1940 – Winston Churchill gives his “this was their finest hour” speech to the House of Commons urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France
0618 – Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty’s rule over China
0860 – Rus Vikings attack Constantinople
1155 – Pope Adrian IV crowns Frederick I Barbarossa Roman-German Emperor
1178 – Five Canterbury monks see what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the moon’s distance (on the order of metres) are a result of this collision.
1264 – The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature
1429 – French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc crush the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turns the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.
1538 – Truce of Nice signed between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and French King Francis I ending the Italian War of 1536-38
1542 – Crown of Ireland Act 1542 passed by the Parliament of Ireland, gives English King Henry VIII the title “King of Ireland”
1621 – The first duel in America took place in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
1667 – The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames toward London.
1767 – Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sighted Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.
1778 – Britain evacuated Philadelphia during the U.S. Revolutionary War.
1812 – The War of 1812 began as the U.S. declared war against Great Britain. The conflict began over trade restrictions.
1815 – Napoleon suffers a shattering defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, The battle was Napoleon’s last. The French Emperor was exiled to Saint Helena where he died six years later. “To meet one’s Waterloo” is still a figure of speech today indicating total defeat.
1817 – London’s Waterloo Bridge opened. The bridge, designed by John Rennie, was built over the River Thames.
1858 – Charles Darwin receives from Alfred Russel Wallace a paper that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own. This prompts Darwin to publish his theory
1864 – The January Uprising, an insurrection in Russia’s Kingdom of Poland aimed at restoration of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is quashed after 1-1/2 years
1873 – Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote for a U.S. President.
1900 – Empress Dowager Longyu of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families
1915 – During World War I, the second battle of Artois ended.
1918 – Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the German army.
1925 – The first degree in landscape architecture was granted by Harvard University.
1930 – Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute science museum held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1934 – US Highway planning surveys nationwide authorized
1940 – Winston Churchill gives his “this was their finest hour” speech to the House of Commons urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France
“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour.”
1940 – General Charles de Gaulle makes his first speech on the BBC to the French people, since arriving in London, an appeal to defy Nazi occupiers – regarded as the beginning of French Resistance during WWII
1942 – The U.S. Navy commissioned its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
1945 – William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster, charged with treason in England
1948 – The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.
1948 – The LP record is introduced, The 33⅓ rpm microgroove vinyl Long Playing record developed by Columbia Records soon became the music industry’s standard medium. It allowed for a total playing time of 20 minutes per side.
1951 – General Vo Nguyen Giap ended his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.
1953 – Egypt was proclaimed to be a republic with General Neguib as its first president.
1956 – Last of foreign troops leaves Egypt (British and French forces attempted to seize the Canal)
1959 – A Federal Court annulled the Arkansas law allowing school closings to prevent integration.
1959 – Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital’s director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane.
1963 – 3,000 blacks boycot Boston public school
1966 – Samuel Nabrit became the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission.
1968 – Supreme Court bans racial discrimination in sale and rental of housing
1972 – US Supreme Court, 5-3, confirms lower court rulings in Curt Flood case, upholding baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws
1979 – In Vienna, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 2.
1981 – The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California
1982 – The U.S. Senate approved the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for an additional twenty-five years.
1983 – Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
1984 – Major clash police and miners at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. Incident later known as the Battle of Orgreave
1996 – Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts
2000 – In Algiers, Algeria, the foreign ministers of Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a preliminary cease-fire accord and agreed to work toward a permanent settlement of their two-year border war.
2001 – Protests occur in Manipur over the extension of the ceasefire between Naga insurgents and the government of India.
2009 – NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/LCROSS probes to the Moon. It was the first American lunar mission since Lunar Prospector in 1998.
2009 – Greenland assumed control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources from the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic became the official language.
2010 – Campbell Soup Co. recalls nearly 15 million pounds of canned SpaghettiOs with meatballs because of possible under-processing
2012 – 15 people are killed and 40 injured in a suicide attack in Baquba, Iraq
2013 – 31 people are killed and 60 are injured by two suicide bombings in al-Qahira, Baghdad
2013 – Russia passes a law banning foreign same-sex couples from adopting children
2014 – King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates the Spanish throne to make way for his son Felipe VI
2015 – 18 vigilantes are killed & 53 are injured after an accidental detonation of an explosive device in Monguno, Nigeria
2018 – US President Trump orders US military to set up sixth branch of the military – a space force
2019 – China has been forcefully harvesting organs from marginalized groups in prison camps on a significant scale according to International Tribunal in London
2019 – Sex-changing Australian bush tomato study published in journal “PhytoKeys” detailing how Solanum Plastisexum can change from male to female to hermaphrodite
2019 – Two 14 year-old boys become the youngest in Irish history to be convicted of murder when found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of a 14 year-old girl in Dublin
2020 – US Supreme Court rules the Obama-era Dreamers Program (DACA), enabling undocumented migrant children ability to study and work, can stay
2022 – Attacks in Oromia, western Ethiopia, targeting the Amhara people leave a reported 250 dead, killed by Oromo rebels amid worsening ethnic conflict in the country
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
