Events

• 192 – Dong Zhuo – a Chinese general, politician, and warlord – is assassinated by his adopted son Lü Bu (also a general and warlord).
• 853 – A Byzantine fleet sacks and destroys undefended Damietta in Egypt.
• 1200 – King John of England and King Philip II of France sign the Treaty of Le Goulet.
• 1254 – Serbian King Stefan Uroš I and the Republic of Venice sign a peace treaty.
• 1455 – Start of the Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.
• 1520 – The massacre at the festival of Tóxcatl takes place during the Fall of Tenochtitlan, resulting in turning the Aztecs against the Spanish.
• 1629 – Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Danish King Christian IV sign the Treaty of Lübeck ending Danish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War.
• 1762 – Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Hamburg.
• 1762 – Trevi Fountain is officially completed and inaugurated in Rome.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: On the second and last day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling (near Vienna, Austria), Napoleon I is repelled by an enemy army for the first time.
• 1826 – HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage.
• 1840 – The penal transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Union forces begin the Siege of Port Hudson which lasts 48 days, the longest siege in US military history.
• 1864 – American Civil War: After ten weeks, the Union Army’s Red River Campaign ends in failure.
• 1866 – Oliver Winchester founded the Winchester Repeating Arms
• 1872 – Reconstruction Era: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
• 1906 – The Wright brothers are granted US patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”.
• 1926 – Chinese Civil War: Chiang Kai-shek replaces the communists in Kuomintang China.
• 1939 – World War II: Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.
• 1941 – During the Anglo-Iraqi War, British troops take Fallujah.
• 1942 – Mexico enters the Second World War on the side of the Allies.
• 1943 – Joseph Stalin disbands the Comintern.
• 1948 – Finnish President J. K. Paasikivi released Yrjö Leino from his duties as interior minister in 1948 after the Finnish parliament had adopted a motion of censure of Leino with connection to his illegal handing over of nineteen people to the Soviet Union in 1945.
• 1967 – Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.
• 1968 – The nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
• 1972 – Over 400 women in Derry, Northern Ireland, attack the offices of Sinn Féin following the shooting by the Irish Republican Army of a young British soldier on leave.
• 1990 – North and South Yemen are unified to create the Republic of Yemen.
• 1994 – A worldwide trade embargo against Haiti goes into effect to punish its military rulers for not reinstating the country’s ousted elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
• 1996 – The Burmese military regime jails 71 supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in a bid to block a pro-democracy meeting.
• 2000 – In Sri Lanka, over 150 Tamil rebels are killed over two days of fighting for control in Jaffna.
• 2014 – General Prayut Chan-o-cha becomes interim leader of Thailand in a military coup d’état, following six months of political turmoil.
• 2021 – Severe weather kills 21 runners in the 100 km (60-mile) ultramarathon in the Yellow River Stone Forest, Gansu province of China.

People (Births)

• 1622 – Louis de Buade de Frontenac, French soldier and governor (d. 1698).
• 1665 – Magnus Stenbock, Swedish field marshal and Royal Councillor (d. 1717).
• 1783 – William Sturgeon, English physicist and inventor, invented the electromagnet and electric motor (d. 1850).
• 1879 – Symon Petliura, Ukrainian statesman and independence leader (d. 1926).
• 1885 – Soemu Toyoda, Japanese admiral (d. 1957).
• 1941 – Menzies Campbell, Scottish sprinter and politician.
• 1943 – Betty Williams, Northern Irish peace activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2020).
• 1976 – Christian Vande Velde, American cyclist.

People (Deaths)

• 192 – Dong Zhuo, Chinese warlord and politician (b. 138).
• 337 – Constantine the Great, Roman emperor (b. 272).
• 1455 – Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, English commander (b. 1406).
• 1455 – Thomas Clifford, 8th Baron de Clifford, Lancastrian commander (b. 1414).
• 1455 – Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, English commander (b. 1393).
• 1609 – Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeff, Dutch captain (b. 1573).
• 1745 – François-Marie, 1st duc de Broglie, French general (b. 1671).
• 1861 – Thornsbury Bailey Brown, American soldier (b. 1829).
• 1967 – Charlotte Serber, American Librarian of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos site (b. 1911).
• 1982 – Cevdet Sunay, Turkish general and politician, 5th President of Turkey (b. 1899).
• 2008 – Robert Asprin, American soldier and author (b. 1946).
• 2012 – Wesley A. Brown, American lieutenant and engineer (b. 1927).
• 2015 – Vladimir Katriuk, Ukrainian-Canadian SS officer (b. 1921).