388   Battle at Aquileja: Emperor Theodosius beats emperor Magnus Maximis

754   Pope Stephen II, [III] makes Pippin de Korte, King of France

1148 Second Crusade: Crusaders abandon their siege of Damascus

1330 Battle of Velbuzd: Serbian forces defeats Bulgarian army

1364 Troops of the Republic of Pisa and the Republic of Florence clash in the Battle of Cascina.

1540 Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

1571 La Laguna encomienda, known today as the Laguna province in the Philippines is founded by the Spaniards as one of the oldest encomiendas (provinces) in the country.

1586 Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe on return to England

1635 In Eighty Years’ War Spanish marshal Piccolomini conquers strategic Dutch fortress of Schenkenschans

1656 Second Northern War: Battle of Warsaw begins

1717 Prussian king Frederik Willhelm I gives compulsory education to 5-12 yrs

1741 Captain Vitus Bering discovers Mount St Elias, Alaska

1742 Prussia and Austria sign peace treaty

1790 Henry James Pye appointed British Poet Laureate by King George III

1794 French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France

1794 French Revolutionary figure Maximilien Robespierre and 22 other leaders of “the Terror” guillotined to thunderous cheers in Paris

1808 Mahmud II succeeds Mustafa IV as Sultan of Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and Caliph of Islam

1821 Peru declares independence from Spain (National Day)

1851 Total solar eclipse captured on a daguerreotype photograph

1858 First use of fingerprints as a means of identification is made by Sir William James Herschel of the Indian Civil Service

1858 Nadar takes first airborne photo (in a balloon)

1862 Confederate forces defeated at More’s Hill, Mo

1864 2nd day of battle at Deep Bottom Run, Virginia

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia

1866 Metric system becomes a legal measurement system in US

1866 Vinnie Ream becomes the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln) at the age of 18

1868 US Secretary of State William H. Seward certifies 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution granting citizenship to African American ex-slaves and due process of law

1883 Shocks triggered by volcano Epomeo (Isle of Ischia, Italy) destroys 1,200 houses at Casamicciola, kills 2,000

1893 A petition organised by Kate Sheppard, demanding women’s suffrage, is delivered to New Zealand’s parliament; signed by over 25,000 women, a 5th of the adult European female population

1896 City of Miami, Florida incorporated

1898 Spanish troops in Ponce, Puerto Rico, surrender

1900 Louis Lassing invents Hamburger in Connecticut

1904 Rafael Reyes becomes dictator of Colombia after losing Panama

1904 Interior Minister of Russia, Vyacheslav Plehve is assassinated; as leader of the most reactionary elements of government, he was hated for his repressive policies

1914 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders British Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow

1914 Declaration of World War I: In the culmination of the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, igniting World War I

1915 Because of virtual anarchy, US Marines go ashore in Haiti on orders from President Woodrow Wilson; this will lead to an occupation that will last until 1934

1917 Silent Parade organized by James Weldon Johnson of 10,000 African-Americans who march on 5th Ave in NYC to protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans

1926 US & Panamanian pact about safeguard of Panama Canal

1930 Record 114°F (46°C) temperature at Greensburg, Kentucky (state record)

1931 Mob hitman Mad Dog Coll allegedly participates in a kidnapping attempt that results in the shooting death of a child, which earns him the nickname “Mad Dog”

1932 US President Herbert Hoover uses federal troops to forcibly evict the Bonus Army (WWI veterans and their families) gathered from their encampment in Washington DC, 4 die

1932 “White Zombie” – First feature length zombie film directed by Victor Halperin and starring Béla Lugos is released in the US

1933 Frist singing telegram delivered (to Rudy Vallee), NYC

1933 Spain recognizes the USSR

1934 118°F (48°C) temperature at Orofino, Idaho (state record)

1935 First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

1938 Hawaii Clipper disappears between Guam and Manila as the first loss of an airliner in trans-Pacific China Clipper service

1939 5th Dutch government of Colijn falls

1939 The Sutton Hoo helmet is discovered

1940 Radio Orange begins broadcasting from London

1942 World War II: Nazis liquidate 10,000 Jews in Minsk Belorussia Ghetto

1942 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227. In response to alarming German advances, all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be tried in a military court, with punishment ranging from duty in a shtrafbat battalion, imprisonment in a Gulag, or execution.

1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians

1943 Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini resigns

1943 US President FDR announces end of coffee rationing in US

1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah: RAF bombing over Hamburg causes a firestorm that kills 42,600 German civilians

1944 World War II: Adolf Hitler routes 4 division of South France to Normandy

1944 US 8th Army corp occupies Coutances France

1945 Japanese premier Suzuki disregards US ultimatum to surrender

1945 US Army B-25 bomber crashes into 79th floor of Empire State Building, 14 die and 26 injures

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva arrive on the Pacific island of Tinian with the plutonium core used to assemble the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9

1945 “Elevator girl” Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog causes a US bomber plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall

1947 Iuliu Maniu’s Farmers’ Party is banned in Romania

1948 I G Farben chemical plant explodes in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 182 die

1948 London’s Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the “Battle of London Airport”.

1957 Heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Kyūshū, Japan, kill 992.

1959 United Kingdom starts using postal codes

1959 Hawaii’s first US election sends first Asian-Americans to Congress

1960 The German Volkswagen Act came into force

1962 19 die in a train crash in Steelton Pa

1962 Mariner I launched to Mars falls into Atlantic Ocean

1964 Ranger 7 launched toward the Moon; sent back 4308 TV pictures

1965 Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1971 Dutch ends censorship of “Blue Movie”

1973 France performs nuclear Test at Mururoa atoll

1973 Skylab 3’s astronauts (Bean, Garriott & Lousma) launched

1974 69 die when packed bus strikes heavy truck (Belem, Brazil)

1974 Spetsgruppa A, Russia’s elite special force, was formed

1976 Tangshan Earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude kills 242,769 and injuring 164,851 in Northern China–the largest loss of life from an earthquake in the 20th century

1977 First oil through the TransAlaska Pipeline System reach Valdez, Alaska

1978 600,000 attend the “Summer Jam” rock festival at Watkins Glen, New York, at the time the largest ever audience at a pop festival

1978 Price of gold tops $200-an-oz level for the first time

1978 USSR performs nuclear Test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR

1979 France performs nuclear Test

1980 Peru adopts constitution, Fernando Belaúnde Terry becomes president

1983 NASA launches Telstar-3A

1984 23rd modern Olympic Games open in Los Angeles

1985 Alan Garcia sworn in as President of Peru

1986 Bomb attack in East Beirut, 25 killed

1986 NASA releases the transcript from doomed Challenger, pilot Michael Smith could be heard saying, “Uh-oh!” as spacecraft disintegrated

1988 Jordan cancels $1.3 billion development plan in West Bank

1990 Alberto Fujimori installed as President of Peru

1996 Kennewick Man, the remains of a prehistoric man, is discovered near Kennewick, Washington

2002 Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground.

2002 Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 9560 crashes after takeoff from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killing 14 of the 16 people on board

2005 The Provisional Irish Republican Army call an end to their thirty-year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland

2005 A tornado touches down in a residential area in south Birmingham, England, causing £4,000,000 worth of damages and injuring 39 people.

2012 18 people are killed and 11 injured in ethnic clashes in Ethiopia

2014 UN Security Council hold emergency meeting calling for an immediate and indefinite humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas

2014 Missiles strike near Gaza’s main hospital and a nearby refugee camp, leaving 10 dead and many wounded; Israeli Defense Force say they are not responsible

2014 Israel criticizes John Kerry’s proposed ceasefire, stating that no ceasefire deal will be accepted without the destruction of tunnels leading from Gaza to Israel and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip

2016 Earliest evidence of cancer found in 1.7 million-year-old toe fossil from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, published in “South African Journal of Science”

2017 Pakistan Supreme Court rules corruption accusations against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif enough to remove him from office and disqualifying for lifetime

2017 General John Kelly appointed new Chief of Staff by US President Donald Trump

2018 Longest “blood moon” eclipse of the 21st century, lasting 1 hour 43 minutes

657        Battle of Siffin: The first Muslim civil war between Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muawiyah I beside Euphrates River

811        Battle of Pliska: Bulgarians under Krum beat Byzantines. Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I is killed and his heir Staurakios is seriously wounded.

920        Battle of Valdejunquera: Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at Pamplona

1309      Henry VII is recognized King of the Romans by Pope Clement V

1469      Wars of the Roses: Battle of Edgecote Moor – Pitting the forces of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick against those of King Edward IV

1499      Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda discovers Curacao Island

1509      The Emperor Krishnadevaraya ascends to the throne, marking the beginning of the regeneration of the Vijayanagara Empire

1529      Francisco Pizarro González, Spanish conquistador, is appointed governor of Peru

1576      Muitende Spanish troops conquer Aalst

1579      Francis Drake leaves San Francisco to cross Pacific Ocean

1581      Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration): The northern Low Countries declare their independence from the Spanish king, Philip II.

1588      English Admiral John Hawkins knighted for his actions against the Armada

1663      French troops invade papal territory Comtat Venaissin

1678      England and Netherlands signs treaty: sending ultimatum to France

1745      The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England

1757      Battle at Hastenbeck: French army beats Duke of Cumberland

1758      French and Indian War: The Siege of Louisbourg ends with British forces defeating the French and taking control of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence

1760      Austrian troops occupy Fort Glatz Silezie

1775      US Continental Congress establishes United States Post Office in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin takes office as Postmaster General

1803      The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London

1805      Naples/Calabria struck by Earthquake; about 26,000 die

1814      The Swedish–Norwegian War begins

1822      First day of the three-day Battle of Dervenakia, between the Ottoman Empire force led by Mahmud Dramali Pasha and the Greek Revolutionary force led by Theodoros Kolokotronis.

1826      Riots in Vilnius, Lithuania cause the death of many Jews

1835      First sugar cane plantation started in Hawaii

1847      Moses Gerrish Farmer builds first miniature train for children to ride

1847      The Liberian Declaration of Independence is signed making Liberia a sovereign nation, independent from the American Colonization Society

1858      Baron Lionel de Rothschild becomes the first Jewish person elected to the British Parliament

1863      Battle of Salineville Ohio, John Hunt Morgan and 364 troops surrender

1865      Patrick Francis Healy becomes the first African American awarded PhD (from University of Leuven, Belgium)

1865      The capital of New Zealand moves from Auckland to Wellington

1878      In California, poet and American West outlaw calling himself “Black Bart” makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box found later with a taunting poem inside.

1881      French marines occupy Tunisian harbor city Sfax

1882      The Republic of Stellaland is founded in Southern Africa

1887      Publication of the Unua Libro, founding the Esperanto movement

1890      In Buenos Aires, Argentina the Revolución del Parque takes place, forcing President Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman’s resignation­

1892      Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain

1896      Vitascope Hall, first permanent for-profit movie theatre, opens in New Orleans

1897      Record 37.5 cm rainfall at Jewell, Maryland (state record)

1899      Ulises Heureaux, the 27th President of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated

1903      First automobile trip across the United States (San Francisco to New York) completed by Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker

1915      International School for Wijsbegeerte forms

1916      The US Protests the ‘Blacklist’ issued by the British forbidding trade with some 30 US firms

1918      Race riot in Philadelphia (three whites and one black killed)

1936      The Axis Powers Germany and Italy decide to intervene in the Spanish Civil War in support for Francisco Franco and the Nationalist faction

1937      End of the Battle of Brunete with Nationalist Victory in the Spanish Civil War

1941      World War II: US embargo on oil-export to Japan– In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands freeze all Japanese assets and cut off oil shipments

1942      RC churches protest, Dutch bishops stand against spread of Judaism

1943      Record 120°F (49°C), Tishmoningo, Oklahoma (state record)

1944      Japanese suicide attack on US lines in Guam

1944      World War II: The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1944      The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed “gasometer”).

1945      The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power. Churchill resigns as Britain’s Prime Minister.

1945      World War II: Declaration of Potsdam: US, Britain and China demand the Japanese surrender during WWII

1945      Japanese government disregards US ultimatum

1945      World War II: US cruiser Indianapolis reaches Tinian with components and enriched uranium for the Little Boy nuclear bomb

1945      Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled

1947      Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.

1948      U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States.

1948      First black host of a network show-CBS’ Bob Howard Show

1950      KNIL (Royal Dutch East Indies Army) unites

1951      Netherlands ends state of war with Germany

1952      King Farouk I of Egypt abdicates [Black Saturday]

1953      Fidel Castro leads a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, intended to spark a revolution in Cuba

1953      Arizona Governor John Howard Pyle orders an anti-polygamy law enforcement crackdown on residents of Short Creek, Arizona, which becomes known as the Short Creek raid

1956      Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announces plan to nationalize Suez Canal, initiating the “Suez Crisis”

1957      USSR launches first intercontinental multistage ballistic missile

1957      Carlos Castillo Armas, Dictator and President of Guatemala, is assassinated by a palace guard with leftist sympathies

1958      Explorer program: Army launches fourth US successful satellite, Explorer IV

1962      Maria Oeljanov, first airship with nuclear missiles, arrives in Cuba

1963      Skopje, Yugoslavia, destroyed by earthquake, kills 1,100

1963      US Syncom 2, first geosynchronous communications satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster

1963      The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development votes to admit Japan.

1964      Train from Povoa de Varzin, Portugal derails near Oporto killing 94

1965      Republic of Maldives gains independence from Britain (National Day)

1968      Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Trương Đình Dzu is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war

1969      Sharon Sites Adams, 39, becomes first lady to solo sail the Pacific

1971      Apollo 15 launched (Scott and Irwin) to fourth manned landing on Moon

1972      Rockwell receives NASA contract to construct Space Shuttle

1974      France performs nuclear Test at Mururoa atoll

1974      Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis forms the country’s first civil government after seven years of military rule

1974      USSR’s Soyuz fails to dock with Salyut 3

1975      Soyuz 18B returns to Earth

1977      USSR performs underground nuclear Test

1977      The ‘Committee of 10’ formed by prominent Soweto residents, issues a program for the election of a new community board to have total autonomy in Soweto, South Africa

1978      France performs nuclear Test at Mururoa atoll

1979      Estimated 109 cm (43″) of rain falls in Alvin, Texas (national record)

1981      Two climbers fall 550 m down cliff near Angel Falls, Venezuela

1982      Canada’s Anik D1 Comsat launched by US Delta rocket

1982      Karen Dianne Baldwin, 18, of Canada, crowned 31st Miss Universe

1982      Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan is seriously injured filming a fight scene for the movie “Coolie”

1986      Lebanese kidnappers released Rev Lawrence Martin Jenco

1989      Robert T. Morris Jr, a student of Cornell University becomes the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after a federal grand jury indicts him for releasing the Morris worm

1990      US President George H. W. Bush signs Americans With Disabilities Act

1991      Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) is arrested in Florida, for exposing himself at an adult movie theater

1992      Britain honors her dead in the Falklands War

1993      Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashes into a ridge on Mt. Ungeo on its third attempt to land at Mokpo Airport, South Korea. 68 of the 116 people onboard are killed

1993      Mars Observer takes first photo of Mars, from 5 billion km

1994      Cambodia’s Red Khmer surprise attack on train, kills 13

1994      Turkish air force bombs Kurds, struggle in Iraq, 70 killed

1999      Fighting ceases between India and Pakistan in the Kargil War, Kashmir, after two months of fighting

2005      Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission – Launch of Discovery, NASA’s first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003

2005      Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days

2005      Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces (LF) leader, is released after spending 11 years in a solitary confinement. His release came after the end of the Syrian occupation to Lebanon.

2008      Fifty-six people are killed and over 200 people are injured, in the Ahmedabad bombings in India

2009      The militant Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram attacks a police station in Bauchi, leading to reprisals by the Nigeria Police Force and four days of violence across multiple cities

2012      At least 200 people are killed in a day of violence in Syria

2012      Insurgent attack kills 19 people and destroys a helicopter at Baqubah, Iraq

2012      North Korea is hit by Tropical Storm Khanun, killing 88 people and leaving 60,000 people homeless

2013      57 people are killed in a market bombing in Parachinar, Pakistan

2014      While Israel reject long-term ceasefire that does not include destroying the Hamas tunnels, they agree to 12 hour ceasefire; Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 1000

2014      The Chinese government suspends the operations of a Shanghai meat dealer and makes arrests after the company sold out-of-date meat to fast food chains, including McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken

2016      The Sagamihara stabbings occur in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. Nineteen people are killed

2016      Hillary Clinton becomes the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

2016      Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.

2017      US President Donald Trump announces policy to ban transgender people from the military, overturning Obama era changes

2017      Great Britain announces it will ban gasoline and diesel cars by 2040

2017      Three live king cobras reported found inside potato chip cans by customs officials in Los Angeles

2018      Facebook has the single worst day of any public company on the stock market – losing 19% or $119 billion market value

2018      Authorities in Stung Treng province, Cambodia, evacuate 25,000 below collapsed Laos dam as waters rise

2018      Over 700 immigrant children still separated from their parents in the US as court-imposed deadline to reunite them passes

2018      Observation of a black hole by The Very Large Telescope in Chile proves Albert Einstein’s prediction of “gravitational redshift”, published in “Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics”