1814 – London Beer Flood: Vats of beer at the Meux and Company Brewery burst, flooding city streets with 610,000 liters of beer. The almost 15 feet tall wave of porter killed 8 people, some of whom were gathered for a funeral.
539 BC – King Cyrus The Great of Persia marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile and making the first Human Rights Declaration.
0415 – Jewish autonomy in Palestine ended by the Romans and Raban Gamliel forced from office
1244 – Battle of La Forbie: Crusaders are defeated by Khwarezmians and Egyptians.
1346 – Battle of Neville’s Cross: King David II of Scotland is captured by Edward III of England at Calais, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years
1448 – Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi were defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II
1604 – Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation. Ophiuchus, which turned out to be the last supernova to have been observed in our own galaxy, the Milky Way
1660 – Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn and quartered, another is hanged.
1662 – England’s King Charles II sells Dunkirk to the French.
1739 – Thomas Coram was granted a Royal Charter from George II so a “hospital for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children” in Londond, England.
1777 – American troops defeated British forces in Saratoga, NY. It was the turning point in the American Revolutionary War.
1781 – General Charles Cornwallis offers his surrender to the American revolutionists at Yorktown, Virginia.
1787 – Boston blacks, petition legislature for equal school facilities
1806 – Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I of Haiti was assassinated after an oppressive rule.
1814 – London Beer Flood: Vats of beer at the Meux and Company Brewery burst, flooding city streets with 610,000 liters of beer. The almost 15 feet tall wave of porter killed 8 people, some of whom were gathered for a funeral.
1850 – James Young obtains a patent for the extraction of paraffin from shale, the beginning of the paraffin industry in West Lothian
1855 – Bessemer steelmaking process patented
1861 – Cullin-la-Ringo Massacre: Largest massacre of white settlers by Australian aborigines, the killing of 19 white settler occurred after the group was led by politician Horatio Wills had set up a camp at Cullin-la-Ringo, which is located in present-day Central Queensland
1888 – The first issue of “National Geographic Magazine” was released at newsstands.
1894 – Ohio national guard kills 3 lynchers while rescuing a black man
1907 – Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland
1912 – Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War
1931 – Al Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.
1933 – “News-Week” appeared for the first time at newsstands. The name was later changed to “Newsweek.”
1937 – Huey, Dewey and Louie, Donald Duck’s three almost identical nephews, first appear in a newspaper comic strip.
1945 – Colonel Juan Peron became the dictator of Argentina after staging a coup in Buenos Aires.
1951 – CBS introduced their Eye Device logo.
1956 – England’s first large scale nuclear power station opens
1961 – Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police
1970 – Montreal, Quebec: Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte murdered by members of the FLQ terrorist group
1973 – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began an oil-embargo against several countries including the U.S. and Great Britain. The incident stemmed from Western support of Israel when Egypt and Syria attacked the nation on October 6, 1973. The embargo lasted until March of 1974.
1977 – German Autumn: Four days after it was hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board
1978 – U.S. President Carter signed a bill that restored full U.S. citizenship rights to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
1979 – The Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services. Both replace the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
1986 – US Senate approved immigration bill prohibiting hiring of illegal aliens & offered amnesty to illegals who entered prior to 1982
1987 – U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
1994 – Israel and Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.
1997 – The remains of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.
1998 – A pipeline explodes in Nigeria when villagers try to siphon off oil. At least 700 die
1999 – Former US nurse Orville Lynn Majors is convicted of murdering six patients at a western Indiana hospital; the jury deadlocked on a seventh count. (Majors is serving a 360-year prison sentence.)
2000 – In New York City, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum opened to the public. The 42nd Street location joined Tussaud’s other exhibitions already in London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Las Vegas.
2001 – Israel’s tourism minister was killed. A radical Palestinian faction claimed that it had carried out the assassination to avenge the killing of its leader by Israel 2 months earlier.
2003 – In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug, known as memantine, to help people with Alzheimer’s symptoms.
2012 – Exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri announced (later thought to be a false finding)
2013 – 59 people are killed in a wave of attacks on Shia Muslims in Iraq
2017 – Islamic State headquarters Raqqa declared under full control of US-led alliance by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman Talal Sello after 4 months of fighting
2018 – Student shoots and detonates a bomb killing 20 with 40 injured at Kerch polytechnic college, Crimea
2019 – Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s acting chief of staff says the White House withheld nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine to further Trump’s own political interests
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
