1963 – The Birmingham church bombing occurred when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama—a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders.
0668 – Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy
0921 – Saint Ludmila is murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law at Tetin.
1600 – Battle of Sekigahara, rise of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan
1616 – The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy
1683 – Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded by 13 immigrant families.
1707 – Ferenc Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania and Tsar Peter the Great sign social security agreement
1774 – Cossack pretender to the Russian throne Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev captured
1775 – An early and unofficial American flag was raised by Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Mott after the seizing of Fort Johnson from the British. The flag was dark blue with the white word “Liberty” spelled on it.
1789 – The U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State.
1812 – Napoleon Bonaparte and his French army reach the Kremlin in Moscow, where they watch the flames of the Great Fire of Moscow spread and grow
1821 – Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador proclaimed independence.
1835 – The HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galapagos Islands
1853 – Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell was ordained becoming first female minister in the United States.
1858 – The first mail service begins to the Pacific Coast of the U.S. under government contract. Coaches from the Butterfield Overland Mail Company took 12 days to make the journey between Tipton, MO and San Francisco, CA.
1885 – The famous circus elephant “”Jumbo”” is killed by a GTR freight train, hauled by locomotive no. 788 at St. Thomas. It was struck from behind while being lead along the track to be loaded into his car. Jumbo stood 12′ 5″” high and weighted 7 1/2 tons.”
1894 – First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats China in the Battle of Pyongyang.
1903 – Queen Wilhelmina calls Dutch railroad strikers “criminals”
1909 – A New York judge rule that Ford Motor Company had infringed on George Seldon’s patent for the “Road Engine.” The ruling was later overturned.
1916 – During the Battle of the Somme, in France, tanks were first used in warfare when the British rolled them onto the battlefields.
1917 – First issue of Forbes magazine published.
1923 – Oklahoma was placed under martial law by Gov. John Calloway Walton due to terrorist activity by the Ku Klux Klan. After this declaration national newspapers began to expose the Klan and its criminal activities.
1928 – Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin
1935 – The Nuremberg Laws were enacted by Nazi Germany. The act stripped all German Jews of their civil rights and the swastika was made the official symbol of Nazi Germany.
1938 – British PM Neville Chamberlain visits Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden
1940 – The German Luftwaffe suffered the loss of 185 planes in the Battle of Britain. The change in tide forced Hitler to abandon his plans for invading Britain.
1941 – The U.S. Attorney General rules that the Neutrality Act is not violated when U.S. ships carry war materiel to British territories, opening the door for the Lend-Lease Act
1943 – Benito Mussolini forms a rival anti-monarchist fascist government in Italy and soon returns to power as a German puppet state
1950 – U.N. forces landed at Inchon, Korea in an attempt to relieve South Korean forces and recapture Seoul.
1952 – UN turns over Eritrea to Ethiopia
1955 – Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is published in Paris by Olympia Press.
1959 – Paul Orgeron detonated a bomb at Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School that killed 5 people and himself.
1963 – The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing kills four children at an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/birmingham-church-bombing
1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to the United States Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.
1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
1971 – Greenpeace was founded.
1973 – OPEC supports price hikes and designates six Gulf countries to negotiate collectively with companies over prices; other members to negotiate individually
1975 – The French department of Corse (the entire island of Corsica) is divided into two: Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud.
1982 – The first issue of “USA Today” was published.
1983 – The U.S. Senate joined the U.S. House of Representatives in their condemning of the Soviet Union for shooting down a Korean jet with 269 people onboard.
1989 – The U.S. Congress recognizes Terry Anderson’s continued captivity in Beirut.
1990 – France announced that it would send an additional 4,000 soldiers to the Persian Gulf. They also expelled Iraqi military attaches in Paris.
1993 – The FBI announced a new national campaign concerning the crime of carjacking.
1994 – U.S. President Clinton told Haiti’s military leaders “Your time is up. Leave now or we will force you from power.”
1995 – The U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing.
1998 – It was announced that 5.9 million people read The Starr Report on the Internet. 606,000 people read the White House defense of U.S. President Clinton.
1999 – The United Nations approved the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force in East Timor.
2004 – NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced a lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.
2011 – Ford Motor Company closes St. Thomas Assembly automobile plant in Southwold, Ontario, after 44 years resulting in the loss of roughly 1,400 jobs
2012 – Japan announces that it will phase out nuclear energy by the 2030s
2014 – President Obama announces the US will send 3,000 troops to help combat spread of the Ebola virus
2015 – EU Migrant Crisis: Hungary seals its border with Serbia with a razor-wire fence, stranding thousands of migrants
2017 – Terrorist bomb only partially explodes in attack at Parsons Green tube station, London, injuring 29
2019 – Hong Kong police use water cannons and tear gas attempting to disperse thousands of protesters outside the British embassy, as protests continue in the city
2020 – Family of Breonna Taylor announce $12 million wrongful death settlement with city of Louisville, Kentucky, after her death in botched police raid March 13
2021 – US, UK and Australia announce trilateral security partnership Aukus, to counteract influence of China, including helping Australia build nuclear-powered submarines
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
