1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon embarks on his historic visit to China, The first visit of a U.S. President in China was an important step in normalizing relations between the two countries.
1173 – Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury
1245 – Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, is granted resignation after having confessed to torture and forgery
1431 – Joan of Arc’s first day of interrogation during her trial for heresy
1595 – The Jesuit poet Robert Southwell is hanged for “treason,” being a Catholic.
1598 – Boris Godunov crowned Tsar of Russia
1613 – Michael Romanov, son of Patriarch of Moscow, elected first Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov
1744 – The British blockade of Toulon is broken by 27 French and Spanish warships attacking 29 British ships.
1764 – English House of Commons tries John Wilkes in absentia and finds him guilty of publishing a seditious libel for his “Essay on Women,” an obscene parody of Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man”
1795 – Freedom of worship established in France under constitution
1797 – Trinidad, West Indies surrenders to the British.
1804 – The first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated in Wales.
1808 – Russia invades Finland, then part of the Swedish Kingdom, with 24,000 troops
1842 – John J. Greenough patented the sewing machine.
1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish “The Communist Manifesto”, “Das Kommunistische Manifest” outlined the sociopolitical worldview today called “Marxism” and was translated from German into over 100 languages.
1849 – In the Second Sikh War, Sir Hugh Gough’s well placed guns win a victory over a Sikh force twice the size of his at Gujerat on the Chenab River, assuring British control of the Punjab for years to come.
1857 – Congress outlaws foreign currency as legal tender in US
1858 – The first electric burglar alarm was installed in Boston, MA.
1878 – The first telephone directories issued in the U.S. were distributed to residents in New Haven, CT. It was a single page of only fifty names.
1885 – The Washington Monument is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1887 – Oregon becomes 1st US state to make Labor Day a holiday
1914 – In a secret meeting of civil and military leaders, Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov convinces them to support a plan for seizing the straits, controlled by Turkey, that block access to the Mediterranean
1916 – During World War I, the Battle of Verdun began in France. The battle ended on December 18, 1916 with a French victory over Germany.
1919 – Kurt Eisner, Premier of the Bavarian Republic, is assassinated by a far-right German nationalist in Munich
1922 – Irish Nationalist Eamon De Valera calls a convention of the Sinn Féin, declaring the Republican Government the only legitimate one in all Ireland
1925 – The first issue of “The New Yorker” was published.
1932 – William N. Goodwin patented the camera exposure meter.
1934 – Nicaraguan patriot Augusto César Sandino and three others kidnapped and assassinated by the National Guard in Larreynaga
1937 – Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile
1940 – The Germans begin construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
1947 – Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.
1951 – The U. S. Eighth Army launches Operation Killer, a counterattack to push Chinese forces north of the Han River in Korea.
1951 – South Carolina House of Representatives urges “Shoeless Joe” Jackson be reinstated by Major League Baseball
1956 – A grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicts 115 in a Negro bus boycott.
1958 – The peace symbol is designed by Gerald Holtom, The symbol was commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and combines the semaphore symbols for the letters N and D – an abbreviation of “Nuclear Disarmament”.
1960 – Havana places all Cuban industry under direct control of the government.
1965 – Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City at the age of 39 by assassins identified as Black Muslims.
1968 – An agreement between baseball players and club owners increased the minimum salary for major league players to $10,000 a year.
1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon embarks on his historic visit to China, The first visit of a U.S. President in China was an important step in normalizing relations between the two countries.
1973 – Israeli fighter planes shot down a Libyan Airlines jet over the Sinai Desert. More than 100 people were killed.
1974 – A report claims that the use of defoliants by the U.S. has scarred Vietnam for a century.
1975 – Former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.
1986 – AIDS patient Ryan White returns to classes at Western Middle School
1988 – In Baton Rouge, LA, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin. He announced that he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Swaggart had been linked to an admitted prostitute.
1989 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush called Ayatollah Khomeini’s death warrant against “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie “deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior.”
1989 – US bust Chinese drug smuggling ring, capturing a record 820 lbs of heroin worth $1 billion at street value
1991 – USSR announces that Iraq has agreed to a proposal to end the Gulf War, but the US calls the plan unacceptable
1999 – Lahore Declaration signed between India’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan’s Navaz Sharif on use of nuclear weapons
2007 – Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigns from office. His resignation is rejected by the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano.
2012 – Yemeni voters go to the polls for a presidential election where the only candidate on the ballot paper is vice-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi
2013 – 21 people are killed and 54 are injured in a bombing in Hyderabad, India
2013 – 83 people are killed and 250 are injured in a series of bombing attacks in Damascus, Syria
2016 – Bombings in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus kill 140 people, Islamic State claims responsibility
2019 – Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 touches down on asteroid Ryugu on mission to collect rock samples
2019 – At Cape Canaveral, FL, SpaceIL launched their Beresheet proble. It was the first privately funded mission to the Moon. The probe crash-landed on the Moon on April 11.
2022 – 60 people die in an explosion at an unregulated gold mine near Gaoua, Burkina Faso
2022 – Australia’s international border reopens to vaccinated tourists after 704 days, nearly two years
2022 – Russian leader Vladimir Putin recognises Russia-backed separatists in two Ukrainian regions, ordering in troops for “peacekeeping functions”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
