966 – Christianisation of Poland – Polish ruler Mieszko I and his court baptized
1434 – The foundation stone of Cathedral St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France is laid
1471 – Wars of the Roses: Battle of Barnet – Yorkists defeat the Lancastrians and kill the Earl of Warwick
1756 – Governor Glen of South Carolina protests against 900 Acadia indians
1775 – The first abolitionist society in U.S. was organized in Philadelphia with Ben Franklin as president.
1793 – A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.
1828 – The first edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary was published under the name “American Dictionary of the English Language.”
1836 – US Congress forms Territory of Wisconsin
1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot – The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, wanted to revive the Confederate cause, mere days after their surrender to the Union Army, bringing the American Civil War to an end. Lincoln died the next day.
1865 – U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell as part of the same conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln
1906 – US President Theodore Roosevelt denounces “muckrakers” in US press, taken from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
1912 – The Atlantic passenger liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage hit an iceberg and began to sink. 1,517 people lost their lives and more than 700 survived.
1931 – King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.
1935 – Black Sunday: Severe dust storm ravages the US Midwest, led to the region being named “the Dust Bowl”
1939 – The John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath” was first published.
1941 – 1st massive German raid in Paris, 3,600 Jews rounded up
1958 – Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 with space dog Laika aboard burns up during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere
1971 – US President Richard Nixon ends blockade against People’s Republic of China
1971 – US Supreme Court upheld busing as means of achieving racial desegregation
1973 – Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray resigns after admitting he destroyed evidence in the Watergate scandal
1984 – The Texas Board of Education began requiring that the state’s public school textbooks describe the evolution of human beings as “theory rather than fact”.
1985 – The Russian paper “Pravda” called U.S. President Reagan’s planned visit to Bitburg to visit the Nazi cemetery an “act of blasphemy”.
1988 – Representatives from the U.S.S.R., Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. signed an agreement that called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan starting on May 15. The last Soviet troop left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989.
1988 – In New York, real estate tycoons Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted for income tax evasion.
1994 – Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh promises to surrender after completion of his Seven Seals manuscript
1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed
2000 – After five years of deadlock, Russia approved the START II treaty that calls for the scrapping of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads. The Russian government warned it would abandon all arms-control pacts if Washington continued with an anti-missile system.
2000 – Metallica file a lawsuit against P2P sharing phenomenon Napster. This lawsuit eventually leads the movement against file-sharing programs.
2002 – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to office two days after being arrested by his country’s military.
2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed – The project dedicated to mapping the genes of the human genome was started in October 1990.
2005 – The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County
2018 – US, UK and French forces carry out airstrikes on sites associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program, in response to Douma gas attack
2020 – US President Donald Trump freezes funding for the World Health Organization pending a review, for mistakes in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and for being “China-centric”, prompting international criticism
2021 – US President Biden says “It’s time to end America’s longest war” confirming his decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by Sept 11
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
