1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled – The crossing point on the sector border between East Berlin and West Berlin had become obsolete with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today, the former checkpoint, including the famous sign stating “You are leaving the American sector”, is a tourist attraction.
168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat and capture Macedonian King Perseus, ending the Third Macedonian War
1377 – 10-year-old Richard of Bordeaux succeeds his grandfather Edward III as Richard II, king of England
1535 – Cardinal John Fisher is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the Church of England
1559 – Jewish quarter of Prague burned and looted
1611 – English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people were set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers.
1633 – The Catholic Church forces Galileo Galilei to renounce his heliocentric world view – The Holy Office concluded that the Italian scientist, by stating that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe, was “vehemently suspect of heresy”. Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
1740 – King Frederik II of Prussia ends torture and guarantees religion & freedom of the press
1772 – Somerset v Stewart court case finds slavery unsupported by English common law, encouraging the abolitionist movement
1812 – Upon learning of plans by the Americans to execute a surprise attack, Laura Secord walks 32 km to warn British troops, results in a British surprise victory at the Battle of Beaver Dams
1815 – 2nd abdication of Napoleon (after Waterloo)
1847 – First ring doughnut supposedly created by Hanson Gregory
1865 – The CSS Shenandoah fires the last shot of the American Civil War in the Bering Strait to indicate surrender
1868 – Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.
1870 – The U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.
1897 – Bombay plague commissioner Walter Charles Rand shot by Chapekar brothers as protest against his extreme measures to combat city’s plague epidemic
1911 – King George V crowned King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and all his realms and territories beyond the sea
1922 – Herrin massacre, 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners are killed in Herrin, Illinois.
1932 – Congress approves “Lindbergh Act” making kidnapping a federal offense (amended 1934)
1936 – Virgin Islands receives a constitution from US (Organic Act)
1940 – France surrenders to Nazi Germany, with the northern half of the country occupied and the south established as the Nazi client state Vichy France
1940 – About 10,000 Afrikaner women march to the union buildings in protest of South Africa’s involvement in WWII
1941 – Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its allies invade the Soviet Union during WWII, the largest military operation in history
1942 – A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River.
1944 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the “GI Bill of Rights” to provide broad benefits for veterans of the war.
1945 – Okinawa falls to U.S. troops – The Battle of Okinawa marked a decisive defeat for Japan during World War II as the archipelago represented the last line of defense for mainland Japan. The country surrendered two months after the end of the battle when two atomic bombs were dropped on the mainland.
1955 – Walt Disney’s animated film “Lady & the Tramp” released
1964 – The U.S. Supreme Court voted that Henry Miller’s book, “Tropic of Cancer”, could not be banned.
1966 – South African Bishop Alphaeus Hamilton Zulu, is refused a passport and thus permission to attend an international church conference by the South African government
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It required that the voting age in the United States to be 18.
1973 – Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.
1975 – Ulster Volunteer Force try to derail a train by planting a bomb on the railway line near County Kildare, Ireland; a civilian who tries to stop them is stabbed-to-death (his actions delay the explosion to let the train pass safely)
1978 – James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington discovered the only known moon of Pluto. The moon is named Charon.
1980 – The Soviet Union announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.
1989 – The government of Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of the UNITA movement agreed to a formal truce in their 14-year-old civil war.
1990 – Florida passes a law which prohibits wearing a thong bathing suit
1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled – The crossing point on the sector border between East Berlin and West Berlin had become obsolete with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today, the former checkpoint, including the famous sign stating “You are leaving the American sector”, is a tourist attraction.
1992 – Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg, Russia identified as Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra
1992 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that hate-crime laws that ban cross-burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.
1999 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons with remediable handicaps cannot claim discrimination in employment under the Americans with Disability Act.
2009 – Two Metro subway trains collide in Washington, D.C., killing 9 and injuring over 80
2011 – After hiding for 16 years, Boston gangster Whitey Bulger is arrested outside an apartment in Santa Monica, California
2012 – Two Baghdad market bombings kill 14 people and injure 106
2015 – South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley calls for the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds in wake of killings in a Charleston church
2018 – Eurozone countries agree debt relief deal for Greece, signalling end to the country’s economic crisis
2019 – Attempted coup fails in Ethiopia, four officials killed including army chief of staff General Seare Mekonnen
2021 – Unesco says Australia’s Great Barrier Reef should be put on list of World Heritage Sites that are “in danger”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
