1860 – The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History takes place.
 
1894 – Korea declared independence from China and asked for Japanese aid.
 
1913 – Fighting broke out between Bulgaria and Greece and Spain. It was the beginning of the Second Balkan War.
 
1915 – During World War I, the Second Battle Artois ended when the French failed to take Vimy Ridge.
 
1917 – World War I: Greece declares war on the Central Powers.
 
1922 – Irish rebels in London assassinate Sir Henry Wilson, the British deputy for Northern Ireland.
 
1930 – France pulled its troops out of Germany’s Rhineland.
 
1934 – Adolf Hitler purged the Nazi Party by destroying the SA and bringing to power the SS in the “Night of the Long Knives.”
 
1935 – Fascists caused an uproar at the League of Nations when Haile Selassie of Ethiopia speaks.
 
1944 – World War II: The Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.
 
1950 – U.S. President Harry Truman ordered U.S. troops into Korea and authorizes the draft.
 
1951 – On orders from Washington, General Matthew Ridgeway broadcasts that the United Nations was willing to discuss an armistice with North Korea.
 
1955 – The U.S. began funding West Germany’s rearmament.
 
1957 – The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.
 
1958 – The U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union.
 
1964 – The last of U.N. troops left Congo after a four-year effort to bring stability to the country.
 
1971 – The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 11 returned to Earth. The three cosmonauts were found dead inside.  The crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft are killed when their air supply escapes through a faulty valve.
 
1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced his opposition to the B-1 bomber.
 
1985 – Thirty-nine American hostages from the hijacked TWA Flight 847 are freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.
 
1990 – East Germany and West Germany merge their economies.
 
1998 – Officials confirmed that the remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified as those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.
 
2004 – The international Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn’s orbit. The craft had been on a nearly seven-year journey.
 
2015 – A Hercules C-130 military aircraft with 113 people on board crashes in a residential area in the Indonesian city of Medan, resulting in at least 116 deaths.