1363 – Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty..
1727 – Anne, eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain, is given the title Princess Royal.
1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day.
1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.
1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.
1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek “Red Sticks” kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1835 – Melbourne is founded.
1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.
1896 – Philippine Revolution: After Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas.
1914 – World War I: Germans defeat the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg
1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.
1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War (“Turkish War of Independence”).
1940 – The Second Vienna Award reassigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins.
1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.
1945 – The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.
1945 – The Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, comes into being.
1945 – The August Revolution ends as Emperor Bảo Đại abdicates, ending the Nguyễn dynasty.
1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.
1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran are assassinated in a bombing committed by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran.
1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union.
1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
1998 – Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.
1999 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia in a referendum.
2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.
2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho Tom Thabane flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.