Events

• 637 – Arab-Byzantine wars: Antioch surrenders to the Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge.
• 758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
• 1137 – Ranulf of Apulia defeats Roger II of Sicily at the Battle of Rignano, securing his position as duke until his death two years later.
• 1270 – The Eighth Crusade ends by an agreement between Charles I of Anjou (replacing his deceased brother King Louis IX of France) and the Hafsid dynasty of Tunis, Tunisia.
• 1340 – Reconquista: Portuguese and Castilian forces halt a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Río Salado.
• 1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios.
• 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Convinced that he is facing a much larger force, Prussian General von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrenders the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers (refer to Napoleonic Wars).
• 1831 – Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.
• 1864 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed, by which Denmark relinquishes one province each to Prussia and Austria.
• 1888 – The Rudd Concession is granted by Matabeleland to agents of Cecil Rhodes.
• 1918 – World War I: The Ottoman Empire signs the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies.
• 1918 – World War I: Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, a state union of Kingdom of Hungary and Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia is abolished with decisions of Croatian and Hungarian parliaments.
• 1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States.
• 1941 – World War II: President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
• 1941 – World War II: Holocaust: Fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp.
• 1942 – World War II: Lieutenant Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier drown while taking code books from the sinking German submarine U-559.
• 1944 – World War II: Holocaust: Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII.
• 1953 – President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union.
• 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: The government recognises the new workers’ councils.
  • Army officer Béla Király leads an attack on the Communist Party headquarters.
• 1961 – The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.
• 1961 – Due to “violations of Vladimir Lenin’s precepts”, it is decreed that Joseph Stalin’s body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin’s tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker.
• 1975 – Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, General Francisco Franco.
• 1980 – El Salvador and Honduras agree to put the border dispute fought over in 1969’s Football War before the International Court of Justice.
• 1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina, after seven years of military rule, are held.
• 1991 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Madrid Conference commences in an effort to revive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
• 2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.
• Anniversary of the Declaration of the Slovak Nation (Slovakia).
• Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions (former Soviet republics, except Ukraine).

People (Births)

• 1558 – Jacques-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force, Marshal of France (d. 1652).
• 1878 – Arthur Scherbius, German electrical engineer, invented the Enigma machine (d. 1929).
• 1882 – William Halsey Jr., American admiral (d. 1959).
• 1882 – Günther von Kluge, Polish-German field marshal (d. 1944).
• 1888 – Louis Menges, American soccer player, soldier, and politician (d. 1969).
• 1893 – Roland Freisler, German soldier, lawyer, and judge (d. 1945).
• 1896 – Harry R. Truman, American soldier (d. 1980).
• 1905 – Johnny Miles, English-Canadian runner (d. 2003).
• 1906 – Hermann Fegelein, German general (d. 1945).
• 1908 – Dmitry Ustinov, Marshal of the Soviet Union (d. 1984).
• 1917 – Nikolai Ogarkov, Russian field marshal (d. 1994).
• 1924 – John P. Craven, American soldier and engineer (d. 2015).
• 1946 – Robert L. Gibson, American captain, pilot, and astronaut.
• 1947 – Glenn Andreotta, American soldier (d. 1968).
• 1968 – Emmanuelle Claret, French biathlete (d. 2013).
• 1990 – Suwaibou Sanneh, Gambian sprinter.

People (Deaths)

• 1632 – Henri II de Montmorency, French admiral and politician (b. 1595).
• 1685 – Michel Le Tellier, French lawyer and politician, French Secretary of State for War (b. 1603).
• 1757 – Edward Vernon, English admiral and politician (b. 1684).
• 1896 – Carol Benesch, Czech architect, designed Peleș Castle (b. 1822).
• 1910 – Henry Dunant, Swiss activist, founded the Red Cross, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1828).
• 1912 – Alejandro Gorostiaga, Chilean colonel (b. 1840).
• 1917 – Talbot Mercer Papineau, Canadian lawyer and soldier (b. 1883).
• 2007 – John Woodruff, American runner and colonel (b. 1915).
• 2014 – Elijah Malok Aleng, Sudanese general and politician (b. 1937).