1812 – “Old Ironsides” (the USS Constitution) won a battle against the British frigate Guerriere east of Nova Scotia.
43 BC – Octavian, later known as Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul
1263 – King James I of Aragon censors Hebrew writing
1274 – Edward I is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey after returning from the Ninth Crusade
1504 – Battle of Knockdoe, bloodiest battle of medieval Ireland fought in Galway between two Anglo-Irish lords, Gearoid Fitzgerald, Lord Deputy, defeats Ulick Finn Burke
1561 – Mary Queen of Scots arrives in Leith, Scotland to assume the throne after spending 13 years in France
1692 – Five more people hanged for witchcraft (19 in all) in Salem, Massachusetts
1772 – King Gustav III seizes effective control of Swedish government and restores full power of monarchy, which had been subordinate to parliament since 1720
1791 – Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his Almanac and writes a letter to Thomas Jefferson criticizing his pro-slavery stance and requesting justice for African Americans using language from the Declaration of Independence
1793 – Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, then the US capital has its 1st fatality. Lasts till November killing around 5,000 people
1812 – “Old Ironsides” (the USS Constitution) won a battle against the British frigate Guerriere east of Nova Scotia. https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/art/exhibits/conflicts-and-operations/the-war-of-1812/uss-constitution-vs-hms-guerriere.html
1848 – The discovery of gold in California was reported by the New York Herald.
1895 – American frontier murderer and outlaw, John Wesley Hardin is shot and killed by John Selman Sr. in a saloon in El Paso, Texas
1909 – The first car race to be run on brick occurred at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
1917 – Team managers John McGraw and Christy Matthewson were arrested for breaking New York City’s blue laws. The crime was their teams were playing baseball on Sunday.
1919 – Afghanistan gained independence from Britain.
1934 – A dark day for democracy, Germans voted to combine the roles of the chancellor and president, making Adolf Hitler Fuhrer.
1936 – Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca was shot by Franco’s soldiers during the Spanish Civil War.
1941 – Romania annexes the Transnistria territory from the Soviet Union after Operation Barbarossa
1942 – About 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France. They suffered about 50 percent casualties.
1953 – Democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh is overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name ‘Operation Boot’) and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project)
1960 – Francis Gary Powers, an American U-2 pilot, was convicted of espionage in Moscow.
1960 – Soviet Sputnik 5 carries 2 dogs, 2 rats, 40 mice, 1 rabbit and fruit flies into space, 1st animals to return alive from orbit
1974 – During an anti-American protest in Nicosia, Cyprus, U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet while in the American embassy.
1981 – Two Libyan SU-22s were shot down by two U.S. Navy F-14 fighters in the Gulf of Sidra.
1985 – Following the Rubicon speech four days earlier, Archbishop Desmond Tutu snubs P. W. Botha’s invitation to attend a meeting to discuss the role and actions of the police and security forces in South Africa
1989 – 1st crack in the Iron Curtain when Hungary opens its borders to Austria for a pan-European picnic for a few hours
1991 – Soviet hard-liners announced that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power. Gorbachev returned to power two days later.
1995 – After 5 days Shannon Faulkner quits as 1st woman at the Citadel
1998 – The first piece of the 351 foot bronze statue of Christopher Columbus arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1998 – South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairperson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, releases documents revealing an alleged plot by Western countries to assassinate UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden
1999 – In Belgrade, thousands of Serbs attended a rally to demand the resignation of Yugoslavia’s President Slobodan Milosevic.
2003 – U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello was one of 22 killed when a suicide car bomb struck the UN’s Baghdad headquarters.
2009 – A series of bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kills 101 and injures 565 others
2010 – Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, with the last of the United States brigade combat teams crossing the border to Kuwait
2014 – NASA satellites take photos showing that the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had for the first time completely dried up
2016 – A federal judge ordered Hillary Clinton to answer questions from the watchdog group Judicial Watch in writing about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
2018 – Rudy Giuliani, US President Donald Trump’s lawyer claims in interview with NBC Chuck Todd that “truth isn’t truth”
2019 – Sudanese Ex-President Omar al-Bashir admits he has received $90 million from Saudi Arabian royals at the start of his corruption trial in Khartoum
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
