1963 – Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.
1184 BC – Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes
0631 – Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Emperor of China, sent envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to persuade the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners who were captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier; this embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China
0758 – Diplomatic dispute at Tang Chinese capital Chang’an when Abbasid Arabs and Uyghur Turks both arrive to offer tribute. Settlement reached when both enter at same time through two different gates.
1345 – Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, is lynched by political prisoners
1346 – Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.
1488 – Battle of Sauchieburn, rebellion against the Scottish crown results in death of King James III
1509 – King Henry VIII married his first of six wives, Catherine of Aragon.
1594 – Philip II recognized the rights and privileges of the local nobles and chieftains in the Philippines, which paved way to the creation of the Principala [i.e., elite ruling class of native nobility in Spanish Philippines].
1770 – Captain James Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia when he ran aground.
1774 – Jews in Algiers escape the attacks of the Spanish army.
1776 – Continental Congress creates committee to draft a Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston as members
1798 – Napoleon Bonaparte took the island of Malta.
1805 – A fire consumed large portions of Detroit in the Michigan Territory.
1837 – The Broad Street Riot occurred in Boston, fueled by ethnic tensions between English-Americans and Irish-Americans.
1878 – DC is given a new government by Congress, 3 commissioners appointed by president (change in 1974)
1889 – The Washington Business High School opened in Washington, DC. It was the first school devoted to business in the U.S.
1895 – Charles E. Duryea received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.
1903 – King Alexander and Queen Draga of Belgrade are assassinated by members of the Serbian army.
1912 – Silas Christoferson became the first pilot to take off from the roof of a hotel.
1913 – Grand Vizir Mahmud Shevket Pasha is assassinated, resulting in continuing Young Turk terrorism until WWI
1915 – British troops took Cameroon in Africa.
1917 – King Alexander assumes the throne of Greece after his father Constantine I abdicates under pressure by allied armies occupying Athens
1927 – Charles A. Lindberg was presented the first Distinguished Flying Cross.
1930 – William Beebe dove to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda. He used a diving chamber called a bathysphere.
1934 – The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ended in failure.
1936 – The Presbyterian Church of America was formed in Philadelphia, PA.
1937 – Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a purge of Red Army generals.
1938 – China launches the 1938 Yellow River flood, In what Steven Dutch, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin, called “the world’s largest act of environmental warfare in history”, the Chinese government created the flood to halt invading Japanese forces.
1939 – King & Queen of England taste first “”hot dogs”” at FDR’s party
1940 – The Italian Air Force bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.
1942 – The U.S. and the Soviet Union signed a lend lease agreement to aid the Soviets in their effort in World War II.
1947 – The U.S. government announced an end to sugar rationing.
1951 – Mozambique becomes an oversea province of Portugal
1955 – Eighty-three are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
1959 – Postmaster General bans D.H. Lawrence’s book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners to successfully escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island.
1963 – Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.
1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants.
1963 – Alabama Gov. George Wallace allowed two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
1964 – World War II veteran Walter Seifert runs amok in an elementary school in Cologne, Germany, killing at least eight children and two teachers and seriously injuring several more with a home-made flamethrower and a lance
1964 – Chicago police break up Rolling Stones press conference on a traffic island in the middle of Michigan Avenue
1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so
1973 – After a ruling by the Justice Department of the State of Pennsylvania, women were licensed to box or wrestle.
1973 – Libya nationalizes Bunker Hunt concession; Nigeria acquires 35 percent participation in Shell-BP concession
1975 – 1st oil pumped from North Sea oilfield
1977 – In the Netherlands, a 19-day hostage situation came to an end when Dutch marines stormed a train and a school being held by South Moluccan extremist. Two hostages and the six terrorists were killed.
1977 – Dutch marines rescued hostages from a Moluccan held train in Holland
1981 – The first major league baseball player’s strike began. It would last for two months.
1982 – Steven Spielberg’s movie “E.T.” opened
1984 – US Supreme Court declares illegally obtained evidence may be admitted at trial if it could be proved that it would have been discovered legally
1987 – Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win a third consecutive term of office.
1990 – The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that would prohibit the desecration of the American Flag.
1991 – Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted. The eruption of ash and gas could be seen for more than 60 miles.
1993 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who commit “hate crimes” could be sentenced to extra punishment. The court also ruled in favor of religious groups saying that they indeed had a constitutional right to sacrifice animals during worship services.
1996 – A gas tube underneath a shopping mall in Osasco, Sao Paulo – Brazil exploded causing the death of 42 and injuring other 472 people.
1996 – Bob Dole, (Sen-R-KS), resigns from US senate to run for president
1998 – Mitsubishi of America agreed to pay $34 million to end the largest sexual harassment case filed by the U.S. government. The federal lawsuit claimed that hundreds of women at a plant in Normal, IL, had endured groping and crude jokes from male workers.
1998 – Pakistan announced moratorium on nuclear testing and offered to talk with India over disputed Kashmir.
2001 – Saudi Arabia seizes ownership, effective June 7, of the 1.6-million-barrels-per-day IPSA pipeline that had carried Iraqi crude oil to the Saudi Red Sea port of Mu’jiz prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
2001 – Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
2002 – Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress.
2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an official historic apology to Canada’s First Nations in regard to a residential school abuse in which children were isolated from their homes, families and cultures for a century
2009 – The World Health Organization declares H1N1 swine flu to be a global pandemic, the first such incident in over forty years
2010 – Opening ceremony World Cup soccer at Johannesburg’s Soccer City. – South Africa. Nelson Mandela, who had planned to attend, skipped the event after his 13-year-old great-granddaughter was killed in a car crash
2012 – 23 people are killed after two villages are attacked in northern Nigeria
2012 – Five people are killed after an ambulance hits a roadside bomb in Afghanistan
2014 – Islamic State of Iraq forces seize control of government offices and other important buildings in the northern city of Mosul
2017 – Jailbreak by militants in Beni, DR Congo kills 11 and frees 900 prisoners
2018 – In landmark ruling, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejects El Salvador woman’s asylum request based on domestic abuse
2018 – More than 100 people arrested in Vietnam, after protests against special economic zones at the People’s Committee Headquarters in Binh Thuan province and elsewhere
2019 – Botswana overturns law criminalizing same-sex relationships from colonial-era in landmark African LGBTQ case
2019 – Comedian Jon Stewart delivers angry rebuke to Congress for the lack of funds for 9/11 victims
2019 – Russian journalist Ivan Golunov released from prison and drug charges dropped after major public outcry with unprecedented joint campaign by Russian news sources
2021 – US lobsterman survives being swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
