1658 – Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.
1867 – Lucien B. Smith patented the first barbed wire.
1868 – The U.S. Congress enacted legislation granting an eight-hour day to workers employed by the Federal government.
1870 – In Spain, Queen Isabella abdicated in favor of Alfonso XII.
1877 – In Philadelphia, PA, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for Sir William Thomson (Baron Kelvin) and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil at the Centennial Exhibition.
1917 – The first American fighting troops landed in France.
1920 – The Greeks took 8,000 Turkish prisoners in Smyrna.
1938 – Dr. Douglas Hyde is inaugurated as the first President of Ireland.
1940 – World War II: France officially surrenders to Germany at 01:35.
1941 – Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.
1943 – The Holocaust: Jews in the Częstochowa Ghetto in Poland stage an uprising against the Nazis.
1944 – World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic countries, begins.
1944 – World War II: United States Navy and British Royal Navy ships bombard Cherbourg to support United States Army units engaged in the Battle of Cherbourg.
1946 – Ho Chi Minh traveled to France for talks on Vietnamese independence.
1947 – The Diary of a Young Girl (better known as The Diary of Anne Frank) is published.
1948 – The Soviet Union tightened its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading for the city.
1948 – The Berlin airlift begins.
1950 – North Korea invaded South Korea initiating the Korean War.
1975 – Mozambique became independent. Samora Machel was sworn in as president after 477 years of Portuguese rule.
1975 – Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has a state of internal Emergency declared in India.
1982 – Greece abolishes the head shaving of recruits in the military.
1991 – The last Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia 23 years after the Warsaw Pact invasion.
1991 – The Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.
1993 – Kim Campbell took office as Canada’s first woman prime minister. She assumed power upon the resignation of Brian Mulroney.
1997 – The Russian space station Mir was hit by an unmanned cargo vessel. Much of the power supply was knocked out and the station’s Spektr module was severely damaged.
1997 – U.S. air pollution standards were significantly tightened by U.S. President Clinton.
2013 – Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani becomes the eighth Emir of Qatar.