461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militumRicimer.
636 – The Rashidun Caliphate defeated the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in Iraq.
1521 – Battle at Milan: Emperor Karel V’s/pontifical/Spanish/German troops beat France & occupy Milan
1700 – Battle at Narva: Swedish King Karel XII defeats Russians
1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay’s Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1816 – Warsaw University is established.
1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 – A meteoritelands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia.
1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army capturesBitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.
1933 – Women allowed to vote in Spain (helps right wing
1940 – First major German air raid on Birmingham – about 440 bombers kill 450
1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranuscounterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR’s favor.
1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden.
1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe.
1951 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece.
1952 – North American F-86 Sabre sets world aircraft speed record, 1124 KPH
1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe’s oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.
1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.
1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the “Ocean of Storms”) and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1977 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachevmeet for the first time.
1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud.
1987 – France performs nuclear test
1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
1998 – Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton. .
1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People’s Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
2002 – The Greek oil tankerPrestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand; 29 people are killed in the nation’s worst mining disaster since 1914.
2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.