1199 – English King Richard I was killed by an arrow at the siege of the castle of Chaluz in France.
1607 – An expedition led by Captain Christopher Newport arrived at the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico for supplies before continuing on their journey. On May 14, they went ashore and founded Jamestown, Virginia, as the first permanent English colony in America
1648 – Construction of the Red Fort completed at Shahjahanabad, Mughal Empire (now Dehli, India)
1652 – Cape Colony, the 1st European settlement in South Africa, established by Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck
1772 – Catherine the Great Empress of Russia, ends tax on men with beards, enacted by Tsar Peter the Great in 1698
1789 – The first U.S. Congress began regular sessions at the Federal Hall in New York City.
1814 – Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fountainebleau. He was allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830 – Joseph Smith and five others organized the Mormon Church in western New York.
1830 – Relations between the Texans and Mexico reached a new low when Mexico would not allow further emigration into Texas by settlers from the U.S.
1860 – Joseph Smith III, creates the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by reorganizing the previous church organized by his father, Joseph Smith, Jr.
1862 – The American Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee.
1896 – The first modern Olympic Games began in Athens, Greece.
1903 – French Army Nationalists were revealed for forging documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dryfus.
1906 – World’s 1st animated cartoon is released, “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” by J. Stuart Blackton
1909 – Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson claimed to be the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917 – The U.S. Congress approved a declaration of war on Germany and entered World War I on the Allied side.
1930 – Hostess Twinkies invented by bakery executive James Dewar
1938 – Teflon invented by Roy J. Plunkett
1945 – The Holocaust: Nazis begin evacuating prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the use of ground troops in combat operations in Vietnam.
1974 – 200,000 attend rock concert “California Jam” at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California; line-up includes Earth, Wind & Fire; Black Sabbath; Deep Purple; and Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1980 – Post It Notes introduced
1983 – The U.S. Veteran’s Administration announced it would give free medical care for conditions traceable to radiation exposure to more than 220,000 veterans who participated in nuclear tests from 1945 to 1962.
1987 – Los Angeles Dodger’s GM Al Campanis appears on TV program ABC News: Nightline saying Blacks may not be equipped to be in baseball management, sparking a racial controversy
1992 – US Supreme Court rules a Nebraska farmer was entrapped by postal agents into buying mail-order child pornography
1994 – The Rwandan genocide begins – The assassination of Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana, and Burundian President, Cyprien Ntaryamira, triggered a mass slaughter of ethnic Tutsis with up to 1 million victims.
2005 – Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani becomes the Iraqi president; Shiite Arab Ibrahim al-Jaafari is named premier the next day
2013 – 22 people are killed and 60 are injured by a suicide bombing at an election campaign tent in Baquba, Iraq
2016 – First baby born with DNA from 3 parents through mitochondrial transfer in Mexico
2019 – First ever “Marsquake” seismic event on planet Mars detected by NASA’s InSight lander
2021 – Jeff Bezos, worth $177 billion, tops Forbes Billionaires list of 2,755 people, including new entry Kim Kardashian
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
