Events

• 1066 – The Norman conquest of England begins with the Battle of Hastings.
• 1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
• 1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I of England.
• 1758 – Seven Years’ War: Frederick the Great suffers a rare defeat at the Battle of Hochkirch.
• 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: A French corps defeats an Austrian attempt to escape encirclement at Ulm.
• 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Napoleon decisively defeats Prussia at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt.
• 1808 – The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France.
• 1843 – Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell is arrested by the British on charges of criminal conspiracy.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Confederate troops under the command of A.P. Hill fail to drive the Union Army completely out of Virginia.
• 1884 – George Eastman receives a US Government patent on his new paper-strip photographic film.
• 1888 – Louis Le Prince films the first motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene.
• 1915 – World War I: Bulgaria joins the Central Powers.
• 1920 – Finland and Soviet Russia sign the Treaty of Tartu, exchanging some territories.
• 1933 – Germany withdraws from the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference.
• 1939 – World War II: The German submarine U-47 sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbour at Scapa Flow, Scotland.
• 1940 – World War II: The Balham underground station disaster kills sixty-six people during the London Blitz.
• 1943 – World War II: Prisoners at Sobibor extermination camp covertly assassinate most of the on-duty SS officers and then stage a mass breakout.
• 1943 – World War II: The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 of 291 B-17 Flying Fortress during the Second Raid on Schweinfurt.
• 1943 – World War II: The Second Philippine Republic, a puppet state of Japan, is inaugurated with José P. Laurel as its president.
• 1947 – Chuck Yeager, a US Air Force pilot, becomes the first person to exceed the speed of sound.
• 1949 – The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in the United States convicts eleven defendants of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the federal government.
• 1952 – Korean War: The Battle of Triangle Hill is the biggest and bloodiest battle of 1952.
• 1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when an American reconnaissance aircraft takes photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles being installed in Cuba.
• 1968 – Jim Hines becomes the first man ever to break the so-called “ten-second barrier” in the 100-metre sprint with a time of 9.95 seconds.
• 1973 – In the Thammasat student uprising, over 100,000 people protest in Thailand against the military government.
  • Seventy-seven are killed and 857 are injured by soldiers.
• 1975 – A RAF Avro Vulcan bomber explodes and crashes over Żabbar, Malta after an aborted landing, killing five crew members and one person on the ground.
• 1982 – US President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.
• 1991 – Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1994 – Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of future Palestinian self government.

People (Births)

• 1493 – Shimazu Tadayoshi, Japanese daimyō (d. 1568).
• 1639 – Simon van der Stel, Dutch commander and politician, 1st Governor of the Dutch Cape Colony (d. 1712).
• 1726 – Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, Scottish-English admiral and politician (d. 1813).
• 1733 – François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt, Austrian field marshal (d. 1798).
• 1882 – Éamon de Valera, American-Irish rebel and politician, 3rd President of Ireland (d. 1975).
• 1890 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, American general and politician, 34th President of the United States (d. 1969).
• 1898 – Thomas William Holmes, Canadian sergeant and pilot, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1950).
• 1909 – Mochitsura Hashimoto, Japanese commander (d. 2000).
• 1911 – Lê Đức Thọ, Vietnamese general and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990).
• 1916 – C. Everett Koop, American admiral and surgeon, 13th United States Surgeon General (d. 2013).
• 1930 – Mobutu Sese Seko, Congolese soldier and politician, President of Zaire (d. 1997).
• 1946 – François Bozizé, Gabonese general and politician, President of the Central African Republic.
• 1957 – Gen Nakatani, Japanese lawyer and politician, 13th Japanese Minister of Defence.

People (Deaths)

• 869 – Pang Xun, Chinese rebel leader.
• 1256 – Kujō Yoritsugu, Japanese shogun (b. 1239).
• 1610 – Amago Yoshihisa, Japanese daimyō (b. 1540).
• 1758 – James Francis Edward Keith, Scottish-Prussian field marshal (b. 1696).
• 1943 – Sobibór uprising:
  • Rudolf Beckmann, German SS officer (b. 1910).
  • Siegfried Graetschus, German sergeant (b. 1916).
  • Johann Niemann, German lieutenant (b. 1913).
• 1944 – Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (b. 1891).
• 1973 – Ahmed Hamdi, Egyptian general and engineer (b. 1929).
• 2003 – Patrick Dalzel-Job, English linguist, commander, and navigator (b. 1913).
• 2012 – Arlen Specter, American lieutenant and politician (b. 1930).
• 2015 – Mathieu Kérékou, Beninese soldier and politician, President of Benin (b. 1933).
• 2015 – Radhakrishna Hariram Tahiliani, Indian admiral (b. 1930).