1370 – Building begins on the Bastille fortress in Paris
1500 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil.
1509 – Henry VIII ascended to the throne of England upon the death of his father Henry VII.
1526 – 1st slave revolt in North America at San Miguel de Gualdape, a Spanish settlement (now part of South Carolina)
1529 – Spain and Portugal divided the eastern hemisphere in the Treaty of Saragosa.
1692 – Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts
1769 – Madame du Barry becomes French King Louis XV’s “official” mistress
1792 – U.S. President George Washington proclaimed American neutrality in the war in Europe.
1864 – The U.S. Congress passed legislation that allowed the inscription “In God We Trust” to be included on one-cent and two-cent coins.
1871 – All German Jews emancipated after the German Constitution adopted by its last state Bavaria
1889 – At noon, the Oklahoma land rush officially started as thousands of Americans raced for new, unclaimed land.
1898 – The first shot of the Spanish-American war occurred when the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.
1898 – Congress passes Volunteer Army Act calling for a Volunteer Cavalry
1934 – US Division of Investigation (later the FBI) under Melvin Purvis botch an operation to capture the John Dillinger Gang at Little Bohemia Lodge, Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. with 2 dead and 4 injured
1940 – Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable
1945 – Concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen liberated
1945 – Adolf Hitler admits defeat – The German dictator announced in the underground Führerbunker that he plans to commit suicide after learning that Soviet forces had entered Berlin. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-admits-defeat
1945 – SS chief Heinrich Himmler secretly meets with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, asking him to act as an intermediary for a surrender offer to the Western Allies. The Allies do not take the offer seriously.
1952 – An atomic test conducted in Nevada was the first nuclear explosion shown on live network television.
1954 – The U.S. Senate Army-McCarthy televised hearings began.
1970 – The first “Earth Day” was observed by millions of Americans.
1972 – An 11-year-old boy killed by a rubber bullet fired by the British Army in Belfast; he was the first to die from a rubber bullet impact
1981 – More than $3.3 million is stolen from the First National Bank of Arizona in Tucson in the then largest US bank robbery in history
1983 – Stern mag announces major historical find-discovery of 60 volume personal diaries written by Adolf Hitler (turned out to be a hoax)
1992 – A series of massive explosions destroys parts of Guadalajara – The disaster in the downtown district of Analco occurred after gasoline had leaked into the sewer system. At least 206 people died, nearly 500 were injured, and about 15,000 were left homeless.
1993 – The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, DC.
1994 – 7,000 Tutsi slaughtered by Hutus in the stadium at Kibuye, Rwanda
1997 – In Lima, Peru government commandos storm and capture the residence of the Japanese ambassador ending a 126-day hostage crisis. In the rescue 71 hostages were saved. Those killed: one hostage (of a heart attack), two soldiers, and all 14 rebels.
2000 – In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida.
2006 – 243 people are injured in pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.
2016 – Paris Agreement on climate change signed in New York binding 195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C
2018 – Gunman opens fire at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee, killing four before James Shaw Jr. wrestled the rifle from the gunman’s hands
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
