1317 – Pontifical decree “Sancta Romania” against spiritualists
1460 – Wars of the Roses: Battle of Wakefield (Northern England), Duke of York killed and his forces soundly defeated by forces for King Henry VI
1610 – Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory arrested at Csejte Castle on suspicion of killing and torturing hundreds of young girls and women
1809 – Wearing masks at balls forbidden in Boston
1853 – The United States bought about 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase.
1853 – Dinner party held inside life-sized model of an Iguanodon (ornithopod dinosaur), created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in South London
1861 – Associated Banks in NYC halt gold payments to government and investors, to disrupt Abraham Lincoln’s US bank reform program
1887 – A petition to Queen Victoria with over one million names of women appealing for public houses to be closed on Sundays was handed to the home secretary.
1903 – Electric arc lamp sets fire to Iroquois theater in Chicago leaving 602 dead in one of the deadliest blazes in American history
1907 – Abraham Mills’ commission declares Abner Doubleday invented baseball
1922 – Creation of the USSR formally proclaimed in Moscow from the Bolshoi Theatre, Soviet Union organized as a federation of RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SSR
1924 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble formally announces existence of other galactic systems at meeting of the American Astronomical Society
1936 – The United Auto Workers union staged its first sit-down strike, at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, MI.
1941 – In an emotional speech to the Canadian Parliament Winston Churchill states Britain will never surrender to “Hitler and his Nazi gang” and that “they have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it”. Afterwards Yousef Karsh captures him in his famous photograph, “The Roaring Lion”.
1953 – The first ever NTSC color television sets go on sale for about USD at $1,175 each from RCA.
1973 – 1st picture of a comet from space (Comet Kohoutek-Skylab)
1978 – Ohio State University fired Woody Hayes as its football coach, one day after Hayes punched Clemson University player Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl. Bauman had intercepted an Ohio pass.
1988 – Oliver North subpoenas US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as defense witnesses for his upcoming trial
1996 – About 250,000 striking workers shut down vital services across Israel in protests against budget cuts proposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu.
1997 – More than 400 people were massacred in four villages in the single worst incident during Algeria’s insurgency.
2000 – Rizal Day Bombings: A series of bombs explode in various places in Metro Manila, Philippines within a span of a few hours, killing 22 and injuring about a hundred.
2016 – A ceasefire organised by Russia, Iran and Turkey between Syria’s government and opposition groups takes effect
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
