Events

• 1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade.
  • Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
• 1521 – Ferdinand Magellan and fifty of his men came ashore to present-day Limasawa to participate in the first Catholic mass in the Philippines.
• 1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
• 1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
• 1885 – The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
• 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
• 1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.
• 1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
• 1909 – Serbia formally withdraws its opposition to Austro-Hungarian actions in the Bosnian Crisis.
• 1917 – According to the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the islands become American possessions.
• 1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks.
  • Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
• 1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the US for the first time.
• 1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
• 1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
• 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
• 1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
• 1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
• 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
• 1964 – Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d’état.
• 1968 – American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of “Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam” in a television address.
  • At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
• 1991 – Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99% of the voters support the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active US Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
• 1992 – The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow.
• 2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
• 2018 – Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution.
• Freedom Day (Malta).
• Transfer Day (US Virgin Islands).

People (Births)

• 1536 – Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shōgun (d. 1565).
• 1813 – Félix María Zuloaga, Mexican general and unconstitutional interim president (1858 and 1860-1862) (d. 1898).
• 1874 – Benjamín G. Hill, Mexican revolutionary general, governor of Sonora (d. 1920).
• 1912 – William Lederer, American soldier and author (d. 2009).
• 1915 – Shoichi Yokoi, Japanese sergeant (d. 1997).
• 1926 – Rocco Petrone, American colonel and engineer (d. 2006).
• 1927 – Vladimir Ilyushin, Russian pilot (d. 2010).
• 1938 – Antje Gleichfeld, German runner.
• 1941 – Faith Leech, Australian swimmer (d. 2013).
• 1948 – Al Gore, American soldier and politician, 45th Vice President of the United States and Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1948 – Gustaaf Van Cauter, Belgian cyclist.
• 1961 – Ron Brown, American sprinter and football player.
• 1974 – Jani Sievinen, Finnish swimmer.
• 1976 – Graeme Smith, Scottish swimmer.
• 1981 – Maarten van der Weijden, Dutch swimmer.
• 1984 – Kaie Kand, Estonian heptathlete.
• 1989 – Liu Zige, Chinese swimmer.
• 1994 – Mads Würtz Schmidt, Danish road cyclist.

People (Deaths)

• 1723 – Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, English soldier and politician, 14th Colonial Governor of New York (b. 1661).
• 1915 – Wyndham Halswelle, English-Scottish runner and captain (b. 1882).
• 1939 – Ioannis Tsangaridis, Greek general (b. 1887).
• 1944 – Mineichi Koga, Japanese admiral (b. 1885).
• 1970 – Semyon Timoshenko, Soviet Commander during the Winter War and the Eastern Front of World War II (b. 1894).
• 1978 – Charles Herbert Best, American-Canadian physiologist and biochemist, co-discovered Insulin (b. 1899).
• 1980 – Jesse Owens, American sprinter and long jumper (b. 1913), see 1936 Summer Olympics.
• 2004 – Scott Helvenston, American soldier (b. 1965).
• 2011 – Mary Greyeyes, the first First Nations woman to join the Canadian Armed Forces (b. 1920).