Events

• 1277 – The Byzantine-Venetian treaty of 1277 is concluded, stipulating a two-year truce and renewing Venetian commercial privileges in the Byzantine Empire.
• 1279 – A Mongol victory at the Battle of Yamen ends the Song dynasty in China.
• 1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporates the Principality of Wales into England.
• 1452 – Frederick III of Habsburg is the last Holy Roman Emperor crowned by medieval tradition in Rome by Pope Nicholas V.
• 1563 – The Edict of Amboise is signed, ending the first phase of the French Wars of Religion and granting certain freedoms to the Huguenots.
• 1649 – The House of Commons of England passes an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England”.
• 1687 – Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by his own men.
• 1808 – Charles IV, king of Spain, abdicates after riots and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez. His son, Ferdinand VII, takes the throne.
• 1853 – The Taiping reform movement occupies and makes Nanjing its capital until 1864.
• 1861 – The First Taranaki War ends in New Zealand.
• 1863 – The SS Georgiana, said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, medicines, and merchandise then valued at over $1,000,000.
• 1865 – American Civil War: The Battle of Bentonville begins. By the end of the battle two days later, Confederate forces had retreated from Four Oaks, North Carolina.
• 1885 – Louis Riel declares a provisional government in Saskatchewan, beginning the North-West Rebellion.
• 1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumière record their first footage using their newly patented cinematograph.
• 1920 – The United States Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time (the first time was on 19 November 1919).
• 1921 – Irish War of Independence: One of the biggest engagements of the war takes place at Crossbarry, County Cork.
  • About 100 Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers escape an attempt by over 1,300 British forces to encircle them.
• 1944 – World War II: The German army occupies Hungary.
• 1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Japan, a dive bomber hits the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing 724 of her crew.
  • Badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the US under her own power.
• 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his “Nero Decree” ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities, and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.
• 1946 – French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Réunion become overseas départements of France.
• 1962 – The Algerian War of Independence ends.
• 1965 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000 and said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, exactly 102 years after its destruction.
• 1982 – Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the United Kingdom.
• 1989 – The Egyptian flag is raised at Taba, marking the end of Israeli occupation since the Six Days War in 1967 and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979.
• 1990 – The ethnic clashes of Târgu Mureș begin four days after the anniversary of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire.
• 2004 – Catalina affair: A Swedish DC-3 shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 in 1952 over the Baltic Sea is finally recovered after years of work.
• 2011 – Libyan Civil War: After the failure of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces to take Benghazi, the French Air Force launches Opération Harmattan, beginning foreign military intervention in Libya.

People (Births)

• 1206 – Güyük Khan, Mongol ruler, 3rd Great Khan of the Mongol Empire (d. 1248).
• 1434 – Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, Japanese shōgun (d. 1443).
• 1742 – Túpac Amaru II, Peruvian rebel leader (d. 1781).
• 1778 – Edward Pakenham, Anglo-Irish general and politician (d. 1815).
• 1821 – Richard Francis Burton, English soldier, geographer, and diplomat (d. 1890).
• 1849 – Alfred von Tirpitz, German admiral and politician (d. 1930).
• 1875 – Zhang Zuolin, Chinese warlord (d. 1928).
• 1883 – Joseph Stilwell, American general (d. 1946).
• 1888 – Léon Scieur, Belgian cyclist (d. 1969).
• 1892 – James Van Fleet, American general and diplomat (d. 1992).
• 1906 – Adolf Eichmann, German SS officer (d. 1962).
• 1910 – Joseph Carroll, American general (d. 1991).
• 1915 – Robert G. Cole, American colonel, Medal of Honour recipient (d. 1944).
• 1922 – Hiroo Onoda, Japanese Army lieutenant (d. 2014).
• 1925 – Brent Scowcroft, American general and diplomat, 9th United States National Security Advisor (d. 2020).
• 1981 – Steve Cummings, English cyclist.

People (Deaths)

• 1717 – John Campbell, 1st Earl of Breadalbane and Holland, Scottish soldier (b. 1636).
• 1790 – Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha, Ottoman general and politician, 182nd Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (b. 1713).
• 1949 – James Somerville, English admiral and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Somerset (b. 1882).
• 1949 – James Newland, Australian soldier and policeman (b. 1881).
• 1950 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, American soldier and author (b. 1875).
• 2003 – Michael Mathias Prechtl, German soldier and illustrator (b. 1926).
• 2012 – Hugo Munthe-Kaas, Norwegian intelligence agent and resistance fighter during WWII (b. 1922).