Events

• 1221 – Genghis Khan defeats the renegade Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din at the Battle of the Indus, completing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia.
• 1429 – Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
• 1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk in Dumfries and Galloway.
• 1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania).
• 1832 – South Carolina passes the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void in the state, beginning the Nullification Crisis.
• 1850 – Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.
• 1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
• 1922 – Nine Irish Republican Army members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad.
  • Among them is author Erskine Childers, who had been arrested for illegally carrying a revolver.
• 1940 – World War II: The First Slovak Republic becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.
• 1941 – World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces.
• 1943 – World War II: At the battle of Makin the USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.
• 1944 – World War II: The 73rd Bombardment Wing launches the first attack on Tokyo from the Northern Mariana Islands.
• 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald (a former US Marine), the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is killed by Jack Ruby.
• 1965 – Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
• 1989 – After a week of mass protests against the Communist regime known as the Velvet Revolution, Miloš Jakeš and the entire Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party resign from office.
  • This brings an effective end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.
• 2013 – Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear programme in exchange for reduced sanctions.
• 2015 – A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by the Turkish Air Force over the Syria-Turkey border, killing one of the two pilots; a Russian marine is also killed during a subsequent rescue effort.
• 2015 – An explosion on a bus carrying Tunisian Presidential Guard personnel in Tunisia’s capital Tunis leaves at least 14 people dead.
• 2016 – The government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army sign a revised peace deal, bringing an end to the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war.

People (Births)

• 1729 – Alexander Suvorov, Russian field marshal (d. 1800).
• 1784 – Zachary Taylor, American general and politician, 12th President of the United States (d. 1850).
• 1869 – Óscar Carmona, Portuguese field marshal and politician, 11th President of Portugal (d. 1951).
• 1885 – Christian Wirth, German SS officer (d. 1944).
• 1887 – Raoul Paoli, French boxer and rower (d. 1960).
• 1887 – Erich von Manstein, German field marshal (d. 1973).
• 1904 – Albert Ross Tilley, Canadian captain and surgeon (d. 1988).
• 1912 – Charles Schneeman, American soldier and illustrator (d. 1972).
• 1916 – Forrest J Ackerman, American soldier and author (d. 2008).
• 1929 – George Moscone, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 37th Mayor of San Francisco (d. 1978).
• 1935 – Ron Dellums, American soldier and politician, 48th Mayor of Oakland (d. 2018).
• 1942 – Marlin Fitzwater, American soldier and journalist, 17th White House Press Secretary.
• 1962 – Tracey Wickham, Australian swimmer.
• 1971 – Cosmas Ndeti, Kenyan runner.

People (Deaths)

• 1801 – Franz Moritz von Lacy, Austrian field marshal (b. 1725).
• 1916 – Hiram Maxim, American-English engineer, invented the Maxim gun (b. 1840).
• 1943 – Doris Miller, American soldier and chef, Navy Cross recipient (b. 1919).
• 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald, American assassin of John F. Kennedy (b. 1939).
• 1996 – Sorley MacLean, Scottish soldier and poet (b. 1911).
• 2013 – Arnaud Coyot, French cyclist (b. 1980).
• 2015 – Robert Ford, English general (b. 1923).