1280 – Japanese Imperial Court orders all temples and shrines to pray for victory in the impending second Mongol invasion
1547 – King Edward VI of England crowned following the death of his father Henry VIII
1725 – 10 sleeping Indians scalped by whites in New Hampshire for £100 a scalp bounty
1792 – U.S. President George Washington signed the Postal Service Act that created the U.S. Post Office.
1798 – French General Louis Alexandre Berthier forcibly removes Pope Pius VI from Rome during French occupation of Rome (Pope later dies a prisoner in Valence)
1809 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government was greater than that of any individual state.
1815 – The USS Constitution, under Captain Charles Stewart fought the British ships Cyane and Levant. The Constitution captures both, but lost the Levant after encountering a British squadron. The Constitution and the Cyane returned to New York safely on May 15, 1815. The Cyane was purchased and became the USS Cyane.
1869 – Tennessee Governor W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis
1872 – Luther Crowell received a patent for a machine that manufactured paper bags.
1919 – Foundation NHL club Toronto Arenas are permitted to cease operations due to financial difficulties; later become Toronto St. Patricks and then Maple Leafs
1921 – The motion picture “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was released starring Rudolph Valentino.
1929 – American Samoa organizes as territory of US
1933 – The U.S. House of Representatives completed congressional action on the amendment to repeal Prohibition.
1938 – UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has appeased Nazi Germany
1939 – The American pro-Nazi organization German American Bund hold a rally at Madison Square Garden and 20,000 attend
1941 – 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk Poland
1941 – Nazi Germany orders Polish Jews barred from using public transportation
1943 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
1953 – US Court of Appeals rules that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling
1962 – John Glenn made space history when he orbited the world three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. He was the first American to orbit the Earth. He was aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. Glenn witnessed the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter while in flight
1965 – Ranger 8 crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of its surface.
1971 – National Emergency Center erroneously orders US radio & TV stations to go off the air. Mistake wasn’t resolved for 30 minutes
1975 – A feud begins between the official Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army; the two groups assassinate a number of each other’s volunteers until the feud ends in June 1975
1979 – 11 ‘loyalists’ known as the “Shankill Butchers” are sentenced to life in prison for 19 murders; the gang was named for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians in Belfast
1987 – A bomb exploded in a computer store in Salt Lake City, UT. The blast was blamed on the Unabomber.
1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh War is triggered by der Autonomous Oblast’s secession from Azerbaijan. Today, Nagorno-Karabakh is a de facto independent state, but the territory is still internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
1993 – Two ten-year-old boys were charged by police in Liverpool, England, in the abduction and death of a toddler. The two boys were later convicted.
1994 – Pope John Paul II demands juristic discrimination of homosexuals
2001 – The United States Supreme Court declines to consider an appeal by five major oil companies against Unocal’s patent on production of cleaner “reformulated” gasoline sold in California
2002 – In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire raced through a train killing at least 370 people and injuring at least 65.
2003 – In West Warwick, RI, 100 people were killed and more than 230 were injured when fire destroyed the nightclub The Station. The fire started with sparks from a pyrotechnic display being used by Jack Russel’s Great White. Ty Longley, guitarist for the band, was one of the victims in the fire.
2012 – Scientists successfully regenerate the flowering plant, Silene stenophylla from a 31,800 year old piece of fruit, greatly surpassing the previous record of 2,000 years
2016 – Gunman goes on random killing spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan, killing 6
2018 – Venezuela becomes the first country to launch a virtual currency, the petro, to counteract their financial crisis
2020 – Trump associate Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months imprisonment for obstructing a congressional investigation
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
