887 – Berengar I is elected as king of Italy by the lords of Lombardy. He is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy at Pavia.[1]
1790 – Louis XVI of France gives his public assent to Civil Constitution of the Clergyduring the French Revolution.
1793 – Second Battle of Wissembourg: France defeat Austria.
1799 – Four thousand people attend George Washington’s funeral where Henry Lee III declares him as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”.
1805 – Austria and France sign the Treaty of Pressburg.
1806 – Battles of Pultusk and Golymin: Russian forces hold French forces under Napoleon.
1811 – A theater fire in Richmond, Virginia kills the Governor of Virginia George William Smith and the president of the First National Bank of Virginia Abraham B. Venable.
1825 – Advocates of liberalism in Russia rise up against Czar Nicholas I but are suppressed in the Decembrist revolt inSaint Petersburg.
1860 – The first ever inter-club English association football match takes place between Hallam and Sheffield football clubs in Sheffield.
1862 – Four nuns serving as volunteer nurses on board USS Red Rover are the first female nurses on a U.S. Navy hospital ship.
1862 – The largest mass-hanging in U.S. history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Native Americans died.
1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.
1944 – World War II: George S. Patton’s Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.
1963 – The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” are released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.
1972 – Vietnam War: As part of Operation Linebacker II, 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.
1975 – Tu-144, the world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft, surpassing Mach 2, went into service.
1991 – The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union.
2004 – The 9.1–9.3 Mw Indian Ocean earthquake shakes northern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). One of the largest observed tsunamis follows, affecting the coastal areas of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, theMaldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; death toll is between 230,000–
2009 – China opens the world’s longest high-speed rail route, which links Beijing and Guangzhou.