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- 1194 Palermo is conquered by Emperor Henry VI.
- 1272 Edward I proclaimed King of England
- 1407 A solemn truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orlans is agreed under the auspices of John, Duke of Berry. Orlans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
- 1490 Joanot Martorell's book Tirant lo Blanc is published for the first time.
- 1637 Peter Minuit and1st Swedish immigrants to Delaware sail from Sweden
- 1695 Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed.
- 1700 King Charles XII of Sweden aged 17, defeats the army of Czar Peter the Great in the battle of Narva
- 1804 Alexander I reissues manifesto of Catherine II, with some modifications, inviting foreigners to settle in New Russia.
- 1805 The opera "Fidelio" is produced (Vienna)
- 1820 An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story).
- 1856 CDR Andrew H. Foote lands at Canton, China, with 287 Sailors and Marines to stop attacks by Chinese on U.S. military and civilians.
- 1861 Secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate government.
- 1862 Confederate army of Tennessee, organizes under Gen Braxton Bragg
- 1866 Howard University founded (Wash, DC)
- 1866 Pierre Lalemont patents rotary crank bicycle
- 1888 William Bundy patents the timecard clock
- 1900 American cartoonist Chester Gould, creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, is born
- 1901 The opera "Gris‚lidis" is produced (Paris)
- 1902 Henri Desgrange and fellow journalist Go Lefvre dream up the idea of the Tour de France over lunch at the Caf de Madrid in Paris.
- 1910 Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosi, denouncing President Porfirio Daz, declaring himself president, and calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.
- 1910 Revolution broke out in Mexico, led by Francisco I Madero
- 1914 US State Department starts requiring photographs for passports
- 1917 Lt. Harcus Strahan (The Fort Garry Horse - Cdn.) wins the Victoria Cross at Masnières, France
- 1917 USS Kanawha, Noma and Wakiva sink German sub off France.
- 1917 Ukraine is declared a republic.
- 1917 Ukrainian Republic declared
- 1918 By order in Council P.C. 2854 the management of the Canadian Government Railways is entrusted to the Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern Railway Co. On the same day the Government takes over the Canadian Northern Railway and appoints a new Board of Directors.
- 1919 First municipally owned airport in US opens in Tucson, Az
- 1923 Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion Papiermark
- 1925 American politician Robert F. Kennedy is born
- 1925 Queen Alexandra, widow of King Edward VII and mother of King George V dies in England
- 1931 Commercial teletype service begins
- 1933 Navy crew (LCDR Thomas G. W. Settle, USN, and MAJ Chester I. Fordney, USMC) sets a world altitude record in balloon (62,237 ft.) in flight into stratosphere.
- 1936 Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange is killed by a republican execution squad.
- 1936 Levee of pond failure at Mitsubishi Osarizawa mine, Kazuno, northeastern Akita, Japan, killing at least 362.
- 1938 Documented anti-Semitic remarks are heard over US radio (by Father Coughlin)
- 1940 Hungary, Rumania, and Slovakia join Axis.
- 1940 World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
- 1942 Operation Galvanic, under command of Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance, lands Navy, Marine, and Army forces on Tarawa and Makin.
- 1943 US forces land on Tarawa and Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Island
- 1945 24 Nazi leaders put on trial at Nuremberg, Germany
- 1945 Nuremberg Trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
- 1945 The International Military Tribunal begins trying German war criminals at Nuremberg
- 1947 "Meet the Press" makes network TV debut on NBC
- 1947 The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
- 1947 The first permanent TV installed on seagoing vessel (The New Jersey)
- 1947 UN General assembly begins debate on printing their own stamps
- 1950 In the Korean war advancing allied troops reach the Manchurian Chinese border
- 1952 Slnsk trials a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia.
- 1953 Scott Crossfield in Douglas Skyrocket, first to break Mach 2 (1300 MPH)
- 1955 Bo Diddley becomes the first African American performer to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Apparently Ed Sullivan was infuriated when Diddley sang his self-titled song instead of Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit, "Sixteen Tons".
- 1957 Newly appointed Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, while testifing before Congress said that he would set up an agency to manage all defense research. Despite objections by some of the military, the research agency, known as ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was created in early 1958. ARPA developed ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, in 1969.
- 1959 Visitor posting - Darla Creel born. My dog is named Goliath. - USA
- 1959 The all-new 105E Anglia was introduced in the United States--the first British Ford to be marketed to Americans on a large scale
- 1959 UN adopts the declaration of children's rights
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
- 1968 Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North Vietnamese army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors are rescued after several hours by an impromptu force made of other men from their unit.
- 1969 Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
- 1975 Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain dies after 36 years in power. He died on the 39th anniversary of the death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera.
- 1976 George Harrison appears on Saturday Night Live
- 1978 A satellite system for transmitting newspaper content was dedicated on this day in 1978. The system transmitted The Wall Street Journal from where it was typeset in Massachusetts to Orlando, Florida, at a rate of 3.5 minutes per page.
- 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages in the Kaaba. The Saudi government received help from French special forces to put down the uprising.
- 1980 Steve Ptacek in Solar Challenger makes first solar-powered flight
- 1980 UA withdraws $44 million movie "Heaven's Gate" for reediting
- 1981 Anatoly Karpov, USSR retains world chess championship
- 1981 Ringo releases "Stop and Smell the Roses" album
- 1983 100 million watch ABC-TV movie "The Day After," about nuclear war
- 1983 An estimated 100 million people watch the controversial made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting a nuclear war and its effects on the United States.
- 1984 SETI is founded.
- 1985 Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.
- 1986 UN's WHO announces first global effort to combat AIDS
- 1989 Velvet Revolution: The number of protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
- 1990 Chief Justice Bertha Wilson (Supreme Court of Cda.) announces her retirement after 9 years
- 1990 Layne Halls of Silver Creek, New York, died at the age of 105, according to his death certificate. Halls had the distinction of being the oldest licensed driver in the United States at the time
- 1990 Thatcher fails to defeat Heseltine's bid for party leadership
- 1992 In England, a fire breaks out in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle, rages for 15 hours, and seriously damages the northwest side of the building (an investigation found that the fire was ignited after a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over an extended period).
- 1992 Visitor posting - Patti Rhea Lynch was born!! :) - USA
- 1992 Visitor posting - Princess Jenna-Nichole Emery was born - USA
- 1993 An Avioimpex Yak 42D crashes near Ohrid, Macedonia. The aircraft was on a flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Skopje, but had been diverted to Ohrid due to poor weather conditions at the Skopje airport. On landing the aircraft crashed into Mount Trojani near Ohrid. All eight crew members and 115 of the 116 passengers were killed.
- 1993 Savings and Loan scandal: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his "dealings" with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.
- 1997 Visitor posting - Indian actor and wrestler Harshiv Chhabra was born today - India
- 1998 A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
- 1998 Okanagan Valley Railway commences operation over the former CP line between Sicamous and Kelowna, BC (including running rights over the CN between Vernon and Kelowna). The formal handing over ceremony took place on January 15, 1999.
- 1998 The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched.
- 1999 Visitor posting - Jared Haacke & Camille Brinkerhoff sealed for all time and eternity - USA
- 2000 A 17 year old student is stabbed and dies at a Calgary High School
- 2003 After the November 15 bombings, a second day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings occurs in Istanbul, Turkey, destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Bank AS and the British consulate.
- 2005 Visitor posting - Taryn and Tayah explode into the world!! My pet is called pete - Australia
- 2009 200 European football matches are under investigation in a match-fixing inquiry, at least three from the UEFA Champions League and 12 from the UEFA Europa League as Europe's biggest ever match-fixing scandal is revealed.
- 2009 35 people are injured and fire bombs are thrown after Egyptian riot police clash with protesters at a demonstration outside the Algerian embassy in Cairo, following Egypt's defeat in a World Cup qualifying playoff match.
- 2009 At least 100 people are killed and around 50,000 displaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with some fleeing to the Republic of the Congo, in an ethnic conflict over fishing rights.
- 2009 At least five people are killed, including the gunman, and a further eight injured in a shooting in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.
- 2009 Brenda, a transsexual named in a sex scandal involving former Lazio governor Piero Marrazzo, is found burned alive following a fire at her Rome flat.
- 2009 Colombia accuses Venezuelan troops of blowing up two border bridges between the two countries. (Colombia Reports)
- 2009 Cumbria, England: A high volume of people, including one policeman, are declared missing, more than 200 people are rescued in Cockermouth and a bridge collapses in Workington during floods. The body of a policeman is later recovered.
- 2009 FIFA turns down the Football Association of Ireland's request for a rematch between France and Republic of Ireland, after a controversial handball decided the 2009 FIFA World Cup qualification playoff between the two countries.
- 2009 Floods in Great Britain and Ireland:
- 2009 MS Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship, is officially unveiled at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, live on an American morning television show.
- 2009 Officials from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China and the United States express "regret" at Iran's refusal to accept nuclear proposals.
- 2009 Somalia announces it is to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, leaving the United States the only country not to ratify it.
- 2009 The Iraq Football Association is suspended by FIFA following government interference.
- 2009 The Irish Defence Forces are deployed to assist civil authorities after widespread flooding hits the west and south of Ireland after the heaviest rainfall in over thirty years falls in one night. The worst affected areas are Cork and Galway, where there is widespread disruption to public transport and services and several major roads are closed. Lectures at University College Cork are cancelled as the university is submerged.
- 2009 The Large Hadron Collider, the largest atom collider in the world, is restarted after a fourteen-month delay for repairs.
- 2009 The United States Senate clears Senator Roland Burris of legal wrongdoing in relation to his appointment to the Senate.
- 2009 Three political parties file a motion of no confidence against French Polynesian President Oscar Temaru.
- 2009 Two fingers and a tooth belonging to astronomer Galileo Galilei are located more than 100 years after their disappearance.
- 2010 Visitor posting - Sheila Lack reaches her 60th birthday - United Kingdom
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