Events

• 367 AD – Gratian, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, is named co-Augustus at the age of eight by his father.
• 410 – The Visigoths under king Alaric I begin to pillage Rome.
• 1185 – Sack of Thessalonica by the Normans.
• 1215 – Pope Innocent III issues a bull declaring Magna Carta invalid.
• 1482 – The town and castle of Berwick upon Tweed is captured from Scotland by an English army.
• 1516 – The Ottoman Empire under Selim I defeats the Mamluk Sultanate and captures present-day Syria at the Battle of Marj Dabiq.
• 1608 – The first official English representative to India lands in Surat.
• 1643 – A Dutch fleet establishes a new colony in the ruins of Valdivia in southern Chile.
• 1682 – William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.
• 1690 – Job Charnock of the East India Company establishes a factory in Calcutta, an event formerly considered the founding of the city (in 2003 the Calcutta High Court ruled that the city’s foundation date is unknown).
• 1781 – American Revolutionary War: A small force of Pennsylvania militia is ambushed and overwhelmed by an American Indian group, which forces George Rogers Clark to abandon his attempt to attack Detroit.
• 1812 – Peninsular War: A coalition of Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces succeed in lifting the two-and-a-half-year-long Siege of Cádiz.
• 1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C. and during the Burning of Washington the White House, the Capitol and many other buildings are set ablaze.
• 1815 – The modern Constitution of the Netherlands is signed.
• 1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed in St. Louis, Missouri.
• 1820 – Constitutionalist insurrection at Oporto, Portugal.
• 1821 – The Treaty of Córdoba is signed in Córdoba, now in Veracruz, Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.
• 1870 – The Wolseley expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion.
• 1898 – Count Muravyov, Foreign Minister of Russia presents a rescript that convoked the First Hague Peace Conference.
• 1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
• 1914 – World War I: German troops capture Namur.
• 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Cer ends as the first Allied victory in the war.
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the US non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Sovereign Council of Asturias and León is proclaimed in Gijón.
• 1942 – World War II: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk, with the loss of seven officers and 113 crewmen.
  • The US carrier USS Enterprise is heavily damaged.
• 1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris.
• 1949 – The treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation goes into effect.
• 1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: As a result of the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids, the US State Department cables the US Embassy, Saigon to encourage Army of the Republic of Vietnam generals to launch a coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm if he did not remove his brother Ngô Đình Nhu.
• 1970 – Vietnam War protesters bomb Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, leading to an international manhunt for the perpetrators.
• 1989 – Colombian drug barons declare “total war” on the Colombian government.
• 1989 – Tadeusz Mazowiecki is chosen as the first non-communist prime minister in Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.
  • Independence Day or Den’ Nezalezhnosti, celebrates the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991.
• 1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 was released to the public in North America.
• 1998 – First radio-frequency identification (RFID) human implantation tested in the United Kingdom.

People (Births)

• 1845 – James Calhoun, American lieutenant (d. 1876).
• 1888 – Valentine Baker, Welsh co-founder of the Martin-Baker Aircraft Company (d. 1942).
• 1919 – Tosia Altman, member of the Polish resistance in World War II (d. 1943).
• 1942 – Max Cleland, American captain and politician.
• 1944 – Gregory Jarvis, American captain, engineer, and astronaut (d. 1986).
• 1947 – Vladimir Masorin, Russian admiral.
• 1948 – Kim Sung-il, South Korean commander and pilot.
• 1948 – Sauli Niinistö, Finnish captain and politician, 12th President of Finland.
• 1964 – Salizhan Sharipov, Kyrgyzstani-Russian lieutenant, pilot, and astronaut.

People (Deaths)

• 948 – Zhang Ye, Chinese general and chancellor.
• 1217 – Eustace the Monk, French pirate (b. 1170).
• 1572 – Charles de Téligny, French soldier and diplomat (b. 1535).
• 1680 – Thomas Blood, Irish colonel (b. 1618).
• 1759 – Ewald Christian von Kleist, German poet and soldier (b. 1715).
• 1804 – Peggy Shippen, American wife of Benedict Arnold and American Revolutionary War spy (b. 1760).
• 1841 – John Ordronaux, French-American soldier (b. 1778).
• 1967 – Henry J. Kaiser, American businessman, founded Kaiser Shipyards and Kaiser Aluminum (b. 1882).
• 1974 – Alexander P. de Seversky, Russian-American pilot and businessman, co-founded Republic Aviation (b. 1894).
• 1979 – Hanna Reitsch, German soldier and pilot (b. 1912).
• 2006 – Rocco Petrone, American soldier and engineer (b. 1926).
• 2012 – Dadullah, Pakistani Taliban leader (b. 1965).