Events

• 1096 – A Seljuk Turkish army successfully fights off the People’s Crusade.
• 1097 – First Crusade: Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.
• 1520 – Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait now known as the Strait of Magellan.
• 1520 – João Álvares Fagundes discovers the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, bestowing them their original name of “Islands of the 11,000 Virgins”.
• 1600 – Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara and becomes shōgun of Japan.
• 1797 – In Boston Harbour, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
• 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A British fleet led by Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar.
• 1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war.
• 1867 – The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in the western Indian Territory.
• 1879 – Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb.
• 1895 – The Republic of Formosa collapses as Japanese forces invade.
• 1910 – HMS Niobe arrives in Halifax Harbour to become the first ship of the Royal Canadian Navy.
• 1931 – A secret society in the Imperial Japanese Army launches an abortive coup d’état attempt.
• 1940 – The first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published (refer to Spanish Civil War).
• 1943 – World War II: The Provisional Government of Free India is formally established in Japanese-occupied Singapore.
• 1944 – World War II: The first kamikaze attack damages HMAS Australia as the Battle of Leyte Gulf begins.
• 1944 – World War II: The Nemmersdorf massacre against German civilians takes place.
• 1944 – World War II: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, the first German city to fall to the Allies.
• 1950 – Korean War: Heavy fighting begins between British and Australian forces and North Koreans during the Battle of Yongju.
• 1956 – The Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya is defeated.
• 1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower approves the transfer of all US Army space-related activities to NASA, including most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.
• 1967 – The National Mobilisation Committee to End the War in Vietnam organises a march of fifty thousand people from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon.
• 1969 – The 1969 Somali coup d’état establishes a Marxist-Leninist administration.
• 1983 – The metre is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
• 1987 – The Jaffna hospital massacre is carried out by Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka, killing 70 Tamil patients, doctors and nurses.
• 1994 – North Korea and the United States sign an Agreed Framework that requires North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons programme and agree to inspections.
• 2011 – Iraq War: President Barack Obama announces that the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq will be complete by the end of the year.
• Armed Forces Day (Honduras).
• Egyptian Naval Day (Egypt).
• Trafalgar Day (the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th century).

People (Births)

• 1409 – Alessandro Sforza, Italian condottiero (d. 1473).
• 1650 – Jean Bart, French admiral (d. 1702).
• 1725 – Franz Moritz von Lacy, Austrian field marshal (d. 1801).
• 1757 – Pierre Augereau, French general (d. 1816).
• 1762 – Herman Willem Daendels, Dutch general, lawyer, and politician, 36th Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (d. 1818).
• 1833 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist and engineer, invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize (d. 1896).
• 1868 – Ernest Swinton, British Army officer (d. 1951).
• 1886 – Eugene Burton Ely, American soldier and pilot (d. 1911).
• 1919 – Jim Wallwork, English-Canadian sergeant and pilot (d. 2013).
• 1949 – Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli captain and politician, 9th Prime Minister of Israel.
• 1983 – Brent Hayden, Canadian swimmer.
• 1983 – Chris Sherrington, English-Scottish martial artist.
• 1984 – Anna Bogdanova, Russian heptathlete.
• 1987 – Andrey Grechin, Russian swimmer.
• 1988 – Daniel Schorn, Austrian cyclist.
• 1995 – Antoinette Guedia Mouafo, Cameroonian swimmer.

People (Deaths)

• 1600 – Ōtani Yoshitsugu, Japanese samurai (b. 1558).
• 1805 – John Cooke, English captain (b. 1763).
• 1805 – George Duff, Scottish captain (b. 1764).
• 1805 – Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, English admiral (b. 1758).
• 1861 – Edward Dickinson Baker, American congressman and colonel (b. 1811).
• 1963 – Józef Franczak, Polish sergeant (b. 1918).
• 1975 – Charles Reidpath, American runner and general (b. 1887).
• 1996 – Georgios Zoitakis, Greek general and politician (b. 1910).
• 1998 – Francis W. Sargent, American soldier and politician, 64th Governor of Massachusetts (b. 1915).
• 2013 – Tony Summers, Welsh swimmer (b. 1924).