1789 – George Washington becomes the first U.S. President, Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City. In the United States, he is venerated as one of the country’s founding fathers.
0030 – Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
0311 – Roman Emperor Galerius issues Edict of Toleration, ending persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire
0313 – Licinius unified the whole of the eastern empire under his own rule.
0711 – Islamic conquest of Iberia: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus)
1250 – King Louis IX of France was ransomed for one million dollars.
1315 – French chamberlain Enguerrand de Marigny is hanged on the public gallows at Montfaucon after being convicted of sorcery
1349 – Jewish community of Radolfzell, Germany, exterminated
1483 – Orbital calculations suggest that on this day, Pluto moved inside Neptune’s orbit until July 23, 1503
1492 – Spain announces it will expel all Jews
1527 – Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France sign the Treaty of Westminster, pledging to combine their forces against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in attempt to win War of the League of Cognac
1563 – Jews are expelled from France by order of Charles VI
1671 – Petar Zrinski, the Croatian Ban from the Zrinski family, is executed.
1725 – Spain withdrew from Quadruple Alliance.
1763 – Member of Parliament and journalist John Wilkes confined in the Tower of London, charged with seditious libel
1789 – George Washington becomes the first U.S. President, Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City. In the United States, he is venerated as one of the country’s founding fathers.
1803 – Chancellor Robert Livingston and James Monroe sign Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris at a cost of 15 million dollars, doubles the size of the USA
1812 – Louisiana admitted as the 18th U.S. state.
1849 – The republican patriot and guerrilla leader Giuseppe Garabaldi repulsed a French attack on Rome.
1861 – US President Abraham Lincoln orders Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory (US Civil War)
1863 – Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia: In a major victory General Robert E. Lee’s troops defeat larger Army of the Potomac under Major General Joseph Hooker, Stonewall Jackson is fatally wounded
1864 – Work began on the Dams along the Red River. The work would allow Union General Nathaniel Banks’ troops to sail over the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana.
1900 – Hawaii was organized as an official U.S. territory.
1900 – Casey Jones dies heroically in a train wreck at Vaughn, Mississippi, while driving Cannonball Express (immortalized in “Ballad of Casey Jones”)
1916 – Germany and its World War I allies become the first countries to use daylight saving time (DST), The rationale was to save energy to aid the war effort. Other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, first introduced DST later that year.
1930 – The Soviet Union proposed a military alliance with France and Great Britain.
1938 – Happy Rabbit appeared in the cartoon “Porky’s Hare Hunt.” This rabbit would later evolve into Bugs Bunny.
1939 – Lou Gehrig played his last game with the New York Yankees.
1940 – Belle Martell was licensed in California by state boxing officials. She was the first American woman, prizefight referee.
1943 – The British submarine HMS Seraph dropped ‘the man who never was,’ a dead man the British planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.
1945 – Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. They had been married for one day. One week later Germany surrendered unconditionally.
1947 – The name of Boulder Dam, in Nevada, was changed back to Hoover Dam.
1948 – The Organization of American States (OAS) held its first meeting in Bogota, Colombia. The institution’s goal was to facilitate better relations between the member nations and to help prevent the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere.
1952 – Mr. Potato Head became the first toy to be advertised on network television.
1953 – The British West Indian colonies agreed on the formation of the British Caribbean Federation that would eventually become a self-governing unit in the British Commonwealth.
1955 – Element atomic number 101, Mendelevium, announced
1955 – West German unions protest for 40-hour work week & higher wages
1964 – The FCC ruled that all TV receivers should be equipped to receive both VHF and UHF channels.
1968 – U.S. Marines attacked a division of North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.
1970 – U.S. troops invaded Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnamese Army base areas. The announcement by U.S. President Nixon led to widespread protests.
1972 – The North Vietnamese launched an invasion of the South.
1973 – U.S. President Nixon announced resignation of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other top aides.
1975 – The fall of Saigon marks the end of the Vietnam War. As Communist forces gained control of Saigon, South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh, who had only been in office for 2 days, surrendered unconditionally.
1977 – Human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo begin protesting at the forced disappearances of thousands, under the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, in Buenos Aires
1980 – Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, abdicates; Princess Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard (42) becomes Queen Beatrix
1980 – Terrorists seized the Iranian Embassy in London.
1984 – U.S. President Reagan signed cultural and scientific agreements with China. He also signed a tax accord that would make it easier for American companies to operate in China.
1990 – US hostage Frank Reed freed after 4 years in hands of pro-Iranians
1993 – CERN put the World Wide Web software in the public domain.
1993 – Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a tennis match in Hamburg, Germany. The man called himself a fan of second- ranked Steffi Graf. He was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and received a suspended sentence.
1996 – US President Clinton approves the sale of $227 million of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; US gas prices are at their highest levels in 5 years
1998 – NATO was expanded to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The three nations were formally admitted the following April at NATO’s 50th anniversary summit.
1998 – In the U.S., Federal regulators fined a contractor $2.25 million for improper handling of oxygen canisters on ValuJet that crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1996.
2001 – US Vice President Cheney calls for increased domestic production of fossil fuels and increased usage of nuclear power to meet America’s energy demand
2002 – Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was overwhelmingly approved for another five years as president.
2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Ekaterinburg, Russia, were confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia and one of his sisters
2012 – One World Trade Center became the tallest structure in New York when it surpassed the height of the Empire State Building.
2013 – 13 people are killed after a bomb explodes in Damascus
2015 – NASA’s Messenger spacecraft crashed into the surface of Mercury. The space probe sent back more than 270,000 pictures to earth.
2018 – Coordinated double suicide attack kills 36 in Kabul, Afghanistan, including nine journalists
2019 – New type of dementia identified and named limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy (Late) after misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease
2020 – US President Donald Trump claims COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, while the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying the virus is not manmade
2021 – 45 killed and 150 injured in a crush of people at the Israeli Lag B’Omer festival at Mount Meron
2021 – Australia announces a ban on citizens returning from India, stranding 8,000 people, and making it a criminal offence to return, amid India’s COVID-19 crisis – first democratic country to do so
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
