3114 BC – According to the proleptic Julian calendar the current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar started. (Non-standard interpretation).
394 – Battle of the Frigidus: Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills the usurper Eugenius. His Frankish magister militum Arbogast escapes but commits suicide two days later
1492 – Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
1522 – The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.
1628 – Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1634 – Thirty Years’ War: In the Battle of Nördlingen the Catholic Imperial army defeats Protestant armies of Sweden and Germany.
1642 – The English Parliament led by Puritans issues an Ordinance suppressing all stage plays in theatres.
1781 – The Battle of Groton Heights takes place, resulting in a British victory.
1803 – British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
1847 – Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts.
1861 – American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, giving the Union control of the Tennessee River’s mouth.
1863 – American Civil War: Confederate forces evacuate Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina.
1870 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.
1885 – Eastern Rumelia declares its union with Bulgaria. Bulgarian unification is henceforth accomplished.
1930 – Democratically elected Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen is deposed in a military coup.
1939 – World War II: At the Battle of Barking Creek, Britain suffers its first fighter pilot casualty of the Second World War as a result of friendly fire.
1939 – World War II: South Africa declares war on Nazi Germany.
1940 – King Carol II of Romania abdicates and is succeeded by his son Michael.
1944 – World War II: The city of Ypres, Belgium is liberated by Allied forces.
1944 – World War II: Soviet forces capture the city of Tartu, Estonia.
1946 – United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes announces that the U.S. will follow a policy of economic reconstruction in postwar Germany.
1948 – Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
1949 – Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.
1952 – A prototype aircraft crashes at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire, England, killing 29 spectators and the two on board.
1962 – The United States government begins the Exercise Spade Fork nuclear readiness drill.
1962 – Archaeologist Peter Marsden discovers the first of the Blackfriars Ships dating back to the 2nd century AD in the Blackfriars area of the banks of the River Thames in London.
1963 – The Centre for International Industrial Property Studies (CEIPI) is founded.
1965 – India retaliates following Pakistan’s Operation Grand Slam which results in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 that ends in a stalemate and follows the signing of the Tashkent Declaration.
1966 – In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.
1968 – Swaziland becomes independent.
1970 – Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of the PFLP and taken to Dawson’s Field in Jordan.
1972 – Munich massacre: Nine Israel athletes taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games by the Palestinian “Black September” terrorist group die (as did a German policeman) at the hands of the kidnappers during a failed rescue attempt. Two other Israeli athletes were slain in the initial attack the previous day.
1976 – Cold War: Soviet Air Force pilot Lieutenant Viktor Belenko lands a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaidō in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States; his request is granted.
1983 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.
1985 – Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a Douglas DC-9 crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing 31.
1986 – In Istanbul, two terrorists from Abu Nidal’s organization kill 22 and wound six inside the Neve Shalom Synagogue during Shabbat services.
1991 – The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
1991 – The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia’s second largest city, which had been known as Leningrad since 1924.
1992 – Hunters discover the emaciated body of Christopher McCandless at his camp 20 miles (32 km) west of the town of Healy, Alaska.
2007 – Israel executes an air strike, Operation Orchard, to destroy a nuclear reactor in Syria.