1969 – The internet is born, The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) awarded a contract to build a precursor of today’s world wide web to BBN Technologies. The date is widely considered as the internet’s symbolic birthday.
0030 – Scholars’ estimate for Jesus’ crucifixion by Roman troops in Jerusalem [or April 3]
0451 – Attila the Hun plunders Metz in Northeastern France
0529 – First draft of Corpus Juris Civilis (fundamental work in jurisprudence) issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I
1118 – Pope Gelasius II excommunicated by Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, forcing him to flee Rome and rule in exile
1498 – Crowd storms Savonarola’s convent San Marco Florence, Italy
1521 – Inquisitor-general Adrian Boeyens bans Lutheran books
1655 – Fabio Chigi replaces Pope Innocent X as Pope Alexander VII
1712 – A slave revolt broke out in New York City.
1798 – The territory of Mississippi was organized.
1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition leaves Fort Mandan (on the Missouri River near what is now Washburn, North Dakota), beginning their journey to the Pacific Ocean
1818 – General Andrew Jackson conquers Spanish Fort San Marcos (St Marks), in Spanish Florida during his pursuit of the Native American Seminole Tribe, in what would become known as the First Seminole War
1831 – Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro abdicates, leaving his six-year old son, Dom Pedro II head of state as Prince Imperial
1862 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh, TN.
1864 – The first camel race in America was held in Sacramento, California.
1868 – Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation is assassinated by the Irish, in one of the few Canadian political assassinations, and only federal politician
1888 – P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the first time under the name “Collier’s.”
1921 – Revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen is elected President of China at Canton, though China remains divided into north and south and subject to rivalries of warlords
1922 – Warren G. Harding’s Interior Secretary, Albert B. Fall, leases the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Harry Sinclair, setting in motion the Teapot Dome scandals
1926 – Mussolini is shot at 3 times by Violet Gibson in Rome, she only hits him once in the nose
1927 – The first long-distance TV transmission was sent from Washington, DC, to New York City. The audience saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.
1930 – The first steel columns were set for the Empire State Building.
1933 – Prohibition ended in the United States.
1940 – Booker T. Washington became the first black to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp.
1941 – German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1943 – British and American armies linked up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa to form a solid line against the German army.
1945 – The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa. The fleet was headed for a suicide mission.
1945 – Sonderkommando Elbe, special Luftwaffe units designed to destroy Allied planes by ramming them mid-air, are sent on their first and only mission of World War II
1948 – The United Nations’ World Health Organization began operations.
1953 – The Big Four met for the first time in 2 years to seek an end to their air conflicts.
1953 – IBM unveiled the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine. It was IBM’s first commercially available scientific computer.
1954 – US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in news conference is first to voice fear of a “domino-effect” of communism in Indo-China
1963 – Yugoslavia proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.
1963 – Josip Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life.
1966 – The U.S. recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.
1967 – Israel reported that they had shot down six Syrian MIGs.
1969 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
1969 – The internet is born, The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) awarded a contract to build a precursor of today’s world wide web to BBN Technologies. The date is widely considered as the internet’s symbolic birthday.
1971 – U.S. President Nixon pledged to withdraw 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
1975 – Preliminary meeting in Paris on world economic crisis between oil-exporting, oil-importing, and non-oil Third World countries
1978 – US President Jimmy Carter defers production of neutron bomb
1980 – The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed economic sanctions in response to the taking of hostages on November 4, 1979.
1983 – Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson made the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
1983 – The Chinese government canceled all remaining sports and cultural exchanges with the U.S. for 1983.
1985 – In Sudan, Gen. Swar el-Dahab took over the Presidency while President Gaafar el-Nimeiry was visiting the U.S. and Egypt.
1985 – The Soviet Union announced a unilateral freeze on medium-range nuclear missiles.
1988 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to final terms of a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soviet troops began leaving on May 16, 1988.
1988 – In Fort Smith, AR, 13 white supremacists were acquitted on charges for plotting to overthrow the U.S. federal government.
1989 – A Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons sank in the Norwegian Sea.
1990 – An arson attack on the passenger ferry, Scandinavian Star, kills 159
1990 – In the U.S., John Poindexter was found guilty of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. The convictions were later reversed on appeal.
1990 – At Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center a display of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs went on display. On the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. The charges resulted in acquittal.
1994 – Civil war erupted in Rwanda between the Patriotic Front rebel group and government soldiers. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the months that followed.
1998 – Mary Bono, the widow of Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband’s congressional term.
1999 – Yugoslav authorities sealed off Kosovo’s main border crossings to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving.
2000 – U.S. President Clinton signed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000. The bill reversed a Depression-era law and allows senior citizens to earn money without losing Social Security retirement benefits.
2002 – The Roman Catholic archdiocese announced that six priests from the Archdiocese of New York were suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct.
2003 – U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein’s regime falls two days later
2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
2013 – 15 people, including 9 children, are killed by an air strike on Aleppo by the Syrian Air Force
2017 – Truck driven into a department store in Stockholm, killing 4 in a terror attack
2017 – US President Donald Trump orders missile strike on Syrian airfield after chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun
2018 – Suspected gas attack on Douma by Syrian government airforce kills more than 40 people and injuries more than 500
2019 – Rebel force the Libyan National Army under General Khalifa Haftar begins advancing on Tripoli with 21 killed and 27 injured over next few days as they try to take the capital
2020 – Australia’s highest court overturns the child sexual abuse conviction of Catholic Cardinal George Pell
2020 – US Acting-Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigns after calling USN Capt. Brett Crozier of aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) “too naive and too stupid”, in an address to the ship’s crew
2022 – Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes the first black woman to be confirmed by the US Senate to the Supreme Court in 53-47 vote
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
