1859 – The first oil well was successfully drilled in the U.S. by Colonel Edwin L. Drake near Titusville, PA.
0663 – Battle of Baekgang: Tang Chinese and Silla Korean forces defeat Korean Baekje forces and their Yamato Japanese allies on the Geum River in Korea. Last Japanese invasion of Korea for 900 years.
1549 – Battle of Dussindale: John Dudley Earl of Warwick destroys Robert Kett’s army, ending Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk, England
1556 – Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abdicates in favor of his brother Ferdinand I
1610 – Polish King Wladyslaw crowned king of Russia
1660 – The books of John Milton were burned in London due to his attacks on King Charles II.
1776 – British defeat Americans in Battle of Long Island
1802 – The West India Quay officially opens – London’s first purpose-built dock, with the then largest brick building in the world
1828 – Uruguay was formally proclaimed to be independent during preliminary talks between Brazil and Argentina.
1858 – The first cabled news dispatch was sent and was published by “The New York Sun” newspaper. The story was about the peace demands of England and France being met by China.
1859 – The first oil well was successfully drilled in the U.S. by Colonel Edwin L. Drake near Titusville, PA.
1872 – Aaron Montgomery Ward issues the first “catalog” for his mail-order business, it is one sheet listing 163 available items
1883 – A massive volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa blew up most of the island and resulted in tsunamis that killed over 36,000 people.
1889 – Boxer Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey was defeated for the first time of his career by George LaBlanche.
1892 – The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York was seriously damaged by fire.
1894 – The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. The provision within for a graduated income tax was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1918 – Christy Mathewson resigns as Cincinnati Reds manager to accept a commission as a captain in chemical warfare branch of US Army
1918 – Spanish flu arrives in Boston, beginning of the second wave and deadliest wave in the US
1928 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact, 60 nations agree to condemn ‘recourse to war for the solution of international controversies’.
1932 – 200,000 English textile workers strike
1938 – Robert Frost, in a fit of jealousy, set fire to some papers to disrupt a poetry recital by another poet, Archibald MacLeish.
1939 – Nazi Germany demanded the Polish corridor and Danzig.
1941 – Shah of Iran Rezā Shāh Pahlavi abdicates throne in favour of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
1942 – Cuba declares war on Germany, Japan & Italy
1942 – Soviet woman sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko arrives in Washington D.C., the 1st Soviet citizen welcomed at the White House, by Eleanor Roosevelt
1945 – American troops landed in Japan after the surrender of the Japanese government at the end of World War II.
1950 – General Foods blacklists Jean Muir of Aldrich Family for alleged communist sympathies
1962 – Mariner 2 was launched by the United States. In December of the same year the spacecraft flew past Venus. It was the first space probe to reach the vicinity of another planet.
1966 – Race riot in Waukegan, Illinois
1972 – North Vietnam’s major port at Haiphong saw the first bombings from U.S. warplanes.
1976 – Transsexual Renee Richards barred from competing in US Tennis Open
1979 – Warrenpoint ambush: 18 British Army soldiers killed when Provisional IRA explode two roadside bombs as a British convoy passes Narrow Water Castle
1979 – 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, cousin of Queen Elizabeth II and last Viceroy of India, is killed along with three companions, two of them children by the IRA when his boat is blown up near Sligo, Ireland
1984 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the first citizen to go into space would be a teacher. The teacher that was eventually chosen was Christa McAuliffe. She died in the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.
1986 – Protests erupt in Soweto, South Africa, against evictions carried out after an 11 week rent boycott
1990 – Market prices plunge as OPEC nears informal agreement to increase output to cover shortfall due to invasion; cash market trading experiences abrupt decline.
1990 – The U.S. State Department ordered the expulsion of 36 Iraqi diplomats.
1991 – The Soviet republic of Moldavia declared its independence.
1996 – California Governor Pete Wilson signed an order that would halt state benefits to illegal immigrants.
1999 – The final crew of the Russian space station Mir departed the station to return to Earth. Russia was forced to abandon Mir for financial reasons.
2001 – The U.S. military announced that an Air Force RQ-1B “Predator” aircraft was lost over Iraq. It was reported that the unmanned aircraft “may have crashed or been shot down.”
2001 – Work began on the future site of a World War II memorial on the U.S. capital’s historic national Mall. The site is between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.
2003 – World’s Biggest Battery is Plugged in, The battery, which takes up about 2,000 square metres of space and weighs about 1,300 tonnes is set up to provide emergency electricity to the residents of Fairbanks in Alaska, for about 7 minutes.
2012 – First interplanetary human voice recording is broadcast from the Mars Rover Curiosity
2014 – Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls the international response to Ebola “irresponsible” and “slow and derisory”
2018 – UN releases report saying Myanmar military leaders should face genocide and crimes against humanity charges for violence against Rohingya
2020 – Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant sentenced to life without parole, for the killing of 51 mosque worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, 1st time the country imposes the sentence
2021 – Britain’s Prince Andrew served with a US federal lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a teenager 20 years ago
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
