1346 – Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.
1533 – Henry VIII, who divorced his wife and became head of the church of England, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Clement VII.
1708 – The French were defeated at Oudenarde, Malplaquet, in the Netherlands by the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy.
1742 – A papal decree was issued condemning the disciplining actions of the Jesuits in China.
1786 – Morocco agreed to stop attacking American ships in the Mediterranean for a payment of $10,000.
1798 – The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by “An Act for Establishing a Marine Corps” passed by the U.S. Congress. The act also created the U.S. Marine Band. The Marines were first commissioned by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775.
1804 – The United States’ first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was killed by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel.
1864 – In the U.S., Confederate forces led by Gen. Jubal Early began an invasion of Washington, DC. They turned back the next day.
1934 – The first appointments to the newly created Federal Communications Commission were made.
1934 – U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first American chief executive to travel through the Panama Canal while in office.
1955 – The U.S. Air Force Academy was dedicated in Colorado at Lowry Air Base.
1962 – The first transatlantic TV transmission was sent through the Telstar I satellite.
1972 – U.S. forces broke the 95-day siege at An Loc in Vietnam.
1977 – The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a White House ceremony.
1979 – The abandoned U.S. space station Skylab returned to Earth. It burned up in the atmosphere and showered debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
1995 – Full diplomatic relations were established between the United States and Vietnam.
1998 – U.S. Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie, a casualty of the Vietnam War, was laid to rest near his Missouri home. He had been positively identified from his remains that had been enshrined in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, VA.
1999 – A U.S. Air Force jet flew over the Antarctic and dropped off emergency medical supplies for Dr. Jerri Nelson after she had discovered a lump in her breast. Nelso was at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Center.