1950 – Korean War: United Nations forces repelled an attempt by North Korea to capture the city of Taegu.
- 1988 – Fires (pictured) in the United States' Yellowstone National Park ravaged more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.
Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (d. 1651) · Rudolf Bultmann (b. 1884) · Mika Yamamoto (d. 2012)
August 21: First day of Eid al-Adha (Islam, 2018)
- 1140 – Song dynasty general Yue Fei defeated an army led by Jin dynasty general Wuzhu at the Battle of Yancheng during the Jin–Song Wars.
- 1831 – Nat Turner (pictured) led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, U.S., which was suppressed about 48 hours later.
- 1944 – World War II: A combined Canadian–Polish force captured the strategically important town of Falaise, France, in the final offensive of the Battle of Normandy.
- 1993 – NASA lost contact with its Mars Observer spacecraft, three days before orbital insertion.
- 2015 – Passengers subdued an attacker in a train heading from Amsterdam to Paris, resulting in four injuries, including the attacker himself.
John Claypole (b. 1625) · John MacCulloch (d. 1835) · Eve Torres (b. 1984)
- 1642 – King Charles I raised the royal standard at Nottingham, marking the beginning of the First English Civil War.
- 1864 – Under the leadership of Henry Dunant and the International Red Cross Committee, twelve European nations signed the First Geneva Convention (signing pictured), establishing the rules for protection of the victims of armed conflicts.
- 1910 – Japan annexed Korea with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
- 1985 – A fire broke out on British Airtours Flight 28M, causing 55 deaths mostly due to smoke inhalation and bringing about changes to make aircraft evacuation more effective.
- 2012 – A series of ethnic clashes between the Orma and Pokomo tribes of Kenya's Tana River District resulted in the deaths of at least 52 people.
Luca Marenzio (d. 1599) · Bill Woodfull (b. 1897) · Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. (b. 1934)
August 23: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism/Black Ribbon Day in Canada, parts of the European Union, Georgia, and the United States
- 1514 – Ottoman forces defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, gaining control of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq.
- 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departed from London.
- 1921 – The Royal Navy's R-38, the world's largest airship at the time, was destroyed by a structural failure while in flight over Hull, killing 44 of the 49 crew aboard.
- 1943 – Second World War: The decisive Soviet victory in the Battle of Kursk (German tanks and soldiers pictured) gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.
- 2011 – A 5.8 MW earthquake struck the Piedmont region of Virginia, and was felt by more people than any other quake in U.S. history.
Radagaisus (d. 406) · Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal (d. 1498) · Keith Moon (b. 1946)
August 24: Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)
- 410 – Rome was sacked for the first time in approximately 800 years, by the Visigoths under Alaric I.
- 1812 – Peninsular War: Seeing that his army was in danger of being cut off, French commander Jean-de-Dieu Soult retreated from Cádiz, Spain, ending a 30-month siege.
- 1892 – Goodison Park (pictured in 2006) in Liverpool, England, one of the world's first purpose-built football grounds, opened.
- 1941 – Adolf Hitler ordered the suspension of the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and disabled, although killings continued in secret for the remainder of the war.
- 1992 – Hurricane Andrew made landfall in South Florida, the third most intense Category 5 system to hit the United States during the 20th century.
Zhang Ye (d. 948) · Harry Hooper (b. 1887) · Jean-Michel Jarre (b. 1948)
August 25: Independence Day in Uruguay (1825)
- 1758 – Seven Years' War: Prussian forces engaged the Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf in present-day Sarbinowo, Poland.
- 1875 – Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, completing the journey in approximately 21 hours and 40 minutes.
- 1941 – Second World War: Soviet, British and other Commonwealth armed forces invaded Iran to secure oil fields and ensure Allied supply lines for the USSR.
- 1989 – The Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune and provided definitive proof of the existence of the planet's rings (pictured).
- 2001 – American singer Aaliyah and several members of her record company were killed when their overloaded aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff from Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas.
Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471) · Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (b. 1741) · Velma Caldwell Melville (d. 1924)
August 26: Raksha Bandhan (Hinduism, 2018); Heroes' Day/Herero Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States
- 1071 – Byzantine–Seljuq wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert.
- 1928 – At a cafe in Paisley, Scotland, a woman found the remains of a snail in her bottle of ginger beer, giving rise to the landmark civil action case Donoghue v Stevenson.
- 1968 – The U.S. Democratic Party's National Convention opened in Chicago, sparking four days of clashes between anti-Vietnam War protesters and police.
- 1980 – Three men planted a bomb (explosion pictured), which the FBI later described as the most complex improvised explosive device ever created, at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, U.S.
- 2008 – After a ceasefire was reached in the Russo-Georgian War, Russia recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Arnold Fothergill (b. 1854) · Katherine Johnson (b. 1918) · Frederick Reines (d. 1998)
August 27: National Heroes' Day in the Philippines (2018)
- 1776 – British forces led by William Howe defeated the American Continental Army under George Washington at the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War.
- 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeated the Royal Navy, preventing them from taking the harbour of Grand Port on Mauritius.
- 1928 – The first three of over sixty nations signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
- 1990 – American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan (pictured), one of the most influential guitarists in the revival of blues in the 1980s, was killed in a helicopter crash.
- 2003 – Mars made its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing within approximately 55,758,000 kilometres (34,650,000 mi).
Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) · Rebecca Clarke (b. 1886) · Shi Jianqiao (d. 1979)
- 1619 – Ferdinand II, the King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected as Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1833 – The Slavery Abolition Act 1833, officially abolishing slavery in most of the British Empire, received royal assent.
- 1909 – A military coup d'etat against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the Goudi neighbourhood of Athens, Greece.
- 1955 – African-American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American civil rights movement.
- 1993 – 243 Ida (pictured) became the first asteroid found to have a moon when it was visited by NASA's Galileo probe.
He Gui (d. 919) · Edward Burne-Jones (b. 1833) · Jack Kirby (b. 1917)
- 1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, an English fleet of 50 ships captured at least 14 Castilian ships and sank several more in the Battle of Winchelsea.
- 1786 – Led by Daniel Shays (pictured), disgruntled farmers in Western Massachusetts, U.S., angered by high tax burdens and disenfranchisement, started Shays' Rebellion.
- 1842 – Britain and China signed the Treaty of Nanking, an "unequal treaty" to end the First Opium War, in which the island that is now the site of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain.
- 1949 – The Soviet Union successfully conducted its first nuclear weapons test, exploding the 22-kiloton RDS-1.
- 1991 – Italian businessman Libero Grassi was killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a public stand against their extortion demands.
Basil I (d. 886) · Juan Bautista Alberdi (b. 1810) · Ingrid Bergman (b. 1915; d. 1982)
August 30: Eid al-Ghadeer (Shia Islam, 2018)
- 70 – First Jewish–Roman War: The Siege of Jerusalem ended when Romans entered and sacked the Lower City, destroying the Second Temple (depicted).
- 1799 – Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland: A squadron of the navy of the Batavian Republic surrendered to the Royal Navy without a fight near Wieringen.
- 1813 – Creek War: A force of Creeks belonging to the Red Sticks faction killed hundreds of settlers in Fort Mims in Alabama.
- 1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran were assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
- 2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho Tom Thabane fled to South Africa, claiming that the army had launched a coup d'état.
Hervey le Breton (d. 1131) · Agoston Haraszthy (b. 1812) · Marcelo H. del Pilar (b. 1850)
- 1888 – The body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in Buck's Row, London, allegedly the first victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
- 1897 – Thomas Edison was granted a patent for the Kinetoscope (pictured), a precursor to the movie projector.
- 1941 – During World War II a detachment of Chetniks captured the town of Loznica in German-occupied Serbia.
- 1978 – Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Shia cleric and then religious leader of Lebanon, disappeared during an official visit to Libya.
- 1998 – North Korea claimed to have successfully launched Kwangmyŏngsŏng-1, its first satellite, although no objects were ever tracked in orbit from the launch.
Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Ta'i (d. 894) · Agnes Bulmer (b. 1775) · Van Morrison (b. 1945)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for September[edit]
- 1529 – Sancti Spiritu, the first European settlement in Argentina, was destroyed by Amerindians.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate forces attacked retreating Union Army troops at the Battle of Chantilly during a rainstorm in Chantilly, Virginia, but the fighting ended up being tactically inconclusive.
- 1902 – The first science fiction film, titled A Trip to the Moon (scene pictured) and based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, was released in France.
- 1914 – The passenger pigeon, which once numbered in the billions, became extinct when the last individual died in captivity.
- 1972 – American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer became the 11th World Chess Champion when he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in a match that was widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation.
Harriet Shaw Weaver (b. 1876) · Charles Atangana (d. 1943) · Luis Walter Alvarez (d. 1988)
September 2: National Day in Vietnam (1945); Victory over Japan Day in the United States
- 1792 – French Revolution: Due to an overwhelming fear that foreign armies would attack Paris and prisoners would revolt, the summary executions of over a thousand people began.
- 1885 – White miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, U.S., attacked Chinese immigrants, killing at least 28 Chinese miners and causing approximately $150,000 in property damage.
- 1967 – Paddy Roy Bates proclaimed HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk, England, as an independent sovereign state: the Principality of Sealand (pictured).
- 1998 – A fire on Swissair Flight 111, en route from New York City to Geneva, caused the aircraft to crash into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 229 people on board.
Bhaktivinoda Thakur (b. 1838) · Mary Cecil Allen (b. 1893) · Carlos Valderrama (b. 1961)
September 3: Krishna Janmashtami (Hinduism, 2018); Labor Day in the United States (2018)
- 863 – Arab–Byzantine wars: The Byzantine Empire decisively defeated the Emirate of Melitene in the Battle of Lalakaon, beginning the era of Byzantine ascendancy.
- 1901 – The National Flag of Australia, a Blue Ensign defaced with the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, flew for the first time atop the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne.
- 1918 – The Bolshevik government of Russia published the first official announcement of the Red Terror, a period of repression against political opponents.
- 1950 – Winning the Italian Grand Prix, Giuseppe Farina (pictured) became the first Formula One world champion.
- 1991 – A fire killed 25 people locked inside a burning chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, U.S.
Frank Macfarlane Burnet (b. 1899) · Gaston Thorn (b. 1928) · Pauline Kael (d. 2001)
- 929 – At the Battle of Lenzen, the Saxon army killed or captured all of the Slavs defending the fortified stronghold of Lenzen.
- 1812 – War of 1812: A coalition of Native American tribes began the Siege of Fort Harrison in Terre Haute, Indiana, by setting the fort on fire.
- 1843 – Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies and Pedro II of Brazil (both pictured) held an extravagant wedding at a cathedral in Rio de Janeiro.
- 1912 – The Albanian revolt of 1912 came to an end when the Ottoman government agreed to meet most of the rebels' demands.
- 1998 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in Menlo Park, California, to promote the web search engine that they developed as Stanford University students.
Anna of Trebizond (d. 1342) · Paul Harvey (b. 1918) · Syed Mustafa Siraj (d. 2012)
September 5: Eid al-Mubahalah (Islam, 2018)
- 1697 – War of the Grand Alliance: A French warship captured York Factory, a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company in present-day Manitoba, Canada.
- 1882 – A group of London school boys led by Bobby Buckle founded Hotspur Football Club so they could continue to play sports during the winter months.
- 1943 – World War II: American and Australian airborne forces made a landing at Nadzab as part of the New Guinea campaign against Japan.
- 1975 – Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme (pictured), a devotee of Charles Manson, attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford.
- 1977 – NASA launched the robotic space probe Voyager 1, currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth.
Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774) · Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (b. 1817) · Neerja Bhanot (d. 1986)
- 1781 – American Revolutionary War: General Benedict Arnold led British forces to victory in the Battle of Groton Heights.
- 1916 – The first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly (pictured), was founded in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
- 1944 – World War II: Soviet forces captured the city of Tartu on their way to re-establishing their rule in Estonia.
- 1970 – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four jet aircraft, landing two of them at Dawson's Field in Zarqa, Jordan, and one in Beirut, with the last hijacking attempt foiled.
- 1997 – An estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales on television.
Isabella Leonarda (b. 1620) · Frederick Abel (d. 1902) · Wendi Richter (b. 1961)
September 7: Independence Day in Brazil (1822)
- 1159 – Pope Alexander III was chosen as the successor of Pope Adrian IV in a disputed election.
- 1652 – Chinese peasants on Formosa (now Taiwan) began a rebellion against Dutch rule before being suppressed four days later.
- 1927 – American inventor Philo Farnsworth (pictured) transmitted the first images using his all-electronic television system.
- 1984 – An explosion on board a Maltese patrol boat that was disposing of illegal fireworks at sea off Gozo killed seven soldiers and policemen.
- 2011 – Yak-Service Flight 9633, carrying the players and coaching staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl professional ice hockey team, crashed near the Russian city of Yaroslavl, killing all but one of those aboard.
Gregory Bicskei (d. 1303) · Henry Sewell (b. 1807) · Regina Martínez Pérez (b. 1963)
September 8: Victory Day in Malta
- 1775 – Priests on Malta rebelled against the Order of Saint John, but their rebellion was suppressed in a few hours.
- 1860 – The paddle steamer Lady Elgin was rammed by a schooner on Lake Michigan and sank, resulting in the loss of about 300 lives.
- 1954 – Eight nations signed an agreement to create the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, a Southeast Asian version of NATO.
- 1966 – Queen Elizabeth II opened the Severn Bridge (pictured), hailing it as the dawn of a new economic era for South Wales.
- 1978 – Iranian Revolution: After the government of the Shah of Iran declared martial law in response to protests, the Iranian Army shot and killed at least 88 demonstrators in Tehran on Black Friday.
Anne Catherine Emmerich (b. 1774) · Inez Knight Allen (b. 1876) · Derek Taylor (d. 1997)
September 9: Day of the Foundation of the Republic in North Korea (1948); Independence Day in Tajikistan (1991)
- 337 – After disposing of all relatives who possibly held a claim to the throne, Constantine II, Constantius II (bust pictured), and Constans became Roman co-emperors.
- 1493 – Ottoman wars in Europe: At the Battle of Krbava Field, a large Croatian army intercepted an Ottoman force returning to the Sanjak of Bosnia, but was defeated.
- 1739 – The Stono Rebellion, at the time the largest slave rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies of British America, erupted near Charleston, South Carolina.
- 1954 – The 6.7 Mw Chlef earthquake struck Algeria, leaving at least 1,243 people dead and 5,000 injured, and forced the government to implement comprehensive reforms in building codes.
- 2001 – Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, was assassinated in Afghanistan.
Joseph Leidy (b. 1823) · Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (d. 1841) · Neil Davis (d. 1985)
September 10: First day of Rosh Hashanah (Judaism, 2018, AM 5779)
- 1570 – A party of ten Jesuit missionaries landed on the Virginia Peninsula to establish the short-lived Ajacán Mission.
- 1897 – A sheriff's posse fired upon a peaceful labor demonstration made up of mostly Polish and Slovak anthracite coal miners in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, U.S., killing 19 people and wounding many others.
- 1945 – Mike the Headless Chicken was decapitated on a farm in Colorado; he survived another 18 months as part of sideshows before choking to death in Phoenix, Arizona.
- 1961 – At the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, German driver Wolfgang von Trips's car collided with another, causing it to become airborne and crash into a side barrier, killing him and 15 spectators.
- 2008 – CERN's Large Hadron Collider (section pictured), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, was first powered up beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
William Morgan (d. 1604) · Jeppe Aakjær (b. 1866) · Misty Copeland (b. 1982)
September 11: Islamic New Year (2018, 1440 AH); National Day of Catalonia
- 1758 – Seven Years' War: France repelled an invasion attempt by the British in the Battle of Saint Cast.
- 1893 – On the opening day of the first Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda (pictured) introduced Hinduism to the United States.
- 1914 – During the First World War, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force invaded German New Guinea, winning the Battle of Bita Paka.
- 1978 – Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, became the last recorded person to die from smallpox, leading to a debate on whether the virus should be preserved.
- 2001 – Al-Qaeda used four hijacked passenger airliners to carry out a series of suicide attacks against targets in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area.
Daniyal Mirza (b. 1572) · Joseph Nicollet (d. 1843) · Susi Kentikian (b. 1987)
- 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I took the throne as ajaw of the Mayan city of Tikal.
- 1848 – Switzerland became a federal state with the adoption of a new constitution.
- 1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane first struck the island of Guadeloupe; eventually it reached the United States and caused over 4,000 deaths overall.
- 1977 – South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died after being beaten in police custody in Port Elizabeth.
- 2008 – A Metrolink train collided head-on with a freight train (damage pictured) in Los Angeles, California, resulting in 25 deaths and 135 injuries; the Metrolink driver had passed through a red signal, having likely been distracted by text messaging.
Grace Macurdy (b. 1866) · George Reid (d. 1918) · Raymond Burr (d. 1993)
September 13: Ganesh Chaturthi begins (Hinduism, 2018); Feast day of Saint John Chrysostom (Western Christianity)
- 1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin (pictured) returned to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine that came to be known as Calvinism.
- 1848 – An explosion drove an iron rod through the head of railroad foreman Phineas Gage, making him an important early case of personality change after brain injury.
- 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức staged a coup attempt after junta leader Nguyễn Khánh demoted them.
- 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert reached a minimum pressure of 888 mb (26.22 inHg) with sustained flight-level winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), making it the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record at the time.
- 2008 – Five bomb blasts took place within a span of a few minutes in Delhi, India, one terrorist attack in a series committed by the Indian Mujahideen.
Hezqeyas (d. 1813) · Petros Voulgaris (b. 1883) · Mary Brewster Hazelton (d. 1953)
September 14: Hosseini infancy conference (Shia Islam, 2018)
- AD 81 – Domitian, the last Flavian emperor of Rome, was confirmed by the Senate to succeed his brother Titus.
- 1752 – In adopting the Gregorian calendar under the terms of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, the British Empire skipped eleven days, with September 2 being followed directly by September 14.
- 1914 – HMAS AE1 (pictured), the Royal Australian Navy's first submarine, was lost at sea; its wreck was not found until 2017.
- 1940 – The Hungarian Army indiscriminately killed at least 150 ethnic Romanians in Ipp, Transylvania, after rumors spread that Romanians were responsible for the recent deaths of two soldiers.
- 2015 – Physicists of the LIGO and Virgo projects first observed gravitational waves, the existence of which was predicted by Henri Poincaré in 1905.
Jeremiah Dummer (b. 1645) · John Gould (b. 1804) · Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (d. 1905)
September 15: Independence Day in Costa Rica (1821); Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom
- 1440 – French knight Gilles de Rais, one of the earliest known serial killers, was taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.
- 1821 – The Province of Guatemala proclaimed the independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire.
- 1916 – Tanks, the "secret weapons" of the British Army during the First World War (Mark I tank pictured), were first used in combat at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette in Somme, Picardy, France.
- 1944 – World War II: Following the Greek People's Liberation Army victory in the Battle of Meligalas, more than 700 prisoners of war and about 50 civilians were massacred.
- 2008 – Financial crisis of 2007–2008: The global financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy while holding over $600 billion in assets, the largest such filing in U.S. history.
Catherine of Austria, Queen of Poland (b. 1533) · Anna Winlock (b. 1857) · Anton Webern (d. 1945)
September 16: Battle of Britain Day in Canada (2018); Malaysia Day
- 1920 – A bomb in a horse wagon exploded (aftermath pictured) in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City, killing 38 people and injuring several hundred others.
- 1940 – Second World War: Italy captured the town of Sidi Barrani, but its invasion of Egypt progressed no further.
- 1961 – Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, made initial landfall in Muroto, Kōchi, Japan, having decreased in intensity.
- 1982 – A Lebanese militia under the direct command of Elie Hobeika carried out a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Shatila, killing at least 460 civilians.
- 1990 – Construction of the Northern Xinjiang railway was completed between Ürümqi South and Alashankou stations, linking the railway lines of China and Kazakhstan, and adding a sizable portion to the Eurasian Land Bridge.
Philip III of Navarre (d. 1343) · Marian Cruger Coffin (b. 1876) · Ahn Eak-tai (d. 1965)
September 17: Constitution Day in the United States
- 1176 – Byzantine–Seljuq wars: The Seljuq Turks prevented the Byzantines from taking the interior of Anatolia at the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army under Richard Montgomery began the Siege of Fort St. Jean in the British province of Quebec.
- 1859 – Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton (pictured) distributed letters to various newspapers in San Francisco, proclaiming himself Emperor Norton.
- 1914 – Andrew Fisher, whose previous term as Prime Minister of Australia oversaw a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, became Prime Minister for the third time.
- 1980 – Solidarity, a Polish trade union, was founded as the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country.
Stephen Hales (b. 1677) · Jonathan Alder (b. 1773) · Henri Julien (d. 1908)
- 1850 – The United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which decreed that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters.
- 1879 – The Blackpool Illuminations (example pictured) in the English seaside town of Blackpool were switched on for the first time.
- 1918 – World War I: The Central Powers' defeat in the Battle of Dobro Pole played a role in the Bulgarian withdrawal from the war and opened the way for the subsequent liberation of Vardar Macedonia.
- 1974 – Hurricane Fifi struck Honduras, destroying 182 towns and villages in the first 24 hours, and ultimately causing over 8,000 deaths.
- 2001 – Five letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to various media outlets in the United States.
William Hazlitt (d. 1830) · Toni Wolff (b. 1888) · Christian Pulisic (b. 1998)
September 19: Day of Tasu'a (Shia Islam, 2018); International Talk Like a Pirate Day
- 1356 – Hundred Years' War: English forces led by Edward the Black Prince decisively won the Battle of Poitiers and captured King John II of France.
- 1692 – Salem witch trials: As Giles Corey was being crushed to death for refusing to enter a plea to charges of witchcraft, he reportedly kept telling officials, "More weight!"
- 1940 – Polish resistance leader Witold Pilecki (pictured) allowed himself to be captured by German forces and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence.
- 1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival, the largest greenfield festival in the world, was held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, England.
- 1982 –
:-)and:-(were first proposed by Scott Fahlman for use as emoticons.
Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690) · Alexander Tilloch Galt (d. 1893) · Damayanti Joshi (d. 2004)
September 20: Day of Ashura (Islam, 2018)
- 1260 – The second of two major uprisings by the Old Prussian tribe of Balts began against the Teutonic Knights.
- 1498 – A tsunami caused by the Nankai earthquake washed away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha (pictured) at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Japan.
- 1906 – The ocean liner RMS Mauretania, the largest and fastest ship in the world at the time, was launched.
- 1943 – World War II: Australian troops defeated Imperial Japanese forces at the Battle of Kaiapit in New Guinea.
- 2008 – An explosive-laden truck detonated in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
John Patteson (d. 1871) · Éva Gauthier (b. 1885) · Rose Francine Rogombé (b. 1942)
September 21: International Day of Peace
- 1823 – According to Joseph Smith Jr., he was first visited by the Angel Moroni (pictured), who would guide him to the golden plates that became the basis of the Book of Mormon.
- 1938 – The Great New England Hurricane made landfall on Long Island, New York, killing an estimated 682 people and injuring 1,754 others.
- 1943 – Second World War: The German Army began the Massacre of the Acqui Division on the Greek island of Cephalonia, executing 5,155 Italian soldiers by 26 September.
- 1965 – Portugal accepted a Rhodesian mission in Lisbon despite objections by Britain, which had required its colony to implement democratic majority rule as a condition of independence.
- 2013 – Unidentified gunmen began a three-day attack on the upmarket Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, resulting in the deaths of 67 people with at least another 175 wounded.
Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860) · Helen Foster Snow (b. 1907) · Kareena Kapoor (b. 1980)
September 22: Independence Day in Mali (1960); Day of Baltic Unity in Latvia and Lithuania
- 1499 – The Swabian War between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg came to a close with the signing of the Treaty of Basel.
- 1869 – Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in Der Ring des Nibelungen by German composer Richard Wagner (pictured), was first performed in Munich.
- 1948 – Led by Gail Halvorsen, the U.S. Army Air Forces began Operation "Little Vittles", delivering candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift.
- 1965 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for an unconditional ceasefire in the Indo-Pakistani War.
- 1993 – A tugboat towing a barge collided with a rail bridge in Mobile, Alabama, U.S., deforming the tracks and causing the derailment of a passenger train eight minutes later, which killed 47 people and injured an additional 103.
John Biddle (d. 1662) · Stephen D. Lee (b. 1833) · Aurelio López (d. 1992)
September 23: Banned Books Week begins (2018); Celebrate Bisexuality Day; National Day in Saudi Arabia (1932)
- 1568 – Anglo-Spanish War: At San Juan de Ulúa (in what is now Veracruz, Mexico), Spanish naval forces forced English privateers to halt their illegal trade.
- 1803 – Maratha troops were defeated by British forces at the Battle of Assaye, one of the decisive battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War.
- 1868 – Ramón Emeterio Betances (pictured) led the Grito de Lares, a revolt against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico.
- 1952 – U.S. vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon delivered the "Checkers speech", one of the first political uses of television to appeal directly to the populace.
- 2008 – A gunman shot and killed ten students at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, Western Finland, before committing suicide.
Eleonora Gonzaga (b. 1598) · Émilie Gamelin (d. 1851) · Sean Spicer (b. 1971)
September 24: Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese calendar, 2018); First day of Sukkot (Judaism, 2018); Heritage Day in South Africa
- 1645 – English Civil War: Royalists under the personal command of King Charles I suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of Rowton Heath.
- 1869 – Jay Gould, James Fisk and other speculators plotted but failed to control the gold market in the U.S., causing gold prices to plummet on "Black Friday".
- 1903 – Alfred Deakin (pictured) became the second Prime Minister of Australia, succeeding Edmund Barton who left office to become a founding Justice of the High Court of Australia.
- 1964 – The Warren Commission released its report to the U.S. president, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The report was made public three days later.
- 1975 – Dougal Haston and Doug Scott on the Southwest Face expedition became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest by ascending one of its faces.
'Adud al-Dawla (b. 936) · Georges Claude (b. 1870) · Bruno Pontecorvo (d. 1993)
- 275 – After the assassination of Aurelian, Tacitus was chosen by the Senate to succeed him as Roman emperor.
- 1790 – Peking opera (modern performer pictured) was born when the Four Great Anhui Troupes introduced Anhui opera to Beijing in honor of the Qianlong Emperor's eightieth birthday.
- 1944 – Second World War: British troops began their withdrawal from the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands, ending the Allies' Operation Market Garden in defeat.
- 1977 – About 4,200 people took part in the first modern Chicago Marathon.
- 1990 – The Ram Rath Yatra, a political-religious march organised to erect a temple to the Hindu deity Rama on the site of the Babri Masjid, began in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Glenn Gould (b. 1932) · John Bonham (d. 1980) · Marian Breland Bailey (d. 2001)
September 26: National Flag Day in Ecuador (1860)
- 1493 – Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Dudum siquidem, the last of the Bulls of Donation, marking the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
- 1687 – The Parthenon in Athens was partially destroyed (ruins pictured) during an armed conflict between the Venetians under Francesco Morosini and Ottoman forces.
- 1907 – The British Colony of New Zealand officially became a dominion to reflect its political independence since the 1850s.
- 1983 – The racing yacht Australia II, captained by John Bertrand, won the America's Cup, ending the New York Yacht Club's 132-year defense of the trophy.
- 2008 – Swiss pilot and inventor Yves Rossy flew a wingpack powered by jet engines across the English Channel.
Francis Daniel Pastorius (b. 1651) · Théodore Géricault (b. 1791) · Leslie Morshead (d. 1959)
September 27: Meskel in Eritrea and Ethiopia
- 1825 – Locomotion No. 1 hauled the train on the opening day of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway in the world to use steam locomotives.
- 1854 – The paddle steamer SS Arctic sank after a collision with SS Vesta 50 miles (80 km) off the coast of Newfoundland, killing approximately 320 people.
- 1930 – With his victory in the United States Amateur Championship, Bobby Jones became the only person to complete a Grand Slam in golf.
- 1964 – The British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2, an advanced Cold War tactical strike and reconnaissance aircraft that was later cancelled, made its maiden flight.
- 1988 – Led by pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured), the political party National League for Democracy was founded in Burma.
Felice della Rovere (d. 1536) · Ivan Goncharov (d. 1891) · Gwyneth Paltrow (b. 1972)
- 1066 – William the Conqueror and his fleet of around 600 ships landed at Pevensey, Sussex, beginning the Norman conquest of England.
- 1821 – The Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire from Spain was drafted in the National Palace in Mexico City.
- 1924 – A team of U.S. Army Air Service aviators landed in Seattle, Washington, to complete the first aerial circumnavigation of the world (one of the aircraft pictured).
- 1978 – Pope John Paul I died only 33 days after his papal election due to an apparent myocardial infarction, resulting in the first year of three popes since 1605.
- 2008 – SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket achieved orbit on its fourth attempt to become the first successful liquid-propelled orbital launch vehicle developed with private funding.
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs (b. 1821) · Louis Pasteur (d. 1895) · Guillermo Endara (d. 2009)
- 1918 – World War I: The Battle of St Quentin Canal took place, which led to the British Fourth Army making the first breach of the German defensive Hindenburg Line.
- 1938 – At a conference in Munich, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain, and Édouard Daladier reached a settlement, signing it at about 1:30 a.m. the next day, stipulating that Czechoslovakia must cede the Sudetenland to Germany.
- 1954 – Willie Mays (pictured) of Major League Baseball's New York Giants made one of the most famous defensive plays in baseball history, known as "The Catch".
- 1991 – The Haitian Army deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, eight months after the nation's first democratic elections.
- 2006 – Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet near Peixoto de Azevedo, Mato Grosso, Brazil, killing 154 people, and triggering a Brazilian aviation crisis.
Ferdinand the Holy Prince (b. 1402) · Mercator Cooper (b. 1803) · Bill Shankly (d. 1981)
- 1551 – Sue Takafusa, a military leader for the Ōuchi clan in western Japan, led a coup against daimyō Ōuchi Yoshitaka, leading to the latter's forced suicide.
- 1882 – The Vulcan Street Plant, the first hydroelectric central station to serve a system of private and commercial customers in North America, went on line in Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.
- 1939 – Second World War: General Władysław Sikorski (pictured) became Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile.
- 1965 – Members of the 30 September Movement attempted a coup against the Indonesian government, which was crushed by the military under Suharto, leading to a mass anti-communist purge with more than 500,000 people killed over the following months.
- 1998 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization that manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses in the Internet, was incorporated.
Ann Jarvis (b. 1832) · Doris Mackinnon (b. 1883) · Anwar al-Awlaki (d. 2011)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for October[edit]
October 1: Shemini Atzeret (Judaism, 2018); Beginning of the National Day celebrations in China (1949); Unification Day in Cameroon (1961); Filipino American History Month (begins)
- 1868 – St Pancras railway station (pictured) in London, which is now the terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, opened to the public.
- 1890 – At the encouragement of preservationist John Muir and writer Robert Underwood Johnson, the United States Congress established Yosemite National Park.
- 1918 – First World War: British and Arab troops captured Damascus from the Ottoman Empire.
- 1949 – Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
- 1998 – Europol was founded, when the Europol Convention signed by all European Union member states came into force.
Yaqub Spata (d. 1416) · Rose O'Neal Greenhow (d. 1864) · Zhu Rongji (b. 1928)
October 2: International Day of Non-Violence; Gandhi Jayanti in India
- 1263 – Scottish–Norwegian War: The armies of Norway and Scotland fought the Battle of Largs, an inconclusive engagement near the present-day town of Largs in North Ayrshire, Scotland.
- 1835 – Mexican dragoons dispatched to disarm settlers at Gonzales, Mexican Texas, encountered stiff resistance from a Texian militia in the Battle of Gonzales, the first armed engagement of the Texas Revolution.
- 1928 – Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá founded Opus Dei (logo pictured), a worldwide organization of the Catholic Church.
- 1941 – World War II: Military forces of Nazi Germany began Operation Typhoon, an all-out offensive which began the three-month-long Battle of Moscow.
- 1990 – A hijacked airliner collided with two other planes while attempting to land at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China, resulting in a total of 128 deaths.
David Teniers III (d. 1685) · Charles Lee (d. 1782) · Sting (b. 1951)
- 2333 BC – According to Korean legend, Dangun established Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom.
- 1951 – The First Battle of Maryang-san, widely regarded as one of the Australian Army's greatest accomplishments during the Korean War, began.
- 1962 – Mercury-Atlas 8, the fifth United States manned space mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
- 1991 – Nadine Gordimer (pictured) became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, was enacted.
Sophie Treadwell (b. 1885) · Carl Nielsen (d. 1931) · Olivia Shakespear (d. 1938)
- 1876 – Texas A&M University opened as the first public institution of higher education in the U.S. state of Texas.
- 1918 – An ammunition plant in Sayreville, New Jersey, U.S., exploded, killing around 100 people and destroying more than 300 buildings.
- 1957 – The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1 (replica pictured), the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
- 1958 – The current Constitution of France was signed into law, establishing the French Fifth Republic.
- 2010 – The dam holding a waste reservoir in western Hungary collapsed, freeing 1 million m3 (1.3 million yd3) of red mud, which flooded nearby communities and killed ten people.
John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll (d. 1743) · Jenny Twitchell Kempton (b. 1835) · Zinha Vaz (b. 1952)
- 1789 – French Revolution: Upset about the high price and scarcity of bread, thousands of Parisian women and their various allies marched (pictured) on the royal palace at Versailles.
- 1869 – During construction of the Hennepin Island tunnel in St. Anthony, Minnesota (now Minneapolis), U.S., the Mississippi River broke through the tunnel's limestone ceiling, nearly destroying Saint Anthony Falls.
- 1930 – The British airship R101 crashed in France en route to India on its maiden overseas flight, killing 48 passengers and crew.
- 1970 – Members of the Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped British diplomat James Cross, sparking the October Crisis in Montreal.
- 1986 – Eugene Hasenfus's plane was shot down by Nicaraguan forces while carrying weapons to the Contra rebels on behalf of the U.S. government; he was subsequently captured, leading to an international controversy.
Giovanni Visconti (d. 1354) · Paul Fleming (b. 1609) · Eduardo Duhalde (b. 1941)
October 6: German-American Day in the United States
- 618 – Wang Shichong's army defeated that of Li Mi, allowing Wang to consolidate his power and soon depose China's Sui dynasty.
- 1762 – Seven Years' War: The Battle of Manila concluded with a British victory over Spain, leading to a short British occupation of Manila.
- 1934 – Catalonia's autonomous government declared a general strike, an armed insurgency, and the establishment of the Catalan State in reaction to the inclusion of conservatives in the republican regime of Spain.
- 1998 – University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard was attacked and fatally wounded near Laramie, Wyoming, U.S., dying six days later.
- 2010 – Instagram (current logo pictured) released the initial version of its mobile application for iOS devices.
Sarah Crosby (b. 1729) · Goh Keng Swee (b. 1918) · Babasaheb Bhosale (d. 2007)
- 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: A Venetian army under Bartolomeo d'Alviano was decisively defeated by the Spanish army commanded by Ramón de Cardona and Fernando d'Ávalos.
- 1800 – The French privateer Robert Surcouf led a 150-man crew to capture the 40-gun, 437-man East Indiaman Kent.
- 1868 – Cornell University (co-founder Ezra Cornell pictured) in Ithaca, New York, was established, with an initial enrollment of 412 men the next day.
- 1988 – Near Point Barrow in Alaska, an Iñupiat hunter discovered three gray whales trapped in pack ice, which resulted in an international effort to free them.
- 2008 – 2008 TC3 exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan, the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted prior to its entry into the atmosphere as a meteor.
Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708) · Charles XIII of Sweden (b. 1748) · Beatrice Hutton (d. 1990)
October 8: Thanksgiving in Canada (2018); Independence Day in Croatia (1991)
- 1897 – Composer Gustav Mahler (pictured) was appointed the director of the Vienna Court Opera.
- 1918 – World War I: After his platoon suffered heavy casualties during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France's Forest of Argonne, American Corporal Alvin York led the 7 remaining men on an attack against a German machine gun nest, killing at least 25 German soldiers and capturing 132 others.
- 1952 – Three trains collided at Harrow & Wealdstone station in London, killing 112 people and injuring 340.
- 1962 – The German news magazine Der Spiegel revealed the unpreparedness of the West German armed forces against the communist threat from the east, and was accused of treason shortly afterwards.
- 1969 – Demonstrations organized by the Weather Underground known as the Days of Rage began in Chicago.
Harriet Taylor Mill (b. 1807) · Kiichi Miyazawa (b. 1919) · Wendell Willkie (d. 1944)
October 9: Leif Erikson Day in the United States
- 1708 – Great Northern War: Russia defeated Sweden at the Battle of Lesnaya on the Russian–Polish border in what is now Belarus.
- 1888 – The Washington Monument (pictured) in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
- 1914 – World War I: The civilian authorities of Antwerp surrendered, allowing the German army to capture the city.
- 1942 – World War II: American forces defeated the Japanese at the Third Battle of the Matanikau in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, reversing the Japanese victory a couple of weeks earlier.
- 2016 – Militants attacked a border police post in Myanmar, killing nine people and triggering a period of intense persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Henry Constable (d. 1613) · Benjamin Banneker (d. 1806) · Mona Best (d. 1988)
- 1780 – One of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record struck the Caribbean Sea, killing at least 20,000 people over the next seven days.
- 1846 – English astronomer William Lassell discovered Triton (pictured), the largest moon of the planet Neptune.
- 1911 – The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising, marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.
- 1943 – World War II: The Kenpeitai, the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, arrested and tortured fifty-seven civilians and civilian internees on suspicion of their involvement in a raid on Singapore Harbour during Operation Jaywick.
- 1963 – The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground, came into effect.
Paulinus of York (d. 644) · Han van Meegeren (b. 1889) · R. K. Narayan (b. 1906)
October 11: National Coming Out Day (international)
- 1142 – The Treaty of Shaoxing was ratified, ending the Jin–Song Wars, although sporadic fighting continued until 1234.
- 1311 – The peerage and clergy of the Kingdom of England published the Ordinances of 1311 to restrict King Edward II's powers.
- 1840 – Bashir Shihab II (pictured) surrendered to the Ottoman Empire and was removed as Emir of Mount Lebanon after an imperial decree by Sultan Abdülmecid I.
- 1950 – A field-sequential color system developed by Hungarian-American engineer Peter Goldmark became the first color television system to be adopted for commercial use, only for it to be abandoned a year later.
- 1987 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The Indian Peace Keeping Force began Operation Pawan to take control of Jaffna from the Tamil Tigers and enforce their disarmament as a part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord.
Grigory Potemkin (b. 1739) · Henry J. Heinz (b. 1844) · Dorothea Lange (d. 1965)
October 12: National Day in Spain (1492)
- 1398 – The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen signed the Treaty of Salynas, the third attempt to cede Samogitia to the Knights.
- 1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse (pictured) became the first woman to make a parachute descent, falling 900 m (3,000 ft) in a hot-air balloon gondola.
- 1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States was first used in public schools to coincide with the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
- 1960 – Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated during a live television recording by a man using a samurai sword.
- 1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in a failed attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her cabinet.
Thomas Dudley (b. 1576) · Richard Molesworth, 3rd Viscount Molesworth (d. 1758) · Sheila Florance (d. 1991)
October 13: Friday the 13th (2017)
- 1307 – Agents of King Philip IV of France launched a dawn raid, arresting many members of the Knights Templar, and subsequently torturing them into "admitting" heresy.
- 1885 – The Georgia Institute of Technology (pictured) was established in Atlanta as part of Reconstruction plans to build an industrial economy in the Southern United States.
- 1917 – At least 30,000 people in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal, witnessed the "Miracle of the Sun".
- 1963 – Poet of the Republic of Korea and Rev. Seung-Moo Ha is born.
- 1979 – Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" topped the Billboard Hot 100.
- 2000 – President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea became the first Korean winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 2013 – During the Hindu festival of Navratri at a temple in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, rumours about an impending bridge collapse caused a stampede that resulted in 115 deaths.
Iyasu I (d. 1706) · Lillie Langtry (b. 1853) · Walter Houser Brattain (d. 1987)
October 14: Defender of Ukraine Day
- 1066 – Norman conquest of England: The forces of William the Conqueror defeated the English army at Hastings and killed Harold Godwinson, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England.
- 1863 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Bristoe Station, the Union II Corps surprised and repelled the Confederate attack on the Union rearguard, resulting in a Union victory.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Inmates at the Sobibór extermination camp in eastern Poland led a revolt, killing 11 SS officers; the camp was shut down a few days later.
- 1956 – B. R. Ambedkar (pictured), a leader of India's "Untouchable" caste, publicly converted to Buddhism, becoming the leader of the Dalit Buddhist movement.
- 2012 – Felix Baumgartner jumped from a helium balloon in the stratosphere to become the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power.
Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham (b. 1726) · Mary Margaret O'Reilly (b. 1865) · Julius Nyerere (d. 1999)
- 1529 – The Siege of Vienna ended as the Austrians repelled the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of conquest in Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
- 1888 – George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in London, received a letter allegedly from Jack the Ripper.
- 1932 – Air India (modern aircraft pictured), the flag carrier airline of India, began operations under the name Tata Airlines.
- 1965 – Vietnam War protests: At an anti-war rally in New York City, David J. Miller burned his draft card, the first such act to result in arrest under a new amendment to the Selective Service Act.
- 2013 – A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Bohol in the Philippines, resulting in 222 deaths.
Al-Mu'tamid (d. 892) · Dolores Jiménez y Muro (d. 1925) · Julia Yeomans (b. 1954)
- 1384 – Jadwiga was officially crowned as "King of Poland" instead of "Queen" to reflect the fact that she was a sovereign in her own right.
- 1793 – Marie Antoinette (pictured), queen consort of Louis XVI, was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution in Paris at the height of the French Revolution.
- 1875 – Brigham Young University, the largest religious university in the United States, was founded in Provo, Utah.
- 1923 – Roy and Walt Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood; it eventually grew to become one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world.
- 1978 – Polish Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years and the first ever from a Slavic country.
Pedro González de Lara (d. 1130) · Lucy Stanton (b. 1831) · Angela Lansbury (b. 1925)
October 17: Dessalines Day in Haiti (1806)
- 1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler observed an exceptionally bright star, now known as Kepler's Supernova, which had suddenly appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus earlier in October.
- 1964 – Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies inaugurated the artificial Lake Burley Griffin (pictured) in the middle of the capital, Canberra.
- 1992 – Having gone to the wrong house for a Halloween party, Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori was shot and killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.
- 2001 – Rehavam Ze'evi, the Israeli Minister of Tourism, was assassinated in revenge for the killing of the PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.
Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke (d. 1781) · Childe Hassam (b. 1859) · Chuka Umunna (b. 1978)
October 18: Vijayadashami begins (Hinduism, 2018); Feast day of Saint Luke; Independence Day in Azerbaijan (1991); Alaska Day (1867)
- 1565 – The first recorded naval battle between Europeans and the Japanese occurred when a flotilla of samurai attacked two Portuguese trade vessels in Nagasaki.
- 1748 – The War of the Austrian Succession ended with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
- 1929 – In the Persons Case, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council decided that women were eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate.
- 1968 – At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American Bob Beamon (pictured) set a world record of 8.90 metres (29.2 ft) in the long jump, a mark that stood for 23 years.
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (d. 1744) · Lucy Stone (d. 1893) · Freida Pinto (b. 1984)
- 1596 – The Spanish ship San Felipe was shipwrecked on the Japanese island of Shikoku and its cargo was confiscated by the local daimyō.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Despite incurring nearly twice as many casualties as the Confederates, the Union Army emerged victorious in the Battle of Cedar Creek.
- 1943 – Streptomycin (molecular model pictured), the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was first isolated by a PhD student at Rutgers University.
- 1988 – The British government banned the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and several Irish republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups from being broadcast on television and radio in the United Kingdom.
- 2005 – Hurricane Wilma became the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum atmospheric pressure of 882 mbar.
Annie Smith Peck (b. 1850) · Demetrios Christodoulou (b. 1951) · Ali Treki (d. 2015)
- 1740 – Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, Maria Theresa (pictured) assumed the throne of the Habsburg Monarchy in Austria.
- 1944 – World War II: Fulfilling a promise he made two years previously, General Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte to begin the recapture of the entire Philippine Archipelago.
- 1973 – Watergate scandal: Both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than obey Richard Nixon's order to have Archibald Cox fired.
- 1982 – During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, a large number of attendees tried to leave the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium at the same time, resulting in a stampede that caused 66 deaths.
- 2011 – Libyan Civil War: Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, was captured during the Battle of Sirte and killed less than an hour later.
Pauline Bonaparte (b. 1780) · Tom Petty (b. 1950) · Farooq Leghari (d. 2010)
- 1520 – The islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon near Canada were visited by Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes, who named them "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins".
- 1854 – Florence Nightingale (pictured) and a staff of 38 nurses and 15 nuns were sent to Turkey to help treat wounded British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War.
- 1944 – World War II: The three-week-long Battle of Aachen concluded, making the city the first on German soil to be captured by the Allies.
- 1950 – Korean War: The Battle of Yongju began as British and Australian troops of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade engaged in heavy fighting with North Korean forces.
- 1978 – After reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft, Frederick Valentich disappeared in unexplained circumstances while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft over the Bass Strait to King Island, Australia.
Edmund Waller (d. 1687) · Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929) · Steph Davies (b. 1987)
October 22: International Stuttering Awareness Day
- 1633 – Ming Chinese naval forces defeated a Dutch East India Company fleet in the Taiwan Strait, the largest naval encounter between Chinese and European forces before the First Opium War more than two hundred years later.
- 1707 – In one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the British Isles, at least 1,400 sailors on four Royal Navy ships were lost in stormy weather off the Isles of Scilly.
- 1895 – At Gare Montparnasse station in Paris, an express train derailed after overrunning the buffer stop, crossing the concourse before crashing through a wall and falling to the plaza below (pictured).
- 1924 – The educational non-profit organization Toastmasters International was founded at a YMCA in Santa Ana, California.
- 2015 – Sweden suffered its deadliest school attack when a sword-wielding man attacked students and teachers in a high school in Trollhättan, killing three people.
George Coulthard (d. 1883) · Edith Kawelohea McKinzie (b. 1925) · Oona King (b. 1967) Bob Odenkirk (b. 1962)
- 1641 – Irish Catholic gentry in Ulster tried to seize control of Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland, to force concessions to Catholics.
- 1850 – The first National Women's Rights Convention, presided over by Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis (pictured), began in Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.
- 1934 – Jeannette Piccard piloted a hot-air balloon flight that reached 57,579 feet (17,550 m), and became the first woman to fly in the stratosphere.
- 1983 – Lebanese Civil War: Suicide bombers destroyed two barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers of the international peacekeeping force, and 6 civilians.
- 2002 – Chechen separatists seized a crowded theater in Moscow, taking approximately 700 patrons and performers hostage, at least 130 of whom were later killed.
Sweyn III of Denmark (d. 1157) · Ludwig Leichhardt (b. 1813) · Soong Mei-ling (d. 2003)
- 1648 – The second treaty of the Peace of Westphalia, the Treaty of Münster, was signed, ending both the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and officially recognizing the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and Swiss Confederation as independent states.
- 1931 – The George Washington Bridge (pictured), today the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge, connecting New York City to Fort Lee, New Jersey, was dedicated.
- 1945 – The UN Charter, the constitution of the United Nations, entered into force after being ratified by the five original permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other signatories.
- 1975 – To protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices, 90% of the female population in Iceland went on strike for a day.
William Prynne (d. 1669) · Letitia Woods Brown (b. 1915) · Roman Abramovich (b. 1966)
- 1415 – Hundred Years' War: Henry V of England's army, consisting mostly of archers, unexpectedly defeated the numerically superior French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt on Saint Crispin's Day.
- 1854 – Crimean War: Lord Cardigan led his cavalry on a disastrous assault (pictured) in the Battle of Balaclava.
- 1924 – The Daily Mail published the Zinoviev letter, purportedly a directive from Moscow to increase communist agitation, pushing the Conservative Party to a landslide victory in the UK general election four days later.
- 1950 – Korean War: The People's Volunteer Army ambushed the South Korean II Corps and elsewhere engaged the 1st Infantry Division, marking China's entry into the war.
- 2001 – Windows XP, one of the most popular and widely used versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, was released for retail sale.
Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar (b. 840) · Grace Banker (b. 1892) · Katy Perry (b. 1984)
- 1597 – Thirteen Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a far larger Japanese invasion fleet at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait.
- 1813 – War of 1812: A British force and its Mohawk allies under Charles de Salaberry repulsed an American attempt to invade Canada.
- 1902 – A group of Russian explorers led by Baron Eduard Toll left their camp on Bennett Island and disappeared without a trace.
- 1921 – The Chicago Theatre (pictured), the oldest surviving grand movie palace, opened.
- 1994 – Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty settling relations between the two countries and pledging that neither would allow its territory to become a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.
John Basset (b. 1518) · William T. Anderson (d. 1864) · Oro (d. 1993)
- 1838 – Governor Lilburn Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, ordering all Mormons to leave the state or be killed.
- 1914 – World War I: The Royal Navy dreadnought HMS Audacious was sunk by a mine, but its loss was kept secret for four years.
- 1946 – Inter-religious riots, in which Hindu mobs targeted Muslim families, began in the Indian state of Bihar, resulting in anywhere between 2,000 and 30,000 deaths.
- 1958 – General Ayub Khan (pictured) deposed Iskander Mirza to become the second President of Pakistan.
- 2004 – The Boston Red Sox completed a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series, breaking the so-called "Curse of the Bambino".
Mary Sidney (b. 1561) · Robert Hubert (d. 1666) · Judy LaMarsh (d. 1980)
October 28: Feast day of Jude the Apostle (Western Christianity)
- 1707 – The Hōei earthquake ruptured all of the segments of the Nankai megathrust simultaneously – the only earthquake known to have done this.
- 1886 – In New York Harbor, U.S. President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty (pictured), a gift from France commemorating the Declaration of Independence.
- 1940 – World War II: Italy invaded Greece after Greek prime minister Ioannis Metaxas rejected Benito Mussolini's ultimatum demanding the cession of Greek territory.
- 1995 – A fire in the Baku Metro, Azerbaijan, killed at least 289 people and injured 270 more in the world's deadliest subway disaster.
- 2007 – In the Argentine general election, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became the first woman to be elected President of Argentina.
Ibas of Edessa (d. 457) · Marie of the Incarnation (b. 1599) · Francis Bacon (b. 1909)
- 1618 – English courtier and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (pictured) was executed in London after King James I reinstated a fifteen-year-old death sentence against him.
- 1787 – The opera Don Giovanni, based on Don Juan, the legendary fictional libertine, and composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague.
- 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: As the Israel Defense Forces captured the Palestinian Arab village of Safsaf, they massacred at least 52 villagers.
- 1998 – At 77 years old as a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-95 mission, John Glenn became the oldest person to go to space.
- 2015 – China announced the abolition of its one-child policy, allowing families to have two children instead.
Marie of Romania (b. 1875) · Diana Serra Cary (b. 1918) · Carlos Guastavino (d. 2000)
October 30: Arba'een/Arba'een Pilgrimage (Shia Islam, 2018); Mischief Night in some areas of the United States
- 1485 – Having seized the throne of England after the Wars of the Roses, Henry VII was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey.
- 1863 – Seventeen-year-old Vilhelm, Prince of Denmark, arrived in Athens to become George I (pictured), King of Greece.
- 1918 – The Armistice of Mudros was signed in Greece, ending the hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I, and paving the way for the occupation of Constantinople and the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1938 – The radio drama The War of the Worlds, based on the science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, frightened many listeners in the United States into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.
- 1993 – The Troubles: Three members of the Ulster Defence Association opened fire in a crowded pub during a Halloween party, killing eight civilians and wounding nineteen.
André Chénier (b. 1762) · William H. Webb (d. 1899) · Florence Nagle (d. 1988)
- 475 – Romulus Augustulus took the throne as the last effective ruling emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
- 1517 – According to some traditional accounts, Martin Luther first posted his Ninety-five Theses onto the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, present-day Germany, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
- 1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the last successful cavalry charges.
- 1941 – Approximately 400 workers completed the 60-foot (18 m) busts of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
- 1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (pictured) was assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, sparking riots that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs.
Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1723) · Marie Louise Andrews (b. 1849) · Muriel Duckworth (b. 1908)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for November[edit]
November 1: Samhain and Beltane begin (Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively); Rajyotsava (Formation Day) in Karnataka, India (1956)
- 1141 – The Anarchy: Stephen of Blois (pictured), recently freed from the captivity of his cousin and rival Matilda, released her strongest supporter from his custody, leading to a years-long stalemate in the civil war.
- 1914 – World War I: The first contingent of the First Australian Imperial Force departed Albany.
- 1956 – The Indian states Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka were formally created under the States Reorganisation Act.
- 1968 – The voluntary Motion Picture Association of America film rating system came into effect for films released in the United States.
Józef Zajączek (b. 1752) · Jan Matejko (d. 1893) · Joan McCracken (d. 1961)
- 619 – Emperor Gaozu allowed the assassination of a khagan of the Western Turkic Khaganate by Eastern Turkic rivals, one of the earliest events in the Tang campaigns against the Western Turks.
- 1917 – British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a declaration proclaiming British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
- 1943 – World War II: A U.S. Navy task force was able to turn away an Imperial Japanese Navy fleet in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, thus protecting the landings at Cape Torokina.
- 1990 – Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting merged to form BSkyB, currently the largest pay-TV broadcaster in Europe.
- 2000 – Aboard Expedition 1, American astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko (all pictured) became the first resident crew to arrive at the International Space Station.
Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange (b. 1709) · John J. Loud (b. 1844) · Charmaine Dragun (d. 2007)
November 3: Culture Day in Japan
- 1793 – French playwright, journalist and outspoken feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined for her revolutionary ideas.
- 1812 – French invasion of Russia: As Napoleon's Grande Armée began its retreat, its rear guard was defeated at the Battle of Vyazma.
- 1948 – The Chicago Daily Tribune published the erroneous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" in its early morning edition shortly after incumbent U.S. President Harry S. Truman officially upset the heavily favored Governor of New York Thomas Dewey in the presidential election.
- 1954 – The first film featuring the giant monster known as Godzilla was released (poster pictured) nationwide in Japan.
- 1996 – Abdullah Çatlı, a leader of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, was killed in a car crash near Susurluk, Balıkesir Province, Turkey, sparking a scandal which exposed the depth of the state's complicity in organized crime.
Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom (b. 1777) · Olav Aukrust (d. 1929) · Dawn Marie Psaltis (b. 1970)
November 4: Flag Day in Panama
- 1780 – In the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, Túpac Amaru II led an uprising of Aymara, Quechua, and mestizo peasants as a protest against the Bourbon reforms.
- 1890 – London's City and South London Railway (locomotive pictured), the first deep-level underground railway in the world, officially opened, running a distance of 3.2 mi (5.1 km) between the City of London and Stockwell.
- 1960 – At the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Tanzania, Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee using a grass stalk to extract termites from a termite hill, the first recorded case of tool use by animals.
- 2010 – In the first aviation occurrence for an Airbus A380, Qantas Flight 32 suffered an uncontained engine failure and safely made an emergency landing at Singapore Changi Airport with no casualties.
Hu Zongxian (b. 1512) · La Belle Otero (b. 1868) · Shoghi Effendi (d. 1957)
November 5: Constitution Day in the Dominican Republic (2018); Guy Fawkes Night in Great Britain and some Commonwealth countries (1605)
- 1605 – The arrest of Guy Fawkes (pictured), found during a search of the Palace of Westminster, foiled Robert Catesby's plot to blow up the House of Lords.
- 1757 – Seven Years' War: Prussian forces led by Frederick the Great defeated the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman/Austrian Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.
- 1925 – Sidney Reilly, a "super-spy" who was one of the inspirations for James Bond, was executed by the Soviet secret police.
- 1950 – Korean War: The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade succeeded in preventing a Chinese break-through at Pakchon in the Battle of Pakchon.
- 2013 – The Indian Space Research Organisation launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, the nation's first interplanetary probe.
Anna Maria van Schurman (b. 1607) · Hans Egede (d. 1758) · James Robert Baker (d. 1997)
November 6: Gustavus Adolphus Day in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden (1632); Finnish Swedish Heritage Day in Finland; Diwali in South India (2018)
- 447 – A powerful earthquake destroyed large portions of the Walls of Constantinople, including 57 towers.
- 1868 – Red Cloud (pictured), a leader of the Oglala Lakota Native American tribe, signed the second Treaty of Fort Laramie, ending his war and establishing the Great Sioux Reservation.
- 1935 – The Hawker Hurricane, the aircraft responsible for 60% of the Royal Air Force's air victories in the Battle of Britain, made its first flight.
- 1939 – As part of their plan to eradicate the Polish intellectual elite, the Gestapo arrested 184 professors, students and employees of Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
- 1995 – Madagascar's Rova of Antananarivo, which served as the royal palace from the 17th to 19th centuries, was destroyed by fire.
John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (d. 1461) · Else Ackermann (b. 1933) · Jerry Yang (b. 1968)
November 7: Diwali (Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, 2018)
- 680 – The Sixth Ecumenical Council convened in Constantinople to take a position on the theological positions of monoenergism and monothelitism.
- 1811 – American forces led by William Henry Harrison defeated the forces of Shawnee leader Tecumseh's growing confederation at the Battle of Tippecanoe near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana.
- 1949 – Oil was discovered in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan, leading to the construction of Neft Daşları, the world's first offshore oil platform.
- 1987 – Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deposed and replaced Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, declaring him medically unfit for the duties of the office.
- 2000 – Hillary Clinton (pictured) was elected as a Senator, becoming the first First Lady to win public office in the United States.
Maldev Rathore (d. 1562) · Lise Meitner (b. 1878) · Eleanor Roosevelt (d. 1962)
- 1644 – The Shunzhi Emperor (pictured), the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, was enthroned in Beijing after the collapse of the Ming dynasty as the first Qing emperor to rule over China.
- 1861 – American Civil War: The USS San Jacinto stopped the British mailship Trent and arrested two Confederate envoys en route to Europe, sparking a major diplomatic crisis between the United Kingdom and the United States.
- 1940 – The Italian invasion of Greece failed as outnumbered Greek units repulsed the Italians in the Battle of Elaia–Kalamas.
- 1971 – English rock group Led Zeppelin released their fourth album, which would go on to be one of the best-selling albums worldwide.
- 2016 – The Government of India announced the demonetisation of certain banknotes, causing prolonged cash shortages in the weeks that followed and significant disruption throughout the economy.
Lettice Knollys (b. 1543) · Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz (d. 1773) · Stylianos Pattakos (b. 1912)
November 9: Twin Holy Birthdays begin (Bahá'í Faith, 2018); Muhammad Iqbal's Day in Pakistan
- 1872 – The Great Boston Fire began, eventually destroying more than 750 buildings and causing $73.5 million in damages in Boston, Massachusetts.
- 1918 – The government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic adopted the national flag (pictured) which is still used by the Republic of Azerbaijan today, with minor modifications.
- 1938 – Kristallnacht began as SA stormtroopers and civilians destroyed and ransacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in Germany and Austria, resulting in at least 90 deaths and the deportation of 30,000 men to concentration camps.
- 1967 – French comic book heroes Valérian and Laureline first appeared in Pilote magazine.
- 2016 – A tram derailed in Croydon, United Kingdom, killing seven people.
Johannes Narssius (b. 1580) · Neville Chamberlain (d. 1940) · Dylan Thomas (d. 1953)
November 10: Noor Hossain Day in Bangladesh (1987)
- 1202 – The Fourth Crusade began the Siege of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), the first time Catholic crusaders attacked a Catholic city.
- 1898 – White supremacists seized power in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in United States history.
- 1958 – Merchant Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond (pictured), the "most famous diamond in the world", to the Smithsonian Institution.
- 1975 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism.
- 2006 – Prominent Sri Lankan Tamil politician and human rights lawyer Nadarajah Raviraj was assassinated in Colombo.
Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg (b. 1547) · Maria Jane Williams (d. 1873) · Canaan Banana (d. 2003)
November 11: National Independence Day in Poland (1918); Anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 (signatories pictured)
- 1620 – The Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony, was signed by 41 of the Mayflower's passengers while the ship was anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor.
- 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: French, Austrian and Russian units all suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Dürenstein.
- 1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance, a memorial to all Australians who have served in war, opened in Melbourne.
- 1965 – Rhodesia, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom.
Arsacius of Tarsus (d. 405) · David I. Walsh (b. 1872) · Charles Groves Wright Anderson (d. 1988)
- 1892 – William Heffelfinger (pictured) was paid $500 by the Allegheny Athletic Association, becoming the first professional American football player on record.
- 1912 – The bodies of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions were discovered, roughly eight months after their deaths during the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition 1910.
- 1928 – At least 110 people died after the British ocean liner SS Vestris was abandoned as it sank in the western Atlantic Ocean.
- 1940 – World War II: Free French forces captured Gabon from Vichy France.
- 2011 – A blast in Iran's Shahid Modarres missile base led to the death of 17 members of the Revolutionary Guards, including Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran's missile program.
Claude of France (b. 1547) · William Henry Barlow (d. 1902) · Naomi Wolf (b. 1962)
November 13: Feast day of Saint John Chrysostom (Eastern Orthodox Church)
- 1642 – First English Civil War: The Royalist army engaged the much larger Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Turnham Green near Turnham Green, Middlesex.
- 1841 – Scottish surgeon James Braid observed a demonstration of animal magnetism, which inspired him to study the subject he eventually called hypnotism.
- 1940 – Walt Disney's Fantasia, the first commercial film shown in stereophonic sound, premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York City.
- 1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz (pictured) erupted, causing a volcanic mudslide that buried the town of Armero, Colombia, and killed approximately 23,000 people.
- 2015 – Terrorist attacks in Paris perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant killed 130 people and injured 413 others.
Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland (d. 1440) · Dorothea Erxleben (b. 1715) · Paul-Émile Léger (d. 1991)
November 14: World Diabetes Day
- 1680 – Gottfried Kirch, a German astronomer, discovered the Great Comet of 1680, the first to be found using a telescope.
- 1940 – Second World War: Coventry Cathedral (ruins pictured) and much of the city centre of Coventry, England, were destroyed by the Luftwaffe during the Coventry Blitz.
- 1960 – Ruby Bridges and the McDonogh Three became the first black children to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana as part of the New Orleans school desegregation crisis.
- 1975 – With the signing of the Madrid Accords, Spain agreed to withdraw its presence from the territory of Spanish Sahara.
- 1990 – Germany and Poland signed the German–Polish Border Treaty, confirming their border at the Oder–Neisse line, which was originally defined by the Potsdam Agreement in 1945.
Marie François Xavier Bichat (b. 1771) · John Lumsden (b. 1869) · Andrew Inglis Clark (d. 1907)
November 15: Republic Day in Brazil (1889)
- 1315 – A 1,500-strong force from the Swiss Confederacy ambushed a group of Austrian soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire on the shores of Lake Ägerisee in Switzerland.
- 1760 – The chapel of the new Castellania Palace in Valletta, Malta, was consecrated.
- 1859 – Sponsored by Greek businessman Evangelos Zappas, the first modern revival of the Olympic Games took place in Athens.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Heinrich Himmler ordered that Romanies were to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps".
- 1988 – The Soviet Buran spacecraft (pictured), a reusable vehicle built in response to NASA's Space Shuttle program, was launched, unmanned, on its only flight.
Odo II, Count of Blois (d. 1037) · The Duke of Hamilton & Lord Mohun (d. 1712) · Gus Poyet (b. 1967)
- 534 – The Codex Repetitae Praelectionis, the second edition of the Codex Justinianus, the codification of Roman law by Justinian I, was published.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian units captured Fort Washington from the Patriots.
- 1885 – After a five-day trial following the North-West Rebellion, Louis Riel (pictured), Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba", was hanged for high treason.
- 1938 – Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesized the psychedelic drug LSD at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
- 1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an act authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline to transport oil from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Alaska.
Edmund of Abingdon (d. 1240) · Charles-Antoine Campion (b. 1720) · Chinua Achebe (b. 1930)
- 1558 – Elizabeth I (pictured) became Queen of England and Ireland, marking the beginning of the Elizabethan era.
- 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: French forces defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Arcole in a manoeuvre to cut the latter's line of retreat.
- 1968 – NBC controversially cut away from an American football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi, causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic ending.
- 2009 – Administrators at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia discovered that their servers had been hacked and thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.
- 2013 – Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed during an aborted landing at Kazan International Airport in Tatarstan, Russia, killing all 50 people on board and leading to the revocation of the airline's operating certificate.
Agnes of Jesus (b. 1602) · Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (d. 1818) · Robert Hofstadter (d. 1990)
- 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: In the Bay of Bengal, a French frigate squadron captured three East Indiamen mainly carrying recruits for the Indian Army.
- 1865 – American author Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", his first great success as a writer, was published.
- 1956 – In the Polish embassy in Moscow, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said "We will bury you" while addressing Western envoys, prompting them to leave the room.
- 1978 – Jim Jones led more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple to mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after some of its members assassinated U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan (pictured).
- 1991 – The current flag of Uzbekistan was adopted, making the country the first newly independent republic in Central Asia to choose a new flag.
Thomas of Bayeux (d. 1100) · Chloë Sevigny (b. 1974) · Conn Smythe (d. 1980)
November 19: International Men's Day; World Toilet Day
- 1794 – The United States and Great Britain signed the Jay Treaty, the basis for ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
- 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Inmates at the Janowska concentration camp near what is now Lviv, Ukraine, staged a failed uprising, after which the SS liquidated the camp, resulting in at least 6,000 deaths.
- 1985 – Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan (both pictured) held the first of five summit meetings between them in Geneva.
- 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige split in half off the coast of Galicia, after spilling an estimated 17.8 million US gallons (420,000 bbl) in the worst environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
Nicolas Poussin (d. 1665) · Mikhail Kalinin (b. 1875) · James Ensor (d. 1949)
November 20: Mawlid (Sunni Islam, 2018); Transgender Day of Remembrance; National Sovereignty Day in Argentina
- 284 – Diocletian (pictured on coin) became the Roman emperor, eventually establishing reforms that ended the Crisis of the Third Century.
- 1845 – Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata: The Argentine Confederation was defeated in the Battle of Vuelta de Obligado, but the losses ultimately made the United Kingdom and France give up the blockade.
- 1947 – Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King George VI of the United Kingdom, married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, who was given the title Duke of Edinburgh.
- 1969 – A group of Native American activists began a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
- 1990 – Andrei Chikatilo, one of the Soviet Union's most prolific serial killers, with 56 convicted murders, was arrested in Novocherkassk.
Anton Rubinstein (d. 1894) · Meredith Whitney (b. 1969) · Ian Smith (d. 2007)
November 21: World Hello Day; Armed Forces Day in Bangladesh
- 1386 – Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur captured and sacked the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, forcing King Bagrat V to convert to Islam.
- 1894 – First Sino-Japanese War: After capturing the city of Lüshunkou, the Japanese Second Army killed more than 1,000 Chinese servicemen and civilians.
- 1918 – Polish troops and civilians began a three-day pogrom against Jews and Ukrainian Christians in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).
- 1977 – "God Defend New Zealand" (audio featured) became New Zealand's second national anthem, on equal standing with "God Save the Queen", which had been the traditional one since 1840.
- 2009 – An explosion in a coal mine in Heilongjiang, China, killed 108 miners.
Columbanus (d. 615) · James Hogg (d. 1835) · Annie (b. 1977)
November 22: Alphabet Day in Albania (1908)
- 1718 – The pirate Blackbeard was killed in battle by a boarding party of British sailors off the coast of North Carolina, ending his reign of terror in the Caribbean.
- 1812 – War of 1812: During a punitive expedition against Native American villages, a contingent of Indiana Rangers were ambushed by Kickapoo, Winnebago, and Shawnee warriors.
- 1910 – The crews of the Brazilian warships Minas Geraes, São Paulo, Bahia—all commissioned only months before—and several smaller vessels mutinied against what they called the "slavery" being practiced in the Brazilian Navy.
- 1935 – The China Clipper flying boat (pictured) took off from Alameda, California, U.S., to become the first service to deliver airmail cargo across the Pacific Ocean.
- 1967 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
As-Salih Ayyub (d. 1249) · Serranus Clinton Hastings (b. 1814) · Hans Adolf Krebs (d. 1981)
November 23: Guru Nanak Gurpurab (Sikhism, 2018); Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan
- 1867 – The Manchester Martyrs were hanged in Manchester, England, for killing a police officer while helping two Irish nationalists escape from police custody.
- 1876 – William "Boss" Tweed, a New York City politician who had been arrested for embezzlement, was handed to U.S. authorities after having escaped from prison to Spain.
- 1924 – Edwin Hubble published evidence in a newspaper that the Andromeda Nebula, previously believed to be part of the Milky Way, is actually another galaxy, one of many in the universe.
- 1992 – IBM introduced the Simon (pictured), a handheld, touchscreen mobile phone and PDA that is considered the first smartphone.
- 2007 – MS Explorer became the first cruise ship to sink in the Antarctic Ocean.
Richard Hakluyt (d. 1616) · Mary Brewster Hazelton (b. 1868) · Mary Whitehouse (d. 2001)
November 24: Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine (2018)
- 1542 – Anglo-Scottish Wars: England captured about 1,200 Scottish prisoners with its victory in the Battle of Solway Moss.
- 1642 – A Dutch expedition led by Abel Tasman reached what is now Tasmania, Australia.
- 1922 – Irish Civil War: Author and Irish nationalist Erskine Childers was executed by the Irish Free State for illegally carrying a semi-automatic pistol.
- 1963 – Businessman Jack Ruby shot and fatally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald (shooting pictured), the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during a live television broadcast, fueling conspiracy theories on the matter.
- 2015 – A Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M, claiming the latter had strayed into Turkish airspace and ignored warnings to change course.
Magnús Óláfsson (d. 1265) · William Webb Ellis (b. 1806) · Anna Jarvis (d. 1948)
November 25: Mawlid (Shia Islam, 2018); Feast of Christ the King (Roman Catholic Church, 2018); Evacuation Day in New York (1783)
- 1759 – The second of two strong earthquakes struck the Levant and destroyed all the villages in the Beqaa Valley.
- 1795 – Stanisław II Augustus, the last King of Poland, was forced to abdicate after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- 1917 – World War I: German troops invaded Portuguese East Africa (fighting pictured) in an attempt to escape superior British forces to the north and resupply from captured Portuguese materiel.
- 1947 – McCarthyism: Executives from movie studios agreed to blacklist ten screenwriters and directors who were jailed for refusing to give testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
- 1975 – Upon Suriname's independence from the Netherlands, Johan Ferrier became its first president.
Osanna of Cattaro (b. 1493) · Hu Zongxian (d. 1565) · Albertus Soegijapranata (b. 1896)
November 26: Feast day of Sylvester Gozzolini (Catholic Church); Constitution Day in India (1949)
- 1805 – The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest in the world, opened.
- 1842 – The University of Notre Dame (main building pictured) was founded by Rev. Edward Sorin, of the Congregation of Holy Cross, as an all-male institution in South Bend, Indiana, US.
- 1917 – Unable to resolve disputes with Eddie Livingstone, owner of the Toronto Blueshirts, the other ice hockey clubs of Canada's National Hockey Association officially agreed to break away and form the National Hockey League.
- 1942 – Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca.
- 1977 – A speaker claiming to represent the "Intergalactic Association" interrupted the Southern Television broadcast in South East England, warning viewers that "All your weapons of evil must be destroyed."
Sojourner Truth (d. 1883) • Helen C. White (b. 1896) • Tina Turner (b. 1939)
- 1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, one of the most severe storms to strike southern Great Britain, destroyed the first Eddystone Lighthouse (pictured) off Plymouth.
- 1856 – King-Grand Duke William III unilaterally revised the constitution of Luxembourg, greatly expanding his powers.
- 1919 – The first fraternity exclusively for collegiate band members, Kappa Kappa Psi, was founded on the campus of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.
- 1944 – Between 3,500 and 4,000 tonnes of ordnance exploded at the RAF Fauld underground munitions storage depot in the largest non-nuclear explosion in the United Kingdom.
- 2009 – A bomb exploded under a high-speed train travelling between Moscow and Saint Petersburg derailing it, killing 28 passengers and injuring more than 90 others.
Horace (d. 8 BC) · Jacopo Mazzoni (b. 1548) · Georg Forster (b. 1754)
November 28: Declaration of Independence of Albania (1912)
- 1470 – Emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Annam (Vietnam) launched a military expedition against Champa, beginning the Cham–Annamese War.
- 1660 – At London's Gresham College, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Christopher Wren and other leading scientists founded a learned society now known as the Royal Society (coat of arms pictured).
- 1895 – The first automobile race in the United States, the Chicago Times-Herald race, was held in Chicago.
- 1971 – Prime Minister of Jordan Wasfi al-Tal was assassinated by the Black September unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Cairo.
- 1987 – South African Airways Flight 295 suffered a catastrophic in-flight fire and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius, killing all 159 on board.
William Blake (b. 1757) · Adina Emilia De Zavala (b. 1861) · Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (d. 1947)
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British reinforcements brought an end to the Patriot attempt to capture Fort Cumberland in Nova Scotia.
- 1807 – Maria I of Portugal (pictured), the Braganza royal family and its court of nearly 15,000 people departed Lisbon for the colony of Brazil just days before Napoleonic forces invaded.
- 1947 – The United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine by separating the territory into Jewish and Arab states.
- 1987 – Korean Air Flight 858 exploded over the Andaman Sea after two North Korean agents left a time bomb in an overhead compartment, killing all 115 people on board.
- 2007 – During their trial for the 2003 Oakwood mutiny, Philippine soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes staged a mutiny and temporarily seized a conference room in The Peninsula Manila hotel.
Claudio Monteverdi (d. 1643) · Christian Doppler (b. 1803) · Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (b. 1908)
November 30: Saint Andrew's Day
- 1853 – Crimean War: Russian warships led by Pavel Nakhimov destroyed an Ottoman fleet of frigates at the Battle of Sinop, providing France and the UK cause to join the war.
- 1872 – The first international football match took place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
- 1939 – World War II: The Winter War broke out as the Soviet Red Army invaded Finland (Soviet prisoners of war pictured) and quickly advanced to the Mannerheim Line, an action judged illegal by the League of Nations.
- 1999 – Protests by anti-globalization activists against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S., forced the cancellation of its opening ceremonies.
- 2007 – Swami Rambhadracharya, a Hindu religious leader, released the first Braille version of the Bhagavad Gita scripture.
Emeric, King of Hungary (d. 1204) · William-Adolphe Bouguereau (b. 1825) · Shawna Robinson (b. 1964) Gael Garcia Bernal (b. 1978)
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive – All
January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries – Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 16:57 on Monday, November 19, 2018 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
Selected anniversaries for December[edit]
- 1577 – Elizabeth I of England's principal secretary and spymaster Francis Walsingham was knighted.
- 1822 – Pedro I was formally crowned the first Emperor of Brazil, seven weeks after his reign began on his 24th birthday.
- 1955 – In a key event in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks (pictured) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- 1988 – Four armed men hijacked a bus with thirty schoolchildren in Ordzhonikidze, Soviet Union (now Vladikavkaz in Russia), and flew to Israel in exchange for the release of the hostages and ransom.
- 1991 – Over 92% of Ukrainian voters approved their country's independence as declared by the Ukrainian parliament on 24 August.
Saint Eligius (d. 660) · Marie Tussaud (b. 1761) · Masao Horiba (b. 1924)
- 1804 – The coronation of Napoleon (pictured) as Emperor of the French was held at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
- 1823 – U.S. President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
- 1950 – Korean War: With the conclusion of the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army expelled UN forces out of North Korea.
- 1988 – Benazir Bhutto took office as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of a Muslim-majority state.
- 2015 – In San Bernardino, California, a married couple carried out a mass shooting at a Christmas party before fleeing and dying in a shootout with police.
William Burges (b. 1827) • Allen Wright (d. 1885) • Britney Spears (b. 1981)
December 3: First day of Hanukkah (Judaism, 2018)
- 1800 – War of the Second Coalition: French forces defeated the Austrians and Bavarians in Hohenlinden, near Munich, forcing the Austrians to sign an armistice.
- 1904 – Himalia, the largest irregular satellite of Jupiter, was discovered by astronomer Charles Dillon Perrine at the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California.
- 1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first official film featuring the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, was released.
- 1967 – Cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (pictured) performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
- 1968 – Elvis Presley's first television special, Singer Presents...ELVIS was broadcast by NBC.
- 1992 – During extreme weather conditions, the oil tanker Aegean Sea ran aground off the coast of Galicia, Spain, spilling 67,000 tonnes of light crude oil.
Daniel Seghers (b. 1590) · Octavia Hill (b. 1838) · Mary Baker Eddy (d. 1910)
- 1639 – English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks (pictured) made the first successful prediction and observation of a transit of Venus.
- 1893 – First Matabele War: A patrol of British South Africa Company soldiers was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors.
- 1909 – The first Grey Cup, the championship game of the Canadian Football League, was held.
- 1971 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, exploded a bomb at a Catholic-owned pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing 15 people.
- 1992 – U.S. President George H. W. Bush ordered American troops into Somalia to help provide humanitarian aid and restore order during the ongoing Somali Civil War.
John Cotton (b. 1585) · I. K. Gujral (b. 1919) · Pearl Corkhill (d. 1985)
December 5: Krampusnacht in Austria
- 1757 – Seven Years' War: Prussian forces under Frederick the Great defeated Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine at the Battle of Leuthen.
- 1876 – Fire engulfed the Brooklyn Theatre (damage pictured) in Brooklyn, New York, killing at least 278 people, mostly due to smoke inhalation.
- 1958 – Britain's first motorway, the Preston By-pass, opened to the public.
- 1972 – Gough Whitlam took office as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia and formed a duumvirate with his deputy Lance Barnard, ending 23 years of Liberal-Country Party government.
- 2007 – A nineteen-year-old gunman went on a shooting spree at a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., killing nine people, including himself.
Joan, Countess of Flanders (d. 1244) · Louise Bryant (b. 1885) · Amrita Sher-Gil (d. 1941)
December 6: Independence Day in Finland (1917)
- 1060 – Béla I the Champion was crowned King of Hungary.
- 1912 – The Nefertiti Bust (pictured), labeled a "Top 10 Plundered Artifact" by Time magazine, was found in Amarna before being taking to Germany.
- 1941 – The British Secret Intelligence Service established a facility known as "Camp X" in Ontario, Canada, to train covert agents in clandestine operations.
- 1957 – The first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite failed with an explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
- 1992 – The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, was destroyed by Hindu Kar Sevaks, who believed that it was built on the birthplace of Rama.
Jan van Scorel (d. 1562) · William Arnott (b. 1827) · Mary Margaret O'Reilly (d. 1949)
December 7: Armed Forces Flag Day in India; Pearl Harbor Day in the United States
- 1904 – Comparative trials began between HMS Spiteful (pictured), the first warship powered solely by fuel oil, and a similar Royal Navy ship burning coal.
- 1941 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, intending to neutralize the United States Pacific Fleet from influencing the war Japan was planning to wage in Southeast Asia.
- 1975 – The Indonesian military invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism and began a 25-year occupation.
- 1987 – A former airline employee on Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 shot his former boss and the pilots and deliberately crashed the plane near Cayucos, California, leaving no survivors.
- 2007 – A crane barge that had broken free from a tugboat crashed into an oil tanker near Daesan, South Korea, causing the country's worst-ever oil spill.
Charles Saunders (d. 1775) · Willa Cather (b. 1873) · Martha Layne Collins (b. 1936)
December 8: Rōhatsu in Japan
- 1432 – The first battle of the Lithuanian Civil War between the forces of Švitrigaila and of Sigismund Kęstutaitis was fought near what is now the town of Ashmyany.
- 1813 – Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (audio featured) premiered in Vienna, conducted by the composer himself.
- 1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: Following their successful attack three days earlier, a small Indian Navy strike force attacked the Port of Karachi again and created a de facto blockade.
- 1987 – A man shot and killed eight people at the Australia Post building in Melbourne, before jumping to his death.
- 2009 – Bombings carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq in Baghdad, Iraq, killed at least 127 people and injured 448.
Adolph Menzel (b. 1815) · George Boole (d. 1864) · John Banville (b. 1945)
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: After their loss in the Battle of Great Bridge, British authorities were forced to evacuate from the Colony of Virginia.
- 1897 – French actress, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde.
- 1917 – First World War: Hussein al-Husayni, the Ottoman mayor of Jerusalem, surrendered (pictured) the city to the British.
- 1931 – The approval of the Spanish Constitution by the Constituent Cortes paved the way to the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic.
- 1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox, making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated from nature.
Al-Biruni (d. 1048) · Fritz Haber (b. 1868) · Joan Armatrading (b. 1950)
December 10: Human Rights Day, Nobel Banquet
- 1508 – The Papal States, France, Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire formed the League of Cambrai, an alliance against the Republic of Venice.
- 1861 – Forces led by Nguyễn Trung Trực, an anti-colonial guerrilla leader in southern Vietnam, sank the French lorcha L'Esperance.
- 1909 – Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (pictured) became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 1979 – The Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship of Taiwan arrested a large number of opposition leaders who had organized pro-democracy demonstrations, an incident credited with ending the KMT's rule in 2000.
- 1989 – At the first open pro-democracy demonstration in Mongolia, journalist Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announced the formation of the Mongolian Democratic Union, which would be instrumental in ending Communist rule four months later.
Michael IV the Paphlagonian (d. 1041) · Olivier Messiaen (b. 1908) · Diane Schuur (b. 1953)
- 1789 – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (The Old Well pictured), one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, received its charter.
- 1886 – The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
- 1920 – Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in Cork, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in the city.
- 1962 – Convicted murderers Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were the last two persons to be executed in Canada.
- 1981 – Salvadoran Civil War: About 900 civilians were killed by the Salvadoran armed forces in an anti-guerrilla campaign.
Colley Cibber (d. 1757) · Hector Berlioz (b. 1803) · Max Born (b. 1882)
December 12: Yule Lads begin arrival in Iceland
- 1866 – England's worst mining disaster occurred when a series of explosions caused by flammable gases ripped through the Oaks Colliery.
- 1911 – The final Delhi Durbar, a mass assembly at Coronation Park to mark the succession of an Emperor or Empress of India, took place.
- 1942 – World War II: German troops began Operation Winter Storm, an attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad.
- 1964 – Jomo Kenyatta (pictured) became the first President of the Republic of Kenya.
- 2000 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore that the election recount of the ballots cast in Florida for the presidential election must stop, effectively making George W. Bush the winner.
Edvard Munch (b. 1863) · Henrietta Swan Leavitt (d. 1921) · Yasujirō Ozu (b. 1903; d. 1963)
- 1643 – First English Civil War: Roundhead forces serving under Sir William Waller (pictured) led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry.
- 1769 – Dartmouth College in what is now Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S., was established by a royal charter and became the last university founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
- 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces captured Nanking in China and then began to commit numerous atrocities over the next several weeks.
- 1982 – A magnitude 6.2 earthquake in North Yemen killed as many as 2,800 people and was the region's first instrumentally recorded event to be detected on global seismograph networks.
Samuel Johnson (d. 1784) · Emily Carr (b. 1871) · Taylor Swift (b. 1989)
December 14: Martyred Intellectuals Day in Bangladesh (1971); Monkey Day
- 557 – A large earthquake severely damaged the city of Constantinople.
- 1836 – The Toledo War, the mostly bloodless boundary dispute between Ohio and the adjoining Territory of Michigan, unofficially ended with a resolution passed by the controversial "Frostbitten Convention".
- 1913 – Haruna (pictured), the fourth and last ship of the Kongō-class, was launched, eventually becoming one of the Japanese workhorses during both World Wars.
- 1981 – The Knesset extended Israeli "laws, jurisdiction and administration" to the Golan Heights, effectively annexing the territory.
- 1992 – War in Abkhazia: During the Siege of Tkvarcheli, a helicopter carrying evacuees from Tkvarcheli was shot down, resulting in at least 52 deaths, which catalysed more concerted Russian military intervention on behalf of Abkhazia.
Al-Ashraf Khalil (d. 1293) · Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (d. 1878) · Helle Thorning-Schmidt (b. 1966)
December 15: Kingdom Day in Aruba, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Sint Maarten (1954); Zamenhof Day in Esperanto culture
- 687 – Sergius was elected pope, ending the last disputed period of sede vacante during the Byzantine Papacy.
- 1025 – Constantine VIII became sole emperor of the Byzantine Empire, 63 years after being crowned co-emperor.
- 1467 – Troops under Stephen III of Moldavia defeated the forces of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in present-day Baia, Romania.
- 1906 – The Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (poster pictured), a 14.17-kilometre (8.80 mi) long deep-level underground tube railway connecting Hammersmith and Finsbury Park, London, opened.
- 1942 – World War II: The Americans engaged Imperial Japanese forces at the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse in the hills near the Matanikau River area on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal Campaign.
David Teniers the Younger (b. 1610) · Sarah Trimmer (d. 1810) · Frankie Dettori (b. 1970)
December 16: National Day in Bahrain; Day of Reconciliation in South Africa
- 1707 – The last recorded eruption of Japan's Mount Fuji released some 800 million m3 of volcanic ash.
- 1773 – To prevent the unloading of tea that was taxed without their consent under the Tea Act, a group of colonists destroyed it by throwing it into Boston Harbor (pictured).
- 1850 – The Canterbury Pilgrims aboard Randolph and Charlotte Jane arrived to settle Christchurch, New Zealand.
- 1918 – Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas declared the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, a puppet state created by Soviet Russia to justify the Lithuanian–Soviet War.
- 1997 – "Dennō Senshi Porygon", an episode of the Japanese television series Pokémon, induced epileptic seizures in 685 children.
Elizabeth Carter (b. 1717) · Noël Coward (b. 1899) · Deyda Hydara (d. 2004)
- 497 BC – The temple to the Roman god Saturn was dedicated in the Roman Forum; its anniversary was celebrated as Saturnalia.
- 546 – After a nearly year-long siege, the Ostrogoths led by Totila sacked Rome.
- 1837 – A fire in the Winter Palace (pictured) in Saint Petersburg broke out, damaging the palace and killing thirty guardsmen.
- 1948 – The Finnish Security Police was established to remove communist leadership from its predecessor, the State Police.
- 1983 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a car bomb just outside Harrods in London, killing six people and injuring about 90 others.
Rumi (d. 1273) · Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (d. 1917) · Agnes Mary Mansour (d. 2004)
December 18: Tenth of Tevet (Judaism, 2018); National Day in Qatar (1878)
- 1499 – Muslims in the city of Granada rebelled against their rulers in response to forced conversions to Catholicism.
- 1898 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official land speed record, averaging 63.15 km/h (39.24 mph) over 1 km (0.62 mi).
- 1939 – Second World War: The Luftwaffe victory over the Royal Air Force in the Battle of the Heligoland Bight greatly influenced both sides' future air strategy.
- 1963 – Students from Ghana and other African countries organized a protest on Moscow's Red Square in response to the alleged murder of medical student Edmund Assare-Addo.
- 1966 – Epimetheus (pictured), one of the moons of Saturn, was discovered, but was mistaken for Janus; it took twelve years to determine that they are two distinct objects sharing the same orbit.
James Watney (b. 1800) · Ty Cobb (b. 1886) · Alexei Kosygin (d. 1980)
- 1776 – Thomas Paine published the first in a series of pamphlets entitled The American Crisis, opening with the line, "These are the times that try men's souls."
- 1843 – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (pictured), a novella about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation after being visited by three Christmas ghosts, was first published.
- 1964 – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ruling junta of South Vietnam led by Nguyễn Khánh, initiated a coup, dissolving and arresting members of the High National Council, a civilian advisory body.
- 1983 – The Jules Rimet Trophy, awarded to the winner of the FIFA World Cup, was stolen from a display case in the Brazilian Football Confederation offices.
- 1997 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashed into the Musi River in Indonesia, killing 104 people.
Vitus Bering (d. 1741) · Ann Bishop (b. 1899) · Stella Gibbons (d. 1989)
- 1860 – South Carolina became the first of eleven slave states to secede from the United States, leading to the eventual creation of the Confederate States of America and later the American Civil War.
- 1951 – Experimental Breeder Reactor I near Arco, Idaho, United States, became the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it became able to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs.
- 1987 – The deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history occurred when the MV Doña Paz (pictured) sank after colliding with an oil tanker on the Tablas Strait, in the Philippines, resulting in an estimated 4,000 deaths.
- 1995 – As per the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War, the NATO-led IFOR began peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 2007 – Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch was stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art and recovered about three weeks later.
Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon (d. 1740) · Elizabeth Kekaaniau (d. 1928) · Beatrice Beeby (d. 1991)
December 21: December solstice (22:23 UTC, 2018); Yule
- 1124 – Lamberto Scannabecchi was elected Pope and took the name Honorius II.
- 1826 – Settlers from the United States in Mexican Texas made the first attempt to secede from Mexico, establishing the short-lived Republic of Fredonia.
- 1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length cel-animated feature in film history, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles.
- 1968 – Apollo 8 launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a trajectory to the Moon, for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.
- 1988 – A total of 270 people were killed when a bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103 exploded while the plane was in flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.
- 2012 – Countries that were part of the Maya civilization celebrated the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.
Hugh, Margrave of Tuscany (d. 1001) · Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton (b. 1505) · Jane Fonda (b. 1937)
- 856 – An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 struck the eastern Alborz mountains of Persia, causing 200,000 deaths.
- 1769 – Having been soundly defeated in battle, the Qing dynasty agreed to terms of truce, ending the Sino-Burmese War.
- 1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel (pictured), connecting New York City to Weehawken, New Jersey, opened.
- 1987 – The Zimbabwe African National Union and Zimbabwe African People's Union agreed to merge, bringing an end to the Gukurahundi, the suppression of predominantly Ndebele civilians by the 5th Brigade.
- 1997 – Hussein Farrah Aidid relinquished the disputed title of President of Somalia.
John Newbery (d. 1767) · Frank B. Kellogg (b. 1856) · Peggy Ashcroft (b. 1907)
December 23: Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; The Emperor's Birthday in Japan; Festivus
- 1793 – French Revolution: The Royalist counterrevolutionary army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Savenay, although fighting continued in the War in the Vendée for years afterward.
- 1888 – During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh stalked his friend French painter Paul Gauguin with a razor, and then afterwards cut off the lower part of his own left ear and gave it to a prostitute.
- 1919 – The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was enacted, lifting most of the existing common-law restrictions on women in the United Kingdom.
- 1957 – Ian Craig of Australia became the youngest Test cricket captain in history.
- 2010 – A monsoonal trough brought torrential rain to Queensland, causing massive flooding (pictured) that killed 38 people and caused A$2.38 billion in damage.
Pamheiba (b. 1690) · Jean-François Champollion (b. 1790) · P. V. Narasimha Rao (d. 2004)
- 1818 – "Silent Night", a Christmas carol by Josef Mohr and Franz Gruber, was first performed in a church in Austria.
- 1846 – The Sultanate of Brunei ceded the island of Labuan to Great Britain as a colony.
- 1914 – British and German soldiers interrupted World War I to celebrate Christmas, beginning the Christmas truce (pictured).
- 1964 – The Viet Cong bombed the Brinks Hotel in Saigon, killing two U.S. Army officers, raising fears of an escalation in the Vietnam War.
- 1973 – The United States Congress granted Washington, D.C. home rule, allowing the residents to elect their own mayor and city council.
Gongsun Shu (d. 36) · Adam Mickiewicz (b. 1798) · Cosima Wagner (b. 1837) · Jeff Sessions (b. 1946)
December 25: Christmas (Gregorian calendar); Quaid-e-Azam Day (Pakistan)
- 36 – The empire of Chengjia was conquered by the Eastern Han dynasty after the death of its emperor Gongsun Shu.
- 1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne was crowned as Baldwin I of Jerusalem (pictured), the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
- 1831 – A Baptist preacher named Samuel Sharpe began an unsuccessful eleven-day slave revolt in Jamaica.
- 1927 – The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng, a revolutionary socialist political party that sought Vietnamese independence from French colonial rule, was formed in Hanoi.
- 1989 – Romanian Revolution: Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were condemned to death under a wide range of charges and executed.
- 2007 – A tiger at the San Francisco Zoo escaped from its enclosure and attacked three patrons before it was shot and killed.
Makan ibn Kaki (d. 940) · Nina E. Allender (b. 1873) · Sadiq al-Mahdi (b. 1935)
December 26: Boxing Day in Commonwealth countries; Kwanzaa begins in Canada and the United States
- 1606 – The first known performance of the play King Lear, a tragedy by William Shakespeare based on the legendary King Lear of the Britons, was held.
- 1898 – At the French Academy of Sciences, physicists Pierre and Marie Curie announced the discovery of a new element, naming it radium.
- 1900 – A relief crew arrived at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse (pictured) of Scotland and discovered that the previous crew had disappeared without a trace.
- 1919 – American baseball player Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to their rivals, the New York Yankees, starting the 84-year-long "Curse of the Bambino".
- 1996 – The Federation of Korean Trade Unions called upon its 1.2 million members to walk off the job, beginning the largest organized strike in South Korea's history.
Rose Lok (b. 1526) · Seth Warner (b. 1784) · Elizabeth David (b. 1913)
- 1521 – Three men of the Radical Reformation arrived in Wittenberg, Saxony, and caused an unrest that required the release of Martin Luther from custody to quell.
- 1831 – Aboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin (pictured) left Plymouth, England, on what became a historic expedition to South America that made his name as a naturalist.
- 1922 – The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Hōshō, the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier.
- 1997 – Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright was assassinated in the HM Prison Maze by members of the Irish National Liberation Army.
- 2007 – Riots erupted in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the presidential election—the first event in a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.
Bertha of Savoy (d. 1087) · Hayley Williams (b. 1988) · Carrie Fisher (d. 2016)
December 28: Proclamation Day in South Australia (1836)
- 484 – Alaric II succeeded his father Euric as king of the Visigoths.
- 1612 – Galileo became the first person to observe the planet Neptune (pictured), although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star.
- 1895 – History of film: Using their cinematograph in Paris, the Lumière brothers showed motion pictures to a paying audience for the first time.
- 1943 – World War II: After eight days of brutal house-to-house fighting, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division captured Ortona, Italy.
- 2014 – The passenger ferry Norman Atlantic caught fire in the Adriatic Sea, resulting in nine deaths, with a further 19 missing.
Arthur Hunter Palmer (b. 1819) · Thomas Babington Macaulay (d. 1859) · Maurice Ravel (d. 1937)
- 1845 – The Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States, becoming the 28th state admitted into the union.
- 1860 – To counter the French Navy's Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship, the British Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armoured warship, HMS Warrior.
- 1911 – Sun Yat-sen (pictured) was elected in Nanjing as the Provisional President of the Republic of China.
- 1975 – A bomb set by unknown perpetrators at LaGuardia Airport in New York City exploded, killing 11 people and seriously injuring 74 others.
- 1997 – In order to prevent the spread of the H5N1 flu virus, the Hong Kong government began the slaughter of 1.3 million chickens.
Stephen Bocskai (d. 1606) · Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee (b. 1844) · Twinkle Khanna (b. 1974)
December 30: Rizal Day in the Philippines (1896)
- 1460 – Wars of the Roses: Richard, Duke of York (pictured), was killed in the Battle of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, and his army was destroyed.
- 1813 – War of 1812: British forces captured Buffalo, New York, and engaged in considerable plundering and destruction.
- 1906 – The All-India Muslim League, a political party in British India that developed into the driving force behind the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent, was founded in Dhaka.
- 1958 – The Guatemalan Air Force fired upon Mexican fishing boats which had strayed into Guatemalan territory, causing conflict between the two nations.
- 2009 – Pro-government counter-demonstrators held rallies in several Iranian cities in response to recent anti-government protests held on the holy day of Ashura.
Rudyard Kipling (b. 1865) · Josephine Butler (d. 1906) · Fatima Jibrell (b. 1947)
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Quebec, British forces repulsed an attack by the Continental Army to capture Quebec City and enlist French Canadian support.
- 1857 – Queen Victoria selected Ottawa, then a small logging town, to be the capital of the British colony of Canada.
- 1963 – Despite Prime Minister Roy Welensky's efforts, the Central African Federation officially collapsed, subsequently becoming three separate nations: Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
- 1986 – Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others (rescue efforts depicted), making it the second deadliest hotel fire in United States history.
- 1999 – Panama took control of the Panama Canal Zone from the United States, in accordance with the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.
Carlo Gimach (d. 1730) · Mary Logan Reddick (b. 1914) · Diane von Fürstenberg (b. 1946)
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