Events

• 637 – Arab-Byzantine wars: Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge.
• 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
• 1137 – Ranulf of Apulia defeats Roger II of Sicily at the Battle of Rignano, securing his position as duke until his death two years later.
• 1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou (replacing his deceased brother King Louis IX of France) and the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis, Tunisia.
• 1340 – Reconquista: Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado.
• 1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios.
• 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Convinced that he is facing a much larger force, Prussian General von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrenders the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers (Refer to Napoleonic Wars).
• 1817 – Simón Bolívar becomes President of the Third Republic of Venezuela.
• 1864 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed, by which Denmark relinquishes one province each to Prussia and Austria.
• 1918 – World War I: The Ottoman Empire signs the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies.
• 1918 – World War I: Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, a state union of Kingdom of Hungary and Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia is abolished with decisions of Croatian and Hungarian parliaments.
• 1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States.
• 1941 – World War II: President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
• 1941 – World War II: Holocaust: Fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp.
• 1942 – World War II: Lieutenant Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier drown while taking code books from the sinking German submarine U-559.
• 1944 – World War II: Holocaust: Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII.
• 1953 – President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union.
• 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: The government recognises the new workers’ councils. Army officer Béla Király leads an attack on the Communist Party headquarters.
• 1961 – The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.
• 1975 – Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, General Francisco Franco.
• 1980 – El Salvador and Honduras agree to put the border dispute fought over in 1969’s Football War before the International Court of Justice.
• 1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina, after seven years of military rule, are held.
• 1991 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Madrid Conference commences in an effort to revive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
• 2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is re-consecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.

People (Births)

• 1558 – Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force, Marshal of France (d. 1652).
• 1751 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish-English poet, playwright, and politician, Treasurer of the Navy (d. 1816).
• 1878 – Arthur Scherbius, German electrical engineer, invented the Enigma machine (d. 1929).
• 1882 – William Halsey, Jr., American admiral (d. 1959).
• 1882 – Günther von Kluge, Polish-German field marshal (d. 1944).
• 1888 – Louis Menges, American soccer player, soldier, and politician (d. 1969).
• 1893 – Charles Atlas, Italian-American bodybuilder (d. 1972).
• 1893 – Roland Freisler, German soldier, lawyer, and judge (d. 1945).
• 1896 – Harry R. Truman, American soldier (d. 1980).
• 1905 – Johnny Miles, English-Canadian runner (d. 2003).
• 1906 – Hermann Fegelein, German general (d. 1945).
• 1908 – Dmitry Ustinov, Marshal of the Soviet Union (d. 1984).
• 1917 – Nikolai Ogarkov, Russian field marshal (d. 1994).
• 1924 – John P. Craven, American soldier and engineer (d. 2015).
• 1946 – Robert L. Gibson, American captain, pilot, and astronaut.
• 1947 – Glenn Andreotta, American soldier (d. 1968).
• 1968 – Emmanuelle Claret, French biathlete (d. 2013).
• 1990 – Suwaibou Sanneh, Gambian sprinter.

People (Deaths)

• 1632 – Henri II de Montmorency, French admiral and politician (b. 1595).
• 1685 – Michel Le Tellier, French lawyer and politician, French Secretary of State for War (b. 1603).
• 1757 – Edward Vernon, English admiral and politician (b. 1684).
• 1896 – Carol Benesch, Czech architect, designed Peleș Castle (b. 1822).
• 1910 – Henry Dunant, Swiss activist, founded the Red Cross, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1828).
• 1912 – Alejandro Gorostiaga, Chilean colonel (b. 1840).
• 1917 – Talbot Mercer Papineau, Canadian lawyer and soldier (b. 1883).
• 1979 – Barnes Wallis, English scientist and engineer, inventor of the “bouncing bomb” (b. 1887).
• 2007 – John Woodruff, American runner and colonel (b. 1915).
• 2014 – Elijah Malok Aleng, Sudanese general and politician (b. 1937).