1467 – The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy
1514 – Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.
1607 – Jamestown expedition makes first landing in America at a place named Cape Henry, in what would become Virginia, but they quickly depart for a better site
1654 – Jews are expelled from Brazil
1655 – Dutch West Indies Co denies Peter Stuyvesant’s desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam
1777 – Sybil Ludington aged 16, rides 40 miles in New York to warn her father’s militia of the approach of the British
1819 – The first Odd Fellows lodge in the U.S. was established in Baltimore, MD.
1859 – Dan Sickles is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity – 1st time this defense used successfully in the US
1865 – John Wilkes Booth was killed by the U.S. Federal Cavalry.
1915 – Italy secretly signs the “Treaty of London” with Britain, France and Russia, bringing Italy into World War I on the Allied side
1925 – Franz Kafka publishes his landmark novel The Trial – The text, which was initially published as Der Process, is a nightmarish account of a man being arrested and prosecuted by a faceless authority for an unknown crime
1931 – New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hit a home run but was called out for passing a runner.
1937 – German planes attacked Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War for the Spanish nationalist government. This raid is considered one of the first to be attacks on a civilian population by a modern air force.
1937 – “LIFE” magazine was printed without the word “LIFE” on the cover.
1949 – Transjordan is officially renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
1952 – US minesweeper Hobson rams aircraft carrier Wasp, kills 176
1954 – Mass trials of Jonas Salk’s anti-polio vaccine begin; the first shot is delivered in Fairfax County, Virginia; more than 443,000 children receive shots over three months
1954 – USSR Supreme Soviet transfer the Crimean oblast from Russian SFSR to Ukrainian SSR
1964 – The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
1968 – Students seized the administration building at Ohio State University.
1980 – Iran begins scattering US hostages from US Embassy
1985 – In Argentina, a fire at a mental hospital killed 79 people and injured 247.
1986 – The world’s worst nuclear disaster to date occurred at Chernobyl, in Kiev. Thirty-one people died in the incident and thousands more were exposed to radioactive material. https://www.history.com/news/chernobyl-disaster-timeline
1994 – 1st day of voting in first ever multi-racial elections in South Africa, Dr Nomaza Paintin in NZ is 1st black South African to vote
1994 – Germany makes Holocaust denial illegal – The far-right party NPD had sought legitimation by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court for expressing the view that the Nazis’ genocide of six million Jews never occurred. The court ruled against them.
1998 – Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he’d compiled on atrocities during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war was made public.
2002 – In Erfurt, Germany, an expelled student killed 17 people at his former school. The student then killed himself.
2005 – Syria ends its military occupation of Lebanon after 29 years – Syria buckled to domestic and international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14 of the same year.
2012 – 70 people are killed by rocket attacks by the Syrian Army on the city of Hama
2018 – Serial killer “Golden State Killer” identified after 40 years as a former police officer, responsible for 12 killings, 50 rapes in California
2019 – “No religion” tops survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1% edging out Catholics 23.0% and evangelicals 22.5%, in long-running General Social Survey
2021 – US Census results shows its population growth second slowest in recorded history, population at 331,449,281 with only 7.4% increase on 2010
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
