Events
- 1111 – Henry V is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
- 1612 – Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojirō at Funajima island.
- 1613 – Samuel Argall, having captured Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia, sets off with her to Jamestown with the intention of exchanging her for English prisoners held by her father.
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces are ambushed and defeated in the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
- 1849 – Lajos Kossuth presents the Hungarian Declaration of Independence in a closed session of the National Assembly.
- 1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
- 1865 – American Civil War: Raleigh, North Carolina is occupied by Union Forces.
- 1909 – The military of the Ottoman Empire reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
- 1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British troops gun down at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India; at least 1200 are wounded.
- 1941 – A Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed.
- 1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
- 1944 – Relations between New Zealand and the Soviet Union are established.
- 1945 – World War II: German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany.
- 1945 – World War II: Soviet and Bulgarian forces capture Vienna.
- 1948 – In an ambush, 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital, and a British soldier, are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. This event came to be known as the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.
- 1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: The Battle of An Lộc begins.
- 1975 – An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
- 1976 – Forty workers die in an explosion at the Lapua ammunition factory, the deadliest accidental disaster in modern history in Finland.
- 2017 – The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
People (Births)
- 1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, planned the Gunpowder Plot (d. 1606).
- 1593 – Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, English soldier and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (d. 1641).
- 1764 – Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, French general and politician, French Minister of War (d. 1830).
- 1784 – Friedrich Graf von Wrangel, Prussian field marshal (d. 1877).
- 1891 – Maurice Buckley, Australian sergeant, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1921).
- 1897 – Werner Voss, German lieutenant and pilot (d. 1917).
- 1917 – Bill Clements, American soldier, engineer, and politician, 15th United States Deputy Secretary of Defense (d. 2011).
- 1920 – Claude Cheysson, French lieutenant and politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 2012).
- 1933 – Ben Nighthorse Campbell, American soldier and politician.
- 1948 – Nam Hae-il, South Korean admiral.
People (Deaths)
- 989 – Bardas Phokas, Byzantine general.
- 1612 – Sasaki Kojirō, Japanese samurai (b. 1585).
- 1716 – Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington, English admiral and politician (b. 1648).
- 1961 – John A. Bennett, American soldier (b. 1935).
- 1966 – Abdul Salam Arif, Iraqi colonel and politician, 2nd President of Iraq (b. 1921).
- 1966 – Georges Duhamel, French soldier and author (b. 1884).
- 1975 – François Tombalbaye, Chadian soldier, academic, and politician, 1st President of Chad (b. 1918).
- 1997 – Bryant Bowles, American soldier and activist, founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (b. 1920).
- 2012 – William B. Buffum, American soldier and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Lebanon (b. 1921).
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