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- 0421 Constantius III becomes co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
- 0421 Flavius Constantine becomes emperor Constantine III of West Roman empire
- 1526 Heavy storm strikes Dutch coast, many die
- 1575 Universiteit Leiden founded, and given the motto "Praesidium Libertatis".
- 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England.
- 1600 Vatican convicts scholar Giordano Bruno to death
- 1601 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebels against Elizabeth I of England - revolt is quickly crushed.
- 1604 Pierre de Gua de Monts c1558-1628 forms de Monts Trading Company with Champlain and Gravé du Pont; Canada's first chartered company
- 1622 King James I of England disbands the English Parliament.
- 1631 Charles I grants Cape Breton Island to Robert Gordon of Lochinvar and son Robert
- 1631 King Louis XIII 1601-1643 names Charles de La Tour Governor and Lieutenant-General of New France and Acadia
- 1672 Isaac Newton reads first optics paper before Royal Society in London
- 1690 French & Indian troops set Schenectady settlement New York on fire
- 1690 Lord Halifax resigns as Lord Privy Seal
- 1690 Louis de Buade et de Palluau, Comte de Frontenac 1622-1698 organizes attack by Mohawk natives and French troops against Schenectady; 60 people killed, 30 captured
- 1692 A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony suggests that two girls in the family of the village minister may be suffering from bewitchment, leading to the Salem witch trials.
- 1693 The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.
- 1693 William & Mary college is 2nd college chartered in US
- 1726 The Supreme Privy Council is established in Russia.
- 1735 First opera in US "Flora," opens in Charleston SC
- 1743 Comet C/1743 C1 approaches within 0.0390 AUs of Earth
- 1744 French/Spanish fleet leaves Toulon
- 1750 Minor earthquake in London
- 1775 Leidse University 400th anniversary dinner
- 1802 Simon Willard patents banjo clock
- 1807 Battle of Eylau - Napoleon defeats Russians under General Benigssen.
- 1807 Napoleon defeats Russians in battle of Eylau
- 1809 Franz I of Austria declares war on France
- 1817 Las Heras crosses the Andes with an army to join San Martn and liberate Chile from Spain.
- 1828 Jules Verne the father of science fiction was born
- 1837 First Vice President chosen by the Senate, Richard Johnson (Van Buren administration)
- 1837 Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate.
- 1839 Aroostook, New Brunswick American and Canadian loggers clash in Aroostook lumber war over undefined boundary with Maine
- 1849 New Roman Republic established.
- 1855 The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appear in southern Devon.
- 1861 Confederate States of America organizes in Montgomery AL
- 1862 Battle of Roanoke Island NC, Federals gain control of Pamlico Sound
- 1863 Nathan Hale, American journalist and author, dies.
- 1865 In the U.S., Delaware voters reject the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)
- 1865 The First black major in US army, Martin Robinson Delany
- 1867 The Ausgleich results in the establishment of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
- 1879 Sanford Fleming first proposes adoption of Universal Standard Time, by dividing the world into 24 equal time zones, with standard time within each zone
- 1883 Louis Waterman begins experiments to invent the fountain pen
- 1887 Dawes Act passed (Indians living apart from tribe granted citizenship)
- 1887 The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.
- 1889 Flood ravages Dutch coast
- 1894 Enforcement Act repealed, making it easier to disenfranchise blacks
- 1895 Tchaikovsky/Petipa's "Swan Lake," premieres in Petersburg
- 1898 John Ames Sherman patents first envelope folding & gumming machine (Massachusetts)
- 1900 British troops are defeated by Boers at Ladysmith, South Africa.
- 1904 Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War.
- 1904 Outbreak of hostilities in Russo-Japanese war
- 1905 Cyclone hit Tahiti & adjacent islands, killing some 10,000 people
- 1909 France & Germany sign treaty about Morocco
- 1910 Boy Scouts of America incorporated & chartered (William D Boyce-Chicago)
- 1910 The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.
- 1911 US helps overthrow President Miguel Dávila of Honduras
- 1912 First eastbound US transcontinental flight lands in Jacksonville FL
- 1914 General Zamon becomes President of Haiti
- 1915 "Birth of a Nation" opens at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles CA
- 1915 D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.
- 1916 French cruiser "Admiral Charner" torpedoed off Syrian coast, kills 374
- 1918 "Stars & Stripes," weekly US armed forces newspaper, first published
- 1918 HMS Boxer, a British 'A' Class destroyer, of around 300 tons, built by Thorneycroft at Chiswick, London, and completed in 1894, sunk in the English Channel after a collision with the SS St.Patrick in bad weather.
- 1918 The Stars and Stripes newspaper publishes for the first time.
- 1920 Lana (Julia Jean) Turner actress and WWII poster girl was born
- 1920 Swiss men vote against women's suffrage
- 1922 President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio in the White House.
- 1922 Radio arrives in the White House
- 1923 Coal mine explosion at Dawson NM kills 120
- 1923 German NSDAP Volkischer Beobachter newspaper becomes a daily
- 1924 Capital punishment: The first state execution using gas in the United States takes place in Nevada.
- 1924 The first coast-to-coast radio hookup General John Joseph Carty speech in Chicago
- 1924 The gas chamber at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City is used for the first time.
- 1925 Kaufman & Berlin's "coconuts," premieres in New York NY
- 1926 German Reichstag decides to apply for League of Nations membership
- 1926 Walt Disney Studios is formed
- 1927 Belgian-Swiss treaty signed
- 1928 Scottish inventor J Blaird demonstrates color-TV
- 1928 The first transatlantic TV image received, Hartsdale NY
- 1930 "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Benny Mereoff hits #1
- 1931 Gas explosion Fire in Fushun-coal mine, Manchuria kills 3,000
- 1931 James Dean actor and singer was born
- 1933 -23ºF (-31ºC), Seminole TX (state record)
- 1933 First flight of all-metal Boeing 247
- 1934 Export-Import Bank organizes in Washington DC
- 1934 Gaston Doumergue forms new French government
- 1936 Jay Berwanger becomes the first person to be selected by a National Football League draft, by the Philadelphia Eagles.
- 1936 Larry Vernethe singer of "Please Mr. Custer, I don't wanta go" I love that song
- 1936 Pandit Jawaharlal follows Gandhi as chairman of India Congress Party
- 1940 Germans set up the Lodz ghetto. 31,721 rooms contain more than 160,000 Jews by May 1.
- 1941 Japanese armored barges cross Strait of Johore to attack Singapore
- 1941 NSB'er Max Blokzijl begins Nazi propaganda on Dutch radio
- 1942 Congress advises FDR that, Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort
- 1942 Stravinsky's "Danses Concertantes," premieres in Los Angeles
- 1943 Red Army recaptures Kursk
- 1944 First black reporter accredited to the White House, Harry McAlpin
- 1944 U-762 sunk off Ireland
- 1945 Allied air attack on Goch/Kleef/Kalkar/Reichswald
- 1945 Beginning of the Battle of the Rhineland as the First Canadian Army attacks German positions in the Reichswald
- 1946 Premier Salazar of Portugal forbids opposition parties
- 1948 5th Winter Olympics games close at St Moritz, Switzerland
- 1949 Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary sentenced for treason.
- 1949 Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty sentenced to life in prison
- 1952 "RCA Victor Show Starring Dennis Day," debuts on NBC TV
- 1955 John Grisham author of A Time to Kill, The Firm and other was born
- 1955 Malenkov resigns as USSR premier, Bulganin replaces him
- 1955 The Government of Sindh abolished Jagirdari system in the province. One million acres (4000 km) of land thus acquired is to be distributed among the landless peasants.
- 1956 Mine disaster in Quaregnon Belgium, 8 die
- 1957 San Francisco Public Library's bookmobile initiated in front of City Hall
- 1958 Edgar Whitehead succeeds Garfield Todd as premier of South Rhodesia
- 1958 French planes bomb Sakiet Tunisia, 75 die
- 1958 KIRO TV channel 7 in Seattle WA (CBS) begins broadcasting
- 1960 Congress opens hearings looking into payola
- 1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".
- 1962 Charonne massacre. 9 trade unionists are killed by French police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police.
- 1963 First transmission of Clandestine Voice of Iraqi People (Communist)
- 1963 Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
- 1964 Peter Shaffer's "Royal Hunt of the Sun," premieres in London
- 1964 Representative Martha Griffiths address gets civil rights protection for women being added to the 1964 Civil Rights Act
- 1964 Visitor posting - Victoria Binks born. Pet- cat called Morse - United Kingdom
- 1965 Eastern DC-7B crashes into Atlantic off Jones Beach NJ, kills 84
- 1965 Supremes release "Stop In the Name of Love"
- 1967 French Diadème D-1C satellite launches into Earth orbit
- 1967 Longest losing streak in Toronto Maple Leaf history (10 games).
- 1967 Peter (Asher) & Gordon (Waller) discontinue their singing partnership
- 1967 Pirate Radio UKGM (England) closes down
- 1968 Three college students are killed in a clash with the South Carolina highway patrol, during a civil rights protest in Orangeburg.
- 1969 Last edition of Saturday Evening Post
- 1969 Meteorite weighing over 1 ton falls in Chihuahua, México
- 1969 The last weekly issue of the Saturday Evening Post hits magazine stands.
- 1971 South Vietnamese troops invade Laos
- 1971 Visitor posting - Michelle Cochran (Granzow) born - USA
- 1971 The Nasdaq stock market index debuts.
- 1973 Mushtaq & Asif Iqbal make 350 stand for 4th wicket vs New Zealand
- 1973 The Senate names the seven members of a special committee to investigate the Watergate scandal.
- 1974 "Good Times," debuts on CBS TV
- 1974 After 84 days in space, the crew of the first American space station Skylab return to Earth.
- 1974 Military coup in Upper Volta.
- 1974 Ringo Starr releases "You're 16"
- 1974 Soap opera "The Secret Storm" ends a 20 year run
- 1974 The three-man crew of the NASA space station, Skylab, return to Earth after completing a lengthy 84-day mission.
- 1975 1800 Unification church couples' wed in Korea
- 1976 Hua Guofeng becomes premier of China PR
- 1977 Earthquake in San Francisco CA, at 5.0, strongest since 1966
- 1977 Hustler publisher Larry Flynt sentenced
- 1978 Crown Prince Sad Abdallah al-Salim Al Sabah becomes PM of Kuwait
- 1978 Proceedings of the United States Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time.
- 1978 U.S. senate deliberations are broadcast live on radio for the first time.
- 1979 Denis Sassou-Nguesso became the President of the Republic of the Congo for the first time.
- 1979 The Secretary of the Navy announced that the helicopter portion of the Navy's LAMPS MK III was to be known officially as the Seahawk
- 1980 Former NHL president Clarence Campbell found guilty of conspiring to give Senator Louis Giguère a benefit in connection with a contract for airport duty-free shops
- 1983 Champion thoroughbred Shergar kidnapped in Ireland; never found Lloyds of London pays $10.6 million insurance
- 1983 Eric Peters sets transatlantic sailboat record (E-W)-46 days
- 1984 14th Winter Olympics games opens in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia
- 1984 First time 8 people in space
- 1984 Soyuz T-10 launches with crew of 3 to Salyut 7
- 1985 Bruce Morris, Marshall University, makes a 92' 5¼" basketball shot
- 1985 First-class cricket debut of Jimmy Adams (age 17), Jamaica vs Barbados
- 1985 Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung returns to South-Korea
- 1985 The Dukes of Hazzard ended its 6-1/2 year run on CBS television\
- 1986 1984 Summer Olympics head of the LAPD bomb squad, Arleigh McCree, and his partner Officer Ronald Ball of the Firearms and explosives unit were killed while trying to dismantle two pipe bombs when they responded to a call. McCree was recognized as one of the top explosive experts in the world.
- 1986 A head on collision between a freight train and a passenger train near Hinton, Alberta claims 23 lives.
- 1986 Number one hit on UK music charts - Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Goin n
- 1987 The West beat the East in the NBA All-Star Game. A record was set for total points scored. The West won 154-149 in overtime.
- 1988 NASA launches DOD-2
- 1988 Visitor posting - Ryan James Stiger was born in Silver Spring, Maryland
- 1989 144 people die when a Boeing 707 jetliner crashes into a fog-shrouded mountain in the Azores.
- 1989 5 cm of snow falls in outskirts of Los Angeles
- 1989 An Independent Air Boeing 707 crashes into Santa Maria mountain in Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal, killing 144.
- 1990 "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney suspended by CBS for racial remarks attributed to him by a gay magazine
- 1992 "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred peaks at #1
- 1992 16th Winter Olympics games open in Albertville, France
- 1992 Ulysses spacecraft passes Jupiter
- 1992 Visitor posting - Anil marries Rakhi - India
- 1993 GM sues NBC, alleging that "Dateline NBC" program had rigged 2 car-truck crashes to show that 1973-87 GM pickups were prone to fires
- 1993 General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.
- 1993 Visitor posting - Joseph Jonah Epling was born in Canton Ohio - USA
- 1993 Suchoi-24 crashes into Tupolev passenger flight, 134 die
- 1994 Jack Nicholson uses a golf club to attack a car
- 1994 Kapil Dev sets world record for Test Cricket wickets with 432
- 1994 Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee charge with possession of loaded firearm
- 1994 Ottawa slashes tobacco taxes to reduce rampant cigarette smuggling; and they say crime doesn't pay?
- 1995 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia (46+ killed)
- 1995 In Ottawa Romeo LeBlanc sworn in as Canada's 25th Governor General
- 1996 The massive Internet collaboration "24 Hours in Cyberspace" takes place.
- 1996 US bookstore chain Borders says it will invest in a chain of bookstores in Canada; Ottawa will block the plan under the cultural exemption of NAFTA.
- 1997 Jean-Luc Brassard wins gold medal in free-style skiing at the World Championships in Nagano
- 1998 First female ice hockey game in Olympic history: Finland beats Sweden 6-0.
- 1998 The first female ice hockey game in Olympics history Finland beats Sweden 6-0
- 1999 A funeral service is held in Amman, Jordan, for King Hussein, who died the day before of cancer.
- 2004 Visitor posting - Sarah Marie Holmes was born weighing 9# 12 oz - USA
- 2005 Israel and Palestinians agree to cease-fire.
- 2006 Palestinians attack Temporary International Presence in Hebron offices in Hebron; International observers end decade-long presence.
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