2003 – Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard
1099 – First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem
1376 – The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading rats out of town is said to have occurred on this date.
1515 – First Congress of Vienna settles issues between Poland and Holy Roman Empire – rise of the Habsburgs influence
1587 – A second English colony was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina. The colony vanished under mysterious circumstances.
1648 – 10,000 Jews of Polannoe murdered in Chmielnick massacre during Khmelnytsky Uprising
1793 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada
1796 – Cleveland was founded by General Moses Cleaveland.
1835 – Smolny Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia is consecrated, originally commissioned by Elizabeth of Russia
1864 – Battle of Atlanta: General Sherman’s Union side defeats Confederate troops under General Hood, with 8,449 Confederate and 3,641 US casualties
1916 – A bomb explodes during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco killing 10
1934 -John Dillinger was shot to death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater.
1937 – The U.S. Senate rejected President Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court.
1942 – Gasoline rationing using coupons begins
1942 – Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp
1946 – Militant Zionist organization Irgun bombs the British administrative headquarters for Palestine in southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people of various nationalities injuring 46
1955 – U.S. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon chaired a cabinet meeting in Washington, DC. It was the first time that a Vice-President had carried out the task.
1959 – Ed Wood’s cult classic “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, called one of the worse films ever, premieres
1968 – Sir John Newsome recommends public schools should take 50% of their intake from the state school system
1972 – 2 Catholics are abducted, beaten, and shot dead in a Loyalist area of Belfast
1975 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee had his U.S. citizenship restored by the U.S. Congress.
1986 – US House of Representatives impeaches Judge Harry E. Claiborne for tax evasion
1987 – The U.S. began its policy of escorting re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers up and down the Persian Gulf to protect them from possible attack by Iran.
1988 – 500 US scientists pledge to boycott Pentagon germ-warfare research
1991 – Jeffrey Dahmer confesses to killing 17 men in 1978
1994 – Military coup in Gambia: President Dawda Jawara flees
1995 – Susan Smith found guilty of drowning her two children in South Carolina
1998 – Iran tested medium-range missile, capable of reaching Israel or Saudi Arabia.
2000 – Astronomers at the University of Arizona announced that they had found a 17th moon orbiting Jupiter.
2002 – Israel assassinates Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, along with 14 civilians
2003 – Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard
2003 – In Paris, France, a fire broke out near the top of the Eiffel Tower. About 4,000 visitors were evacuated and no injuries were reported.
2009 – The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting up to 6 minutes and 38.8 seconds, occurred over parts of Asia and the Pacific Ocean.
2011 – Lone wolf extremist goes on a massacre in Norway – Anders Behring Breivik an anti-Islamist extremist placed a car bomb in front of the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office in Oslo. A few hours after the bomb exploded, killing 8 people and injuring about 200 others, Breivik opened fire at a youth summer camp at the island of Utøya killing 69 participants. This was the deadliest incident of violence in the Scandinavian country since the Second World War.
2015 – ‘Oldest’ Qur’an fragments discovered in collection of Birmingham University, radiocarbon testing dates to AD568 – AD645
2016 – A man shoots and kills 9 people at the Olympia shopping mall in Munich, Germany and then kills himself
2018 – Israeli military and allies evacuate over 400 White Helmet Syrian rescue workers from its border with Syria to Jordan
2018 – US President Donald Trump threatens Iran in an all-caps tweet of “consequences” in response to speech by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
2019 – US President Donald Trump says US could win war in Afghanistan in a week “I just don’t want to kill 10 million people. If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
