1387 – Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” characters begin their pilgrimage to Canterbury (according to scholars)
1492 – Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the “Indies” with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. This promises him 10% of all riches found, and the governorship of any lands encountered.
1521 – Martin Luther faces charges for his revolutionary religious writings – The German monk was a leading figure of the Protestant Reformation. As a result of the hearing before the Diet of Worms, he was excommunicated and declared an outlaw.
1524 – New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.
1704 – John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston “News-Letter.”
1758 – Frances Williams published a collection of Latin poems. He was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere.
1797 – Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico, one of the largest invasions of Spanish territories in America
1810 – Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton.
1824 – Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54′ 40′.
1860 – Champion of England Tom Sayers and American John Heenan fight out brutal 2 hour, 27 minute draw near Farnborough, England; police stop fight acknowledged as first world title bout
1860 – New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses.
1861 – Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.
1865 – Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.
1907 – Ellis Island, New York records 11,745 immigrants
1917 – A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later.
1937 – It’s duck season – Daffy Duck made his debut in Porky’s Duck Hunt.
1941 – Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.
1941 – The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing.
1947 – Jackie Robinson bunts for his 1st major league hit
1961 – About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack.
1964 – Ford Mustang formally introduced ($2,368 base)
1969 – Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy
1970 – The Apollo 13 astronauts safely splashed down after their near-disastrous flight.
1979 – Four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army van bomb in Bessbrook, County Armagh; the bomb is believed to be the largest PIRA bomb used up to that point
1984 – In London, demonstrators outside the Libyan Embassy were fired upon from someone inside. Eleven people were injured and an English Police woman was killed
1986 – The world’s longest war ends without a single shot having been fired – The state of war between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly had been extended for a total of 335 years by the lack of a peace treaty. Some historians doubt that war had ever been declared.
1993 – A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted.
1996 – Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents.
2001 – A letter between Gale Norton and Jeb Bush is released, stating that the Bush administration has decided to go ahead with plans to auction 6 million acres of potentially oil-and-gas-rich seabed in the Gulf of Mexico
2013 – 15 people are killed and 100 are injured after a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas
2018 – Former F.B.I. director James Comey publishes his political autobiography “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership”
2018 – Protests across India at the rape and murder of an 8-year old Muslim girl in Kathua, Bengalu
2019 – Terror alert closes schools in Denver, Colorado, due to 18 year-old woman obsessed with Columbine massacre, who is then found dead
2019 – 10 babies with “bubble boy disease” cured using a gene therapy made from HIV at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, according to new study
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
