Events

• 141 BC – Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han dynasty of China.
• 1226 – Khwarazmian sultan Jalal ad-Din conquers the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
• 1230 – Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II defeats Theodore of Epirus in the Battle of Klokotnitsa.
• 1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet will discover Brazil which lies within boundaries granted to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
• 1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.
• 1811 – Paraguayan forces defeat Manuel Belgrano at the Battle of Tacuarí.
• 1847 – Mexican–American War: The first large-scale amphibious assault in US history is launched in the Siege of Veracruz.
• 1862 – American Civil War: USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.
• 1916 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.
• 1942 – World War II: Dutch East Indies unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese forces in Kalijati, Subang, West Java, and the Japanese completed their Dutch East Indies campaign.
• 1944 – World War II: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia.
• 1945 – World War II: A coup d’état by Japanese forces in French Indochina removes the French from power.
• 1956 – Soviet forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation policy.

People (Births)

• 1753 – Jean-Baptiste Kléber, French general (d. 1800).
• 1890 – Rupert Balfe, Australian footballer and lieutenant (d. 1915).
• 1904 – Paul Wilbur Klipsch, American soldier and engineer, founded Klipsch Audio Technologies (d. 2002).
• 1915 – Johnnie Johnson, English air marshal and pilot (d. 2001).
• 1934 – Yuri Gagarin, Russian colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1968).

People (Deaths)

• 1649 – Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, English soldier and politician (b. 1590).
• 1964 – Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, German general (b. 1870).
• 1969 – Abdul Munim Riad, Egyptian general (b. 1919).
• 1992 – Menachem Begin, Belarusian-Israeli soldier, politician and Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913).
• 2006 – John Profumo, English soldier and politician, Secretary of State for War (b. 1915).
• 2015 – James Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, Northern Irish soldier and politician (b. 1920).