1969 – Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lands on the surface of the Moon; Aldrin and Armstrong walk on the moon seven hours later; Michael Collins remains in orbit in the lunar module
1054 – Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Caerularius, as head of a Synod held in Constantinople excommunicates Cardinal Humbert of the Western church (Rome)
1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle – King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war
1402 – Timur, his army and 32 elephants win the Battle of Ankara, during his invasion of Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I
1712 – The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.
1749 – Earl of Chesterfield says “Idleness is only refuge of weak minds”
1801 – A 1,235 pound cheese ball was pressed at the farm of Elisha Brown, Jr. The ball of cheese was later loaded on a horse-driven wagon and presented to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson at the White House.
1808 – Napoleon decrees all French Jews adopt family names
1810 – Colombia declared independence from Spain.
1861 – The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, VA.
1868 – Legislation that ordered U.S. tax stamps to be placed on all cigarette packs was passed.
1871 – British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province.
1881 – Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops. (Montana)
1894 – 2000 fed troops recalled from Chicago, having ended Pullman strike
1917 – The draft lottery in World War I went into operation.
1917 – Pact of Corfu signed: Serbs, Croats & Slovenes form Yugoslavia
1921 – Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the floor of US House of Representatives
1924 – Tehran, Persia comes under martial law after the American vice consul, Robert Imbrie, is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumors he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people
1928 – The government of Hungary issues a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians
1932 – In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force who attempt to march to the White House
1933 – Vatican state secretary Pacelli (Pius XII) signs accord with Adolf Hitler
1942 – The first detachment of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, (WACS) began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.
1944 – An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler’s Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded.
1944 – U.S. President Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term of office at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1951 – King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem
1960 – The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage
1960 – Sirima Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) became the world’s first woman prime minister.
1969 – Football War ends – A ceasefire came into effect between Honduras and El Salvador after the two countries fought a brief war over immigration El Salvador to Honduras. The hostilities occurred during North American trials of the FIFA World Cup.
1969 – Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lands on the surface of the Moon; Aldrin and Armstrong walk on the moon seven hours later; Michael Collins remains in orbit in the lunar module
1973 – The US Senate passes the War Powers Act
1974 – Turkish forces invaded Cyprus.
1975 – India expels three reporters from “The Times”, “The Daily Telegraph”, and “Newsweek” because they refuse to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship
1976 – America’s Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.
1977 – The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments
1982 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S. out of comprehensive test ban negotiations indefinitely.
1982 – Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings: 11 British soldiers and 7 military horses killed in Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb attacks during military ceremonies in London
1985 – Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon “Nuestra Senora de Atocha.” The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL.
1989 – Burma government puts author Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest
1992 – Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.
1994 – Supreme Leader of North-Korea, Kim Il-sung is placed in a public Mausoleum at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun
1998 – Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency.
1998 – Two hundred aid workers from CARE International, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and other aid groups leave Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban
2000 – The leaders of Salt Lake City’s bid to win the 2002 Winter Olympics are indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and racketeering
2003 – France: Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in Nice.
2012 – Aurora shooting – A gunman, James Holmes, opened fire in a movie theater during the premier of the Dark Night Rises in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others.
2014 – The Israeli Defence Force enter Shuja’iyya, a populous neighbourhood of Gaza City, as part of their ground offensive focused on destroying tunnels crossing the Israel border
2015 – Hacker group the Impact Team announce they have hacked married dating site Ashley Madison
2017 – China announces a plan against “foreign garbage” banning 24 categories of plastic and recyclable waste from 2018
2020 – Scientists find evidence of volcanoes on Venus, showing the planet is not as dormant as previously thought (Nature Geoscience)
2021 – US, NATO members and other states accuse China’s Ministry of State Security for using “contract criminal hackers” to infiltrate Microsoft email systems
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
