1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France.
1821 – Peru declared its independence from Spain.
1914 – World War I officially began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
1932 – Federal troops forcibly dispersed the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, DC. They were demanding money they were not scheduled to receive until 1945.
1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
1941 – Plans for the Pentagon were approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.
1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.
1945 – A U.S. Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York City’s Empire State Building. 14 people were killed and 26 were injured.
1965 – U.S. President Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.
1974 – Spetsgruppa A, Russia’s elite special force, was formed.
1982 – San Francisco, CA, became the first city in the U.S. to ban handguns.
1998 – Serbian military forces seized the Kosovo town of Malisevo.
2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.
2010 – Airblue Flight 202 crashes into the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad, Pakistan, killing all 152 people aboard. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Pakistan history and the first involving an Airbus A321.