Events

• 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d’état at the imperial palace.
• 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin.
• 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants.
• 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king’s Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton.
• 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama.
• 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta.
• 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty’s Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing.
• 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England.
• 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard.
• 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place.
• 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.
• 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company.
• 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain.
• 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears.
• 1883 – War of the Pacific: Chileans led by Alejandro Gorostiaga defeat Andrés Avelino Cáceres’s Peruvuan army at the Battle of Huamachuco, hastening the end of the war.
• 1921 – Belfast’s Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
• 1924 – Paavo Nurmi won the 1,500 and 5,000 m races with just an hour between them at the Paris Olympics.
• 1927 – Kevin O’Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA.
• 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France.
• 1940 – World War II: Six days before Adolf Hitler issues his Directive 16 to the combined Wehrmacht armed forces for Operation Sea Lion, the Kanalkampf shipping attacks against British maritime convoys begin, in the leadup to initiating the Battle of Britain.
• 1941 – World War II: Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne.
• 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the “Akutan Zero”) that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft’s flight characteristics.
• 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily.
• 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong.
• 1962 – Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.
• 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial.
• 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader (Colonel) Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.
• 2000 – EADS, the world’s second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA.
• 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal.
• 2017 – Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
• 2019 – The last Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the line in Puebla, Mexico.
  • The last of 5,961 “Special Edition” cars will be exhibited in a museum.
• Armed Forces Day (Mauritania).
• Independence Day (Bahamas), celebrates the independence of the Bahamas from the United Kingdom in 1973.

People (Births)

• 1864 – Austin Chapman, Australian businessman and politician, 4th Australian Minister for Defence (d. 1926).
• 1883 – Johannes Blaskowitz, German general (d. 1948).
• 1897 – Karl Plagge, German general and engineer (d. 1957).
• 1899 – Heiri Suter, Swiss cyclist (d. 1978).
• 1903 – Werner Best, German SS officer and jurist (d. 1989).
• 1903 – John Wyndham, English soldier and author (d. 1969).
• 1909 – Donald Sinclair, English lieutenant and businessman (d. 1981).
• 1914 – Joe Shuster, Canadian-American illustrator, co-created Superman (d. 1992).
• 1921 – John K. Singlaub, US Army Major General (d. 2022).
• 1921 – Eunice Kennedy Shriver, American activist, co-founded the Special Olympics (d. 2009).
• 1922 – Herb McKenley, Jamaican sprinter (d. 2007).
• 1923 – John Bradley, American soldier (d. 1994).
• 1933 – C.K. Yang, Taiwanese decathlete and pole vaulter (d. 2007).
• 1942 – Pyotr Klimuk, Belarusian general, pilot, and astronaut.
• 1950 – Tony Baldry, English colonel, lawyer, and politician, British Minister of State for Agriculture.
• 1964 – Wilfried Peeters, Belgian cyclist.

People (Deaths)

• 1460 – Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, English commander and politician, Lord High Constable of England (b. 1402).
• 1621 – Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, French commander (b. 1571).
• 1794 – Gaspard de Bernard de Marigny, French general (b. 1754).
• 1920 – John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, British admiral (b. 1841).
• 2002 – Evangelos Florakis, Greek general (b. 1943).
• 2006 – Shamil Basayev, Chechen terrorist rebel leader (b. 1965).
• 2012 – Fritz Langanke, German lieutenant (b. 1919).