565 – Justin II succeeds his uncle, Justinian I, as emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
655 – Battle of the Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
1315 – Battle of Morgarten: The Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I.
1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.
1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1705 – Battle of Zsibó: Austrian-Danish victory over the Kurucs (Hungarians).
1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta and starts Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
1915 – Winston Churchill resigns from his Government, and soon commands the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1933 – Thailand has its first election
1935 – Manuel L. Quezon is inaugurated as the second President of the Philippines.
1939 – In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.
1943 – The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”
1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program’s final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic “March Against Death”.
1971 – Intel releases the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence.
1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
1979 – A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared independence. Recognized only by Turkey.
1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
1987 – In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight.
1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.
1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.
1990 – The Communist People’s Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.
2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola, killing more than 40 people.
2000 – Jharkhand state comes into existence in India.
2002 – Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
2012 – Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.