1558 – The French took the French town of Thioville from the English.
1611 – English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people were set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers.
1772 – Slavery was outlawed in England.
1807 – British seamen board the USS Chesapeake, a provocation leading to the War of 1812.
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.
1911 – King George V of England was crowned.
1915 – Austro-German forces occupied Lemberg on the Eastern Front as the Russians retreat.
1925 – France and Spain agreed to join forces against Abd el Krim in Morocco.
1933 – Germany became a one political party country when Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.
1940 – France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis.
1941 – Under the codename Barbarossa, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
1942 – A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River.
1942 – In France, Pierre Laval declared “I wish for a German victory”.
1942 – V-Mail, or Victory-Mail, was sent for the first time.
1944 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the “GI Bill of Rights” to provide broad benefits for veterans of the war.
1945 – During World War II, the battle for Okinawa officially ended after 81 days.
1946 – Jet airplanes were used to transport mail for the first time.
1956 – The battle for Algiers began as three buildings in Casbah were blown up.
1964 – The U.S. Supreme Court voted that Henry Miller’s book, “Tropic of Cancer”, could not be banned.
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It required that the voting age in the United States to be 18.
1973 – Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.
1974 – In Chicago, the Sears Tower Skydeck opened. (Willis Tower)
1978 – James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington discovered the only known moon of Pluto. The moon is named Charon.
1980 – The Soviet Union announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.
1989 – The government of Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of the UNITA movement agreed to a formal truce in their 14-year-old civil war.
1990 – Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled in Berlin.
