0049 BC – defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering “alea iacta est” (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war which would lead to his appointment as Roman dictator for life
0069 – Roman emperor Galba adopts Marcus Piso Licinianus as Caesar
0381 – Roman Emperor Theodosius issues edit ordering all churches be surrendered to bishops of the Catholic faith as he saw it
0532 – Constantinople chariot racing green and blue supporters due to be executed escape, prompting Nika revolt
1072 – Palermo falls to Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, who begin to conquer all of Sicily
1429 – Order of the Golden Fleece established in Austria-Hungary & Spain
1514 – Complutensian New Testament in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek & Latin finished
1642 – King Charles I and family flee London for Hampton Court fearing for their lives, not to return for 7 years
1645 – Archbishop William Laud is beheaded at the Tower of London
1776 – “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine was published.
1806 – Dutch settlers in Cape Town surrender to the British.
1815 – British Government bans Americans from settling in Canada
1840 – The penny post, whereby mail was delivered at a standard charge rather than paid for by the recipient, began in Britain.
1861 – Florida seceded from the United States.
1863 – Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground Railway system, from Paddington to Farringdon Street.
1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.
1883 – Fire at uninsured Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee WI kills 71; General Tom Thumb of P T Barnum fame, escapes unhurt
1901 – Oil was discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont, TX.
1911 – Major Jimmie Erickson took the first photograph from an airplane while flying over San Diego, CA.
1914 – Yuan Shih-k’ai, president of the new Chinese republic, dissolves parliament and prepares a constitution of his own design: he will set himself up as dictator, preparatory to an attempt to make himself emperor
1916 – In retaliation for President Woodrow Wilson’s recognition of Mexico’s Carranza government, members of Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army take 17 US mining engineers from a train and shoot 16 of them in cold blood
1920 – The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.
1927 – Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” was first shown, in Berlin.
1929 – The first Adventures of Tintin comic book is published
1941 – Lend-Lease is introduced into the US Congress
1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, FL, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.
1946 – The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place with 51 nations represented.
1957 – Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick rules Bing Crosby can keep token stock in Detroit Tigers, even though he owns part of Pittsburgh Pirates
1962 – Apollo Project: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket booster. It became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, which launched every Apollo moon mission.
1966 – The Georgia House of Representatives votes 184-12 to deny Julian Bond his seat as a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War
1967 – PBS (the National Educational TV) begins as a 70 station network
1971 – “Masterpiece Theatre” premiered on PBS with host Alistair Cooke. The introduction drama series was “The First Churchills.”
1977 – Canada expels four Cubans, two of them diplomats, after RCMP spy investigation
1978 – The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a redezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.
1979 – The Sun paper headline is ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ as UK Prime Minister James Callaghan denies that the country is in chaos during the ‘Winter of Discontent’ strike wave
1981 – In El Salvador, Marxist insurgents launched a “final offensive”.
1983 – In Los Angeles, the Fraggle Rock children’s show debuts on HBO; partly produced in Toronto by Jim Henson
1984 – The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.
1990 – Chinese Premier Li Peng ended martial law in Beijing after seven months. He said that crushing pro-democracy protests had saved China from “the abyss of misery.”
1994 – In Manassas, VA, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial. She had been charged with maliciously wounding her husband John. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.
1997 – Shelby Lynne Barrackman was strangled to death by her grand-father when she licked the icing off of cupcakes. He was convicted of the crime on September 15, 1998.
2000 – It was announced that Time-Warner had agreed to buy America On-line (AOL). It was the largest-ever corporate merger priced at $162 billion. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the deal on December 14, 2000.
2001 – 2001 The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will not be designated as a national monument, the White House announces; a move environmentalist groups had been pressing for to prevent oil drilling
2002 – In France, the “Official Journal” reported that all women could get the morning-after contraception pill for free in pharmacies.
2003 – North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
2013 – 81 people are killed and 120 are wounded by a twin bombing in Quetta, Pakistan
2019 – In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó and the National Assembly declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro “illegitimate” and started the process of attempting to remove him from office.
2020 – The green Ford Mustang from the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller “Bullitt” was sold for $3.4 million at the Mecum Auctions event in Kissimmee, FL.
2021 – America records more than 3,000 deaths a day for the first time reaching 3,249, passing 375,000 deaths in total a day later
2022 – US reports 1.34 million new COVID-19 infections, a global record, with Omicron variant accounting for an estimated 95% of cases
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
