1066 – Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings: In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.
1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1582 – Because of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1758 – Seven Years’ War: Austria defeats Prussia at the Battle of Hochkirch.
1773 – Just before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company’s tea ships are set ablaze at the old seaport of Annapolis, Maryland.
1805 – Battle of Elchingen, France defeats Austria.
1806 – Battle of Jena–Auerstedt France defeats Prussia.
1808 – The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France.
1812 – Work on London’s Regent’s Canal starts.
1840 – The Maronite leader Bashir II surrenders to the British Army and then is sent into exile on the islands of Malta.
1843 – The British arrest the Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell for conspiracy to commit crimes.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Bristoe Station: Confederate troops under the command of General Robert E. Lee fail to drive the Union Army completely out of Virginia.
1880 – Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists.
1898 – The steamer ship SS Mohegan sinks after impacting the Manacles near Cornwall, United Kingdom, killing 106.
1910 – The English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his Farman Aircraft biplane on Executive Avenue near the White House in Washington, D.C..
1915 – World War I: The Kingdom of Bulgaria joins the Central Powers.
1920 – Part of Petsamo Province is ceded by the Soviet Union to Finland.
1933 – Nazi Germany withdraws from the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference.
1938 – The first flight of the Curtiss Aircraft Company’s P-40 Warhawk fighter plane.
1939 – The German submarine U-47 sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbour at Scapa Flow, Scotland..
1943 – Prisoners at the Nazi German Sobibór extermination camp in Poland revolt against the Germans, killing eleven SS guards, and wounding many more. About 300 of the Sobibor Camp’s 600 prisoners escape, and about 50 of these survive the end of the war.
1943 – World War II: The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 of 291 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers in aerial combat during the second mass-daylight air raid on the Schweinfurt ball bearing factories in western Nazi Germany.
1944 – World War II: Athens, Greece, is liberated by British Army troops entering the city as the Wehrmacht pulls out. This clears the way for the Greek government-in-exile to return to its historic capital city, with George Papandreou, Sr., as the head of government.
1944 – Linked to a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is forced to commit suicide.
1947 – Captain Chuck Yeager of the United States Air Force flies a Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft, the Glamorous Glennis, faster than the speed of sound at Mach 1.06 (700 miles per hour (1,100 km/h; 610 kn) over the high desert of Southern California and becomes the first pilot and the first airplane to do so in level flight.
1949 – Chinese Civil War: Chinese Communist forces occupy the city of Guangzhou (Canton), in Guangdong, China.
1952 – Korean War: United Nations and South Korean forces launch Operation Showdown against Chinese strongholds at the Iron Triangle. The resulting Battle of Triangle Hill is the biggest and bloodiest battle of 1952.
1957 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian monarch to open up an annual session of the Canadian Parliament, presenting her Speech from the throne in Ottawa, Canada.
1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot flies over the island of Cuba and takes photographs of Soviet SS-4 Sandal missiles being installed and erected in Cuba.
1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and thereby, along with his allies, such as Alexei Kosygin, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), ousting the former monolithic leader Nikita Khrushchev, and sending him into retirement as a nonperson in the USSR.
1968 – Vietnam War: Twenty-seven soldiers are arrested at the Presidio of San Francisco in California for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.
1968 – Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps will send about 24,000 soldiers and Marines back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours of duty in the combat zone there.
1968 – Apollo program: The first live TV broadcast by American astronauts in orbit performed by the Apollo 7 crew.
1981 – Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected as the President of Egypt one week after the assassination of the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.
1983 – Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, is overthrown and later executed in a military coup d’état led by Bernard Coard.
1994 – The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of the future Palestinian Self Government.
2015 – A suicide bomb attack in Pakistan, kills at least seven people and injures 13 others.