1314 – Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce won over Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland.

1340 – The English fleet defeated the French fleet at Sluys, off the Flemish coast.

1497 – Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland.

1509 – Henry VIII was crowned King of England.

1664 – New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, was founded.

1675 – King Philip’s War began when Indians massacre colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony.

1717 – The Freemasons were founded in London.

1793 – The first republican constitution in France was adopted.

1812 – Napoleon crossed the Nieman River and invaded Russia.

1844 – Charles Goodyear was granted U.S. patent #3,633 for vulcanized rubber.

1859 – At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy.

1861 – Federal gunboats attacked Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia.

1862 – U.S. intervention saved the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.

1910 – The Japanese army invaded Korea.

1913 – Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria following border disputes over Macedonia and Thrace.

1931 – The Soviet Union and Afghanistan signed a treaty of neutrality.

1940 – France signed an armistice with Italy.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pledged all possible support to the Soviet Union.

1947 – Kenneth Arnold reported seeing flying saucers over Mt. Rainier, Washington.

1948 – The Soviet Union began the Berlin Blockade.

1955 – Soviet MIG’s down a U.S. Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait.

1997 – The U.S. Air Force released a report titled “The Roswell Report, Case Closed” that dismissed the claims that an alien spacecraft had crashed in Roswell, NM, in 1947.