Events

• 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon defeats rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.
• 1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
• 1798 – The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia.
• 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland (refer to French Revolutionary Wars).
• 1813 – War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.
• 1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
• 1863 – American Civil War: First Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson.
• 1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.
• 1915 – HMS Princess Irene explodes and sinks off Sheerness, Kent, with the loss of 352 lives.
• 1940 – World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive.
• 1941 – World War II: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency”.
• 1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men.
• 1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.
• 1958 – First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.
• 1960 – In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
• 1965 – Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.
• 1967 – The US Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.
• 1971 – Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre.
• 1980 – The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.
• 1984 – The Danube-Black Sea canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.
• 1988 – Somaliland War of Independence: Somali National Movement launches a major offensive against Somali government forces in Hargeisa and Burao, then second and third largest cities of Somalia.
• 1996 – First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.
• 2001 – Members of the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002.
• 2016 – Barack Obama is the first president of United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.
• Armed Forces Day (Nicaragua).
• Navy Day (Japan).

People (Births)

• 1378 – Zhu Quan, Chinese military commander, historian and playwright (d. 1448).
• 1774 – Francis Beaufort, Irish hydrographer and officer in the Royal Navy (d. 1857).
• 1900 – Lotte Toberentz, German overseer of the Nazi Uckermark concentration camp (d. 1964).
• 1918 – Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japanese commander and politician, 45th Prime Minister of Japan (d. 2019).
• 1922 – Otto Carius, German lieutenant and pharmacist (d. 2015).
• 1923 – Henry Kissinger, German-American political scientist and politician, 56th United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1931 – John Chapple, English field marshal and politician, Governor of Gibraltar.
• 1936 – Benjamin Bathurst, English admiral.
• 1936 – Marcel Masse, Canadian educator and politician, 29th Canadian Minister of National Defence (d. 2014).
• 1949 – Christa Vahlensieck, German runner.
• 1961 – José Luíz Barbosa, Brazilian runner and coach.
• 1970 – Michele Bartoli, Italian cyclist.
• 1988 – Irina Davydova, Russian hurdler.
• 1990 – Yenew Alamirew, Ethiopian runner.
• 1992 – Aaron Brown, Canadian sprinter.

People (Deaths)

• 366 – Procopius, Roman usurper (b. 325).
• 1444 – John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, English commander (b. 1404).
• 1624 – Diego Ramírez de Arellano, Spanish sailor and cosmographer (b. c. 1580).
• 1661 – Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, Scottish general and politician (b. 1607).
• 1941 – Ernst Lindemann, German captain (b. 1894).
• 1941 – Günther Lütjens, German admiral (b. 1889).
• 1943 – Gordon Coates, New Zealand soldier and politician, 21st Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1878).
• 2000 – Kazimierz Leski, Polish engineer and pilot (b. 1912).
• 2008 – Franz Künstler, Hungarian soldier (b. 1900).
• 2009 – William Refshauge, Australian soldier and physician (b. 1913).