1941 – World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
0043 BC- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman writer, gets his head and right hand chopped off by Mark Antony’s soldiers
1354 – Margaret II Countess of Hainaut and her son William, Duke of Bavaria, sign a peace treaty ending the Cod and Hook wars between them
1431 – In Paris, Henry VI of England was crowned King of France.
1696 – Connecticut Route 108, one of the oldest highways in the U.S. is completed to Trumbull.
1724 – Toru Blood tribunal (German: Thorner Blutgericht), execution of Protestants citizens of Toru (Thorn) by Polish authorities
1732 – The original Covent Garden Theatre Royal (now the Royal Opera House) was opened.
1776 – Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
1787 – Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. constitution becoming the first of the United States.
1815 – Michel Ney, Marshal of France, is executed by firing squad after having been convicted of treason for his support of Napoleon I
1869 – Jesse James first confirmed bank robbery – he and his brother rob a bank in Gallatin, Missouri, shots cashier in a revenge killing
1872 – HMS Challenger sets sail on 3½ year world oceanographic cruise – first expedition to explore the deep sea successfully on a global scale
1902 – Britain and Germany issue an ultimatum to Venezuela demanding that President Cipriano Castro pay claims for damages caused during his takeover of the government in 1899
1909 – Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry
1917 – US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria during World War I
1926 – The gas operated refrigerator was patented by The Electrolux Servel Corporation.
1931 – The last Ford Model A was produced on this day. The Ford motor works were then shut down for six months for retooling.
1934 – Wiley Post discovers the jet stream
1941 – World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1946 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta killed 119 people. It was America’s worst hotel fire disaster. The hotel founder, W. Frank Winecoff, was also killed in the fire.
1949 – Chinese Civil War : The government of Republic of China moves from Nanking to Taipei.
1960 – Ivory Coast claims independence from France
1962 – Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality’s constitution, devolving some of his power to advisory and legislative councils
1965 – Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that led to split of the 2 churches in 1054
1968 – Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather took out in 1823
1971 – Libya announced the nationalization of British Petroleum’s assets.
1972 – Apollo 17 launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew takes the famous “blue marble” photo of the entire Earth
1974 – President Makarios returned to Cyprus after five months in exile.
1975 – Indonesia invades East Timor.
1980 – General Antonio Ramlho Eanes was reelected president of Portugal. His right-wing opposition was thrown into disarray by the death of Premier Francisco Sa Carneiro in a plane crash.
1982 – Charlie Brooks Junior, a convicted murderer, became the first prisoner in the U.S. to be executed by injection, at a prison in Huntsville, TX.
1986 – President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees Haiti
1987 – 43 people were killed when a gunman opened fire on a fellow passenger and the two pilots aboard a Pacific Southwest Airlines jetliner.
1988 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced the reduction of the number of Soviet military troops by half a million.
1989 – East Germany’s Communist Party agreed to cooperate with the plan for free elections and a revised constitution.
1992 – The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Mississippi abortion law which, required women to get counseling and then wait 24 hours before terminating their pregnancies.
1993 – Six people were killed and 17 were injured when a gunman opened fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train.
1995 – A probe sent from the Galileo spacecraft entered into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The probe sent back data to the mothership before it was presumably destroyed.
1996 – The space shuttle Columbia returned from the longest-ever shuttle flight of 17 days, 15 hours and 54 minutes.
1998 – The U.N. evacuated 14 peacekeepers that were trapped by fighting between army and rebel forces in central Angola.
1999 – A U.S. federal grand jury indicted a former convict in the 1995 disappearance of atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
2002 – In Mymensingh, Bangladesh, four movies theaters were bombed within 30 minutes of each other. At least 15 people were killed and over 200 were injured.
2004 – Hamid Karzai takes office, The Afghan politician took office as the President of the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan’s first direct democratic elections in history.
2005 – Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of US federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.
2007 – The Hebei Spirit oil spill began in South Korea after a crane barge being towed by tug collided with the very large crude carrier, Hebei Spirit.
2014 – Mayor of Paris calls for diesel cars to be banned from the French Capital by 2020, in order to reduce pollution
2015 – US Presidential candidate Donald Trump proposes banning all Muslims from entering the US
2017 – Crumbling French château La Mothe-Chandeniers in Les Trois-Moutiers is bought by 9,000 people
2018 – Court filings by US federal prosecutors and Special Counsel Robert Mueller against Michael Cohen appear to implicate President Donald Trump on campaign fraud and Russian dealings
2020 – Most of California begins second lockdown as hospitals come under strain and the state records average of 21,000 COVID-19 cases a day
2021 – 3,500 year-old Gilgamesh Dream Tablet goes on display in Iraq for the first time in 30 years after looted during Gulf War. Part of the Epic Gilgamesh, one of oldest known pieces of literature.
2022 – Peruvian president Pedro Castillo ousted from office after trying to dissolve Congress, who were about to impeach him on corruption charges. Vice president, Dina Boluarte sworn in as country’s first woman president
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
