1971 – Body of former world heavyweight boxing champion Charles “Sonny” Liston (40) is found by his wife Geraldine at their Las Vegas home; he had been dead for an estimated 6 days; foul play suspected
1477 – Battle of Nancy: Swiss Confederacy led by René II decisively defeats the Duchy of Burgundy, 7,000+ killed including the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold
1527 – Felix Manz, a leader of the Anabaptist congregation in Zürich, is executed by drowning.
1709 – The Great Frost begins during the night, a sudden cold snap that remains Europe’s coldest ever winter. Thousands are killed across the continent and crops fail in France.
1757 – Failed assassination attempt on French King Louis XV by Damiens
1781 – Richmond, VA, was burned by a British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold.
1804 – Ohio legislature passes 1st laws restricting free blacks movement
1822 – Central America proclaims annexation to Mexican Empire
1834 – Kiowa Indians record this as the night the stars fell
1836 – Davy Crockett arrives in Nacogdoches, Texas, to aid the revolution
1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom
1885 – The Long Island Railroad Company became the first to offer piggy-back rail service which was the transportation of farm wagons on trains.
1895 – Alfred Dreyfus is sentenced to life imprisonment, The French artillery officer was accused of treason. He was later exonerated.
1900 – In Ireland, Nationalist leader John Edward Redmond called for a revolt against British rule.
1903 – The general public could use the Pacific cable for the very first time.
1909 – Colombia recognizes Panama’s independence
1914 – Ford Motor Company announced that there would be a new daily minimum wage of $5 and an eight-hour workday.
1919 Left-wing Spartacus organization instigates a revolt in Berlin; terrified by the spread of Bolshevism, German troops brutally suppress the uprising
1925 – Mrs. Nellie Taylor Ross was sworn in as the governor of Wyoming She was the first female governor in the U.S.
1930 – Bonnie Parker meets Clyde Barrow for the first time at Clarence Clay’s house
1930 – Mao Zedong writes “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”
1933 – In California, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began.
1940 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) got its very first demonstration of FM radio.
1944 – The London “Daily Mail” was the first transoceanic newspaper to be published.
1949 – US President Harry Truman labels his administration the “Fair Deal”
1956 – In the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy walked on two legs for the first time.
1957 – US President Eisenhower asks Congress to send troops to the Middle East
1968 – Dr Benjamin Spock indicted for conspiring to violate draft law
1968 – The Prague Spring begins, The period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia began with the election of Alexander Dubček as the country’s leader.
1971 – Body of former world heavyweight boxing champion Charles “Sonny” Liston (40) is found by his wife Geraldine at their Las Vegas home; he had been dead for an estimated 6 days; foul play suspected https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/48974341
1971 – Globetrotters lose 100-99 to NJ Reds, ending 2,495-game winning streak
1972 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon ordered the development of the space shuttle.
1976 – In retaliation for the Reavey and O’Dowd killings, the South Armagh Republican Action Force shoot dead 10 Protestant civilians after stopping their minibus in County Armagh
1982 – Arkansas judge rules against obligatory teaching of creation
1985 – Thousands of Jewish refugees are airlifted from Sudan to Israel
1987 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan underwent prostate surgery.
1989 – 2 French TV newsmen arrested for trying to plant fake bombs on 3 airlines at JFK airport in security test
1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, The oil tanker spilled twice as much crude oil as the Exxon Valdez in 1989
1993 – The state of Washington executed Westley Allan Dodd. It was America’s first legal hanging since 1965. Dodd was an admitted child sex killer.
1996 – Yahya Ayyash, a member of the Hamas in Israel, is killed by a booby-trapped cellular phone.
1998 – Vandals decapitate Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid
2000 – INS Commissioner Doris Meissner ruled that 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez must be returned to Cuba.
2001 – A report reveals that doctor and former GP Harold Shipman has potentially killed hundreds of patients
2002 – A 15 year-old student pilot, Charles Bishop, crashed a small plane into a building in Tampa, FL. Bishop was about to begin a flying lesson when he took off without permission and without an instructor
2005 – The solar system’s largest known dwarf planet is discovered, The discovery of “Eris” ultimately lead to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgrading Pluto, which has roughly the same size, to a dwarf planet.
2018 – Kitwe in Zambia bans shaking hands and the sale of fresh food in attempt to prevent a cholera outbreak
2018 – North Korea accepts South Korean invitation for high-level talks
2019 – Orthodox Church of Ukraine granted independence from the Russian Orthodox Church by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
2020 – Iran pulls out of the 2015 nuclear deal, will not limit its uranium enrichment
2021 – Six Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, sign an agreement to ease the blockage with Qatar, in place since 2017
2022 – Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards pardons Homer Plessy for buying whites-only train ticket in 1892 (resulted in U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson 1896)
2022 – State of emergency declared across Kazakhstan amid unrest and protests against fuel price rises, 164 killed in three days
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
