1461 – Wars of the Roses: Second Battle of St Albans – Lancastrian army defeats Yorkists and recaptures King Henry VI
1568 – Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II agrees to pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire for peace
1600 – Italian philospher, alchemist, and Copernican theory advocate Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition.
1621 – Myles Standish is elected as the first commander of the Plymouth Colony
1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Jefferson was elected president and Burr became vice president.
1815 – Treaty of Ghent ratified by the US Senate and signed by President James Madison ending War of 1812, over a month after it was signed in Europe
1864 – The Confederate submarine Hunley, equipped with an explosive at the end of a protruding spar, rammed and sank the Union’s ship Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, S.C.
1865 – Columbia, SC, burned. The Confederates were evacuating and the Union Forces were moving in.
1883 – A Ashwell patents vacant/engaged toilet lock in London
1897 – The National Congress of Mothers was organized in Washington, DC, by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. It was the forerunner of the National PTA.
1913 – 1st minimum wage law in US takes effect (Oregon)
1933 – “Newsweek” was first published.
1934 – The first high school automobile driver’s education course was introduced in State College, PA.
1936 – The world’s first superhero, The Phantom, a cartoon strip by Lee Falk, makes his first appearance in comics
1940 – Altmark Incident: Crew of the British destroyer “Cossack” board German “Altmark” in Jøssingfjord, Norway, releasing 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlass
1947 – The Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
1964 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be approximately equal in population. 1 man 1 vote (Westberry v. Sanders)
1969 – Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash record an album; it is never released
1972 – US President Richard Nixon leaves Washington, D.C. for a groundbreaking trip to China
1973 – US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger meets Chinese leader Mao Zedong, where the latter jokingly offers to send 10 million Chinese women to the United States
1979 – China invades Vietnam, marking the start of the Sino-Vietnamese War
1981 – Chrysler Corporation reports largest corporate losses in US history
1988 – US Lt Col William Higgins kidnapped in south Lebanon by Lebanese terrorists & later killed
1989 – 6 week study of Arctic atmosphere shows no ozone “hole”
1992 – In Milwaukee, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison. In November of 1994, he was beaten to death in prison.
1995 – Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings. He was later sentenced to a minimum of 200 years in prison.
1995 – Federal judge allows lawsuit claiming US tobacco makers knew nicotine was addictive & manipulated its levels to keep customers hooked
1998 – Larry Wayne Harris & Bill Levitt arrested for possession of anthrax
2013 – 37 people are killed and 130 are injured in a series of Baghdad car bombings
2016 – Car bomb attack on military convoy in Ankara, Turkey, by Kurdish militant eaves 28 dead
2016 – Chief executive Tim Cook confirms Apple will contest an FBI order to unlock the phone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook
2017 – Discovery of a new mostly underwater continent Zealandia in the South Pacific announced in research journal “GSA Today”
2020 – India’s Supreme Court grants equal rights to women in the armed forces
2021 – Texan senator Ted Cruz flies to Cancun, Mexico with his family amid a winter disaster in his state, igniting widespread condemnation
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
