1998 – James Byrd, Jr is dragged to death by Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and John William King in Jasper, Texas in a racially-motivated hate crime.
1099 – The First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins.
1195 – Earliest report of ball lightning in London by Benedictine monk Gervase of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury,
1329 – Death of Robert the Bruce; succeeded by infant David II of Scots
1494 – Spain and Portugal divided the new lands they had discovered between themselves.
1498 – Christopher Columbus left on his third voyage of exploration.
1546 – Peace of Ardes ended the war between France and England.
1614 – 2nd parliament of King James I, dissolves passing no legislation
1654 – Louis XIV was crowned king of France.
1665 – Great Plague of London: Samuel Pepys writes in his diary of houses marked with a red cross in London’s Drury Lane, meaning somebody inside is infected with the plague and must be locked in for 40 days or until death
1692 – Port Royal, Jamaica, is hit by a catastrophic earthquake; in just three minutes, 1600 people are killed and 3000 are seriously injured
1712 – The Pennsylvania Assembly banned the importation of slaves.
1753 – British Museum founded by an Act of Parliament with royal assent from King George II (opens in 1759)
1769 – Daniel Boone begins exploring the Bluegrass State of Kentucky
1775 – The United Colonies changed their name to the United States.
1776 – Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence.
1788 – French peasants stone the Army in Grenbole, an event known as the Day of the Tiles
1798 – Jews of Pesaro Italy fast commemorating murder of Jews
1832 – Asian cholera brought to Quebec by Irish immigrants kills about 6,000 people in Lower Canada
1862 – Union General Benjamin Butler orders William Mumford hanged after he removed and destroyed US flag on display over New Orleans Mint
1863 – During the French intervention in Mexico, Mexico City is captured by French troops.
1866 – 1,800 Fenian raiders are repelled back to the United States after they loot and plunder around Saint-Armand and Frelighsburg, Quebec
1892 – Creole shoemaker Homer Plessy buys whites-only train ticket in New Orleans in act of civil disobedience – results in landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson
1900 – Boxer rebels cut the rail links between Peking and Tientsin in China.
1903 – Professor Pierre Curie revealed the discovery of Polonium.
1905 – Norway dissolves union with Sweden (in effect since 1814)
1929 – The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome.
1932 – Over 7,000 war veterans marched on Washington, DC, demanding their bonuses.
1935 – Pierre Laval received emergency powers to save the franc.
1936 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, a trade union, is founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Philip Murray is elected its first president.
1939 – King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, arrived in the U.S. It was the first visit to the U.S. by a reigning British monarch.
1940 – King Haakon VII of Norway, Crown Prince Olav and the Norwegian government leave Troms and go into exile in London
1942 – Japan landed troops on the islands of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians. The U.S. invaded and recaptured the Aleutians one year later.
1942 – USS Yorktown sinks near Midway Island
1943 – Professor Clauberg in Auschwitz reports a sterilization rate of 1,000 women a day, mostly on Jewish women from Greece.
1944 – 1944 Nazi Panzer SS troops murder 23 Canadian prisoners of war in Normandy.
1948 – The Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia.
1948 – Edvard Bene resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a constitution making his nation a Communist state.
1954 – 1st microbiology laboratory dedicated (New Brunswick NJ)
1955 – Lux Radio Theater signs off the air permanently. The show launched in New York in 1934, and featured radio adaptations of Broadway shows and popular films
1965 – Morocco King Hassan suspends constitution, grabs power
1965 – The US Supreme Court decides Griswold v. Connecticut effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples.
1965 – In the U.S., the Gemini 4 mission was completed. The mission featured the first spacewalk by an American.
1966 – Former movie star, Ronald Reagan, becomes the 33rd governor of the state of California.
1968 – In Operation Swift Saber, U.S. Marines swept an area 10 miles northwest of Danang in South Vietnam.
1972 – 1972 German Chancellor Willy Brandt visits Israel
1975 – 1975 Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public.
1976 – “The NBC Nightly News”, with John Chancellor and David Brinkley, aired for the first time.
1977 – Anita Bryant leads successful crusade against Miami gay rights law
1982 – Pres Reagan meets Pope John Paul II & Queen Elizabeth
1982 – Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public; the bathroom where Elvis Presley died five years earlier is kept off-limits.
1983 – The U.S. ordered Nicaragua to close all six of its consulates and informed 21 Nicaraguan consular officials that they could no longer remain in the U.S.
1990 – South African President F. W. de Klerk lifts 4 year state of emergency
1994 – The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia declared the RMS Titanic, Inc. (RMST) salvor-in-possession of the wreck and the wreck site of the RMS Titanic.
1998 – James Byrd, Jr is dragged to death by Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and John William King in Jasper, Texas in a racially-motivated hate crime. https://www.biography.com/crime/james-byrd-jr
2000 – U.S. Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft Corporation.
2001 – BP announces that it will build a new $600-million platform offshore Trinidad that is expected to double the company’s production of natural gas there by 2004
2006 – British Houses of Parliament temporarily shut down due to anthrax alert
2012 – 16th century archaeology remains of the Curtain Theatre, where some of Shakespeare’s plays first performed found under a pub in London
2017 – Earliest-ever evidence of Homo Sapiens from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco unearthed by archaeologists published in “Nature”, at 300,000 years old
2017 – Suicide bombers attack Iranian parliament in Tehran and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini killing 12, 1st Islamic State attacks in Iran
2018 – Baltimore ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins, head of a rogue police unit sentenced to 25 years for robbery and racketeering
2018 – Mars Curiosity Rover finds organic matter, including methane, on Mars in studies published in journal “Science”
2019 – More than four million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015 due to its economic crisis according to the UN
2020 – Black Lives Matter Protests continue worldwide in large numbers, In Bristol England statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston pulled down
2021 – Multicellular organisms (bdelloid rotifer) frozen for 24,000 years in Siberia to return to life after Russian scientists have them thawed
2021 – UN International Labor Director says global impact of the pandemic four times worse than 2008 Economic Crisis, pushed 100 million workers into poverty
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
