1941 Codename Barbarossa: Germany invades the Soviet Union, The initially successful attack soon proved a disaster for the Germans as wintry conditions and fierce Soviet resistance caused massive losses and ultimately forced them to retreat.
0168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat and capture Macedonian King Perseus, ending the Third Macedonian War”
1266 – Pope Clement IV commissions English philosopher Roger Bacon to begin “writings and remedies for current conditions” ie. write a summary of the sciences (results in his 1267 “opus major”)
1377 – 10-year-old Richard of Bordeaux succeeds his grandfather Edward III as Richard II, king of England
1497 – Antitax insurrection in Cornwall suppressed at Blackheath
1533 – Ferdinand of Austria and Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent sign peace treaty
1535 – Cardinal John Fisher is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, for refusing to acknowledge King 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.
1675 – Royal Greenwich Observatory established in England by Charles II
1740 – King Frederik II of Prussia ends torture and guarantees religion & freedom of the press
1772 – Slavery was outlawed in England.
1807 – The British man-of-war Leopard fires on the U S frigate Chesapeake and removes four alleged British deserters
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.
1847 – First ring doughnut supposedly created by Hanson Gregory
1868 – Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.
1870 – The U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.
1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet’s commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.
1897 – Bombay plague commissioner Walter Charles Rand shot by Chapekar brothers as protest against his extreme measures to combat city’s plague epidemic
1904 – Chinese laborers arrive in South Africa following a severe labor shortage
1911 – King George V of England was crowned.
1915 – Austro-German forces occupied Lemberg on the Eastern Front as the Russians retreat.
1918 – Hammond circus train wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana.
1922 – Herrin massacre, 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners are killed in Herrin, Illinois.
1925 – France and Spain agreed to join forces against Abd el Krim in Morocco.
1933 – Germany became a one political party country when Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.
1936 – Virgin Islands receives a constitution from US (Organic Act)
1940 – France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis.
1941 Codename Barbarosa: Germany invades the Soviet Union, The initially successful attack soon proved a disaster for the Germans as wintry conditions and fierce Soviet resistance caused massive losses and ultimately forced them to retreat.
1942 – V-Mail, or Victory-Mail, was sent for the first time.
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.
1954 – US Congress passes revised organic act for Virgin Islands
1956 – The battle for Algiers began as three buildings in Casbah were blown up.
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
1969 – The Cuyahoga River caught fire, which triggered a crack-down on pollution in the river
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.
1974 – In Chicago, the Sears Tower Skydeck opened. (Willis Tower)
1977 – Former US Attorney General John Mitchell starts 19 months in Alabama prison for perjury regarding his involvement the Watergate Scandal
1978 – James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington discovered the only known moon of Pluto. The moon is named Charon.
1978 – Neo-Nazis call off plans to march in Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois
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 prohibits wearing a throng 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 – 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.
1992 – Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg, Russia identified as Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra
1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence illegally obtained by authorities could be used at revocation hearings for a convicted criminal’s parole.
1999 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons with remediable handicaps cannot claim discrimination in employment under the Americans with Disability Act.
2007 – Bear Stearns commits $3.2 billion in secured loans to bail out its High-Grade Structured Credit Fund; says company’s troubles are relatively contained.
2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film.
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
2020 – US government data shows African Americans four times more likely than whites to be hospitalized for COVID-19 highlighting racial disparities for the pandemic
2021 – Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pardons nine Catalan politicians and activists for the 2017 illegal secession referendum
2022 – Tooth of murdered Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba arrives for a tour of Democratic Republic of Congo, before being laid to rest in Kinshasa (Lumumba’s body was dissolved in acid)
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
