1971 – Right to vote: the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon
1295 – Scotland and France form an alliance, the beginnings of the Auld Alliance, against England
1610 – John Guy sets sail from Bristol with 39 other colonists for Newfoundland
1628 – English settlers establish town of St Michael (later Bridgetown) on Barbados
1687 – Isaac Newton’s great work Principia published by Royal Society in England, outlining his laws of motion and universal gravitation
1715 – Ottoman troops storm citadel of Acrocorinth in the Peloponnese, massacring a large part of the population and selling the rest into slavery. Inspires Lord Byron’s poem “The Siege of Corinth”
1758 – Lake George New York, General James Abercromby leaves the ruins of Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George to attack the French at Fort Carillon; army of 6,000 British regulars, and almost 9000 provincials from New England, New York and New Jersey, embarks in hundreds of batteaux and whale boats.
1770 – Battle of Chesma and Battle of Larga between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
1775 – Second Continental Congress drafts the Olive Branch Petition to King George III
1806 – A Spanish army repelled the British during their attempt to retake Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1809 – The Battle of Wagram ends in victory for the French but at a terrible cost: 23,000 French soldiers killed or wounded, 7,000 missing out of a 181,700-man army that includes 29,000 cavalrymen, while the Austrian army of 181,700 (4,600 cavalrymen) is forced to retreat after losing 19,110 killed or wounded, 6,740 missing
1811 – Venezuela became the first South American country to declare independence from Spain.
1814 – U.S. troops under Jacob Brown defeated a superior British force at Chippewa, Canada.
1832 – The German government began curtailing freedom of the press after German Democrats advocate a revolt against Austrian rule.
1839 – British naval forces bombarded Dingai on Zhoushan Island in China and then occupied it.
1863 – U.S. Federal troops occupied Vicksburg, MS, and distributed supplies to the citizens.
1865 – William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.
1865 – The U.S. Secret Service Division was created to combat currency counterfeiting, forging and the altering of currency and securities.
1930 – Daredevil George Stathakis dies in a plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but his turtle survives.
1934 – “Bloody Thursday” – Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco
1935 – U.S. President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. The act authorized labor to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining.
1937 – Spam, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation
1940 – During World War II, Britain and the Vichy government in France broke diplomatic relations.
1941 – German troops reached the Dnieper River in the Soviet Union.
1943 – The battle of Kursk began as German tanks attack the Soviet salient. It was the largest tank battle in history.
1946 – The bikini bathing suit, created by Louis Reard, made its debut during a fashion show at the Molitor Pool in Paris. Micheline Bernardini wore the two-piece outfit.
1947 – Larry Doby signs a contract with the Cleveland Indians baseball team, becoming the first black player in the American League. (Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League 11 weeks earlier.)
1948 – Britain’s National Health Service Act went into effect, providing government-financed medical and dental care.
1950 – The Knesset passes the Law of Return which grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.
1950 – U.S. forces engaged the North Koreans for the first time at Osan, South Korea.
1954 – The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin
1962 – Massacre in Oran, Algeria: members of Algerian National Liberation Army kill Pied-Noir (Algerians of European descent) and European expatriates in ethnic genocide upon Algerian independence from France killing an estimated 95 to 400 people over 3 days
1962 – Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.
1971 – Right to vote: the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/26th-amendment
1973 – Coup in Rwanda, Then Army Chief of Staff, Juvénal Habyarimana, staged a coup and overthrew the President, Grégoire Kayibanda. Habyarimana then held the post of president for 20 years
1973 – Catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills 11 firefighters. This explosion has become a classic incident studied in fire department training programs worldwide
1975 – Cape Verde gains independence from Portugal
1975 – Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles title when he defeated Jimmy Connors.
1982 – An Oklahoma City bank goes into receivership. Its receiver, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., begins paying off $271 million in insured deposits as examiners uncover a morass of bad loans to wildcat drillers and others made by Penn Square, based in a shopping center
1984 – The U.S. Supreme Court weakened the 70-year-old “exclusionary rule,” deciding that evidence seized with defective court warrants could be used against defendants in criminal trials.
1987 – First instance of the LTTE using suicide attacks on Sri Lankan Army. The Black Tigers are born and in the following years continue to use it to deadly effect.
1989 – Former U.S. National Security Council aide Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part in the Iran-Contra affair. The convictions were later overturned.
1991 – Ottawa seizes Bank of Credit and Commerce Canada’s assets and closes all four branches; result of international money-laundering investigation.
1991 – Regulators shut down the Pakistani-managed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in eight countries. The charge was fraud, drug money laundering and illegal infiltration into the U.S. banking system.
1995 – The U.S. Justice Department decided not to take antitrust action against Ticketmaster.
1996 – World’s first live cloned mammal is born, Dolly the Sheep, a domestic ship was cloned using cells from an adult sheep by a team led by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell at the Roslin Institute.
1998 – Japan joined U.S. and Russia in space exploration with the launching of the Planet-B probe to Mars.
2000 – Jordanian security agents shot and killed a Syrian hijacker after he threw a grenade that exploded and wounded 15 passengers aboard a Royal Jordanian airliner.
2000 – 10 Bengal tigers, including 7 rare white tigers, died at the Nandankanan Zoo in India. The tigers died of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).
2000 – Euan Blair, the oldest son of British prime minister Tony Blair, was arrested after police found him drunk and lying on the ground in London’s Leicester Square.
2003 – SARS is declared “contained” by the WHO after affecting 26 countries and resulting in 774 deaths
2006 – North Korea launched at least two short-range Nodong-2 missiles, one SCUD missile and one long-range Taepodong-2 missile
2012 – Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party is elected President of Mexico after a recount following irregularities
2012 – Former Argentine president and dictator Jorge Rafael Videla is sentenced to 50 years imprisonment for the abduction of about 400 babies born to political prisoners
2013 – 15 people are killed by a bomb attack on a Shia mosque in Baghdad, Iraq
2016 – FBI releases report stating Hillary Clinton was “extremely careless” handling classified emails but doesn’t recommend prosecution
2017 – Followers of Indian spiritual leader Ashutosh Mahara win a court case, 3 years after his death, to keep his body in a freezer in case he should return to life
2018 – Saleswomen in Kerala, India, win right to sit down and take toilet breaks in new amendment to law
2019 – Former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral says he paid a $2 million bribe to secure votes for his city to be granted 2016 Olympics
2022 – In possibly largest-ever Chinese security breach, hacker offers to sell Shanghai police a database with information on one billion Chinese
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
