1952 – The world’s first rock and roll concert is held in Cleveland, Ohio, DJ Alan Freed presented the concert, which was closed down after only one song because of over-crowding.
0630 – Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1188 – Accession to the throne of Japan by emperor Antoku
1349 – 3,000 Jews were killed in Black Death riots in Efurt Germany.
1413 – Henry of Monmouth, Prince of Wales, becomes King Henry V of England upon the death of his father
1556 – Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617 – Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1702 – Queen Anne addresses English parliament
1788 – Almost the entire city of New Orleans, LA, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were destroyed.
1788 – Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), a freed slave, petitions King George III and Queen Charlotte, to free enslaved Africans
1790 – Thomas Jefferson reported to U.S. President George Washington as the new secretary of state.
1804 – The French civil code, the Code Napoleon, was adopted.
1806 – Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1824 – A fire at a Cairo ammunitions dump killed 4,000 horses.
1844 – The original date predicted by William Miller of Massachusetts for the return of Christ and the end of the world
1851 – Emperor Tu Duc ordered that Christian priests be put to death.
1851 – Yosemite Valley was discovered in California.
1857 – An earthquake hit Tokyo killing about 107,000.
1858 – British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
1871 – Journalist Henry M Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa.
1902 – In New York, three Park Avenue mansions were destroyed when a subway tunnel roof caved in.
1905 – Sterilization legislation was passed in the State of Pennsylvania. The governor vetoed the measure.
1906 – Ohio passed a law that prohibited hazing by fraternities after two fatalities.
1909 – Russia withdrew its support for Serbia and recognized the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia accepted Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina on March 31, 1909.
1910 – The U.S. Senate granted ex-President Teddy Roosevelt a yearly pension of $10,000.
1918 – During World War I, the Germans launched the Somme Offensive.
1925 – The state of Tennessee enacted the Butler Act. It was a law that made it a crime for a teacher in any state-supported public school to teach any theory that was in contradiction to the Bible’s account of man’s creation.
1928 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge gave the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh for his first trans-Atlantic flight.
1939 – Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.
1941 – The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, fell to the British.
1943 – A plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bomb fails, German Wehrmacht officer, Rudolf von Gersdorff, failed to blow up the dictator but managed to defuse his bombs just before they went off and avoid suspicion.
1945 – During World War II, Allied bombers began four days of raids over Germany.
1946 – The United Nations set up a temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.
1947 – US President Harry Truman signs Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States”
1951 – Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1952 – The world’s first rock and roll concert is held in Cleveland, Ohio, DJ Alan Freed presented the concert, which was closed down after only one song because of over-crowding.
1960 – About 70 people were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fired upon demonstrators.
1963 – Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, CA, closed.
1965 – The U.S. launched Ranger 9. It was the last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
1965 – More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL.
1966 – US Supreme Court reverses Massachusetts ruling that “Fanny Hill” is obscene
1970 – Vinko Bogataj crashes during a ski-jumping championship in Germany; his image becomes that of the “agony of defeat guy” in the opening credits of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
1971 – Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refused their orders to advance.
1972 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require one year of residency for voting eligibility.
1974 – In Londone, an attempt was made to kidnap Princess Anne on the Mall.
1975 – Ethiopia abolishes its monarchy after 3,000 years
1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1980 – On the TV show “Dallas”, J.R. Ewing was shot.
1982 – The United States, U.K. and other Western countries condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984 – A Soviet submarine crashed into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
1985 – Larry Flynt offered to sell his pornography empire for $26 million or “Hustler” magazine alone for $18 million.
1985 – Police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators were killed.
1989 – Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison after his conviction was overturned. The documentary “The Thin Blue Line” had challenged evidence of Adams’ conviction for killing a police officer.
1991 – The U.N. Security Council lifted the food embargo against Iraq.
1994 – Bill Gates of Microsoft and Craig McCaw of McCaw Cellular Communications announced a $9 billion plan that would send 840 satellites into orbit to relay information around the globe.
1995 – New Jersey officially dedicated the Howard Stern Rest Area along Route 295.
1995 – Tokyo police raided the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo in search of evidence to link the cult to the Sarin gas released on five Tokyo subway trains.
1999 – Israel’s Supreme Court rejected the final effort to have American Samuel Sheinbein returned to the U.S. to face murder charges for killing Alfred Tello, Jr. Under a plea bargain Sheinbein was sentenced to 24 years in prison.
2000 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had overstepped its regulatory authority when it attempted to restrict the marketing of cigarettes to youngsters.
2002 – In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was charged with murder for his role in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pear. Three other Islamic militants that were in custody were also charged along with seven more accomplices that were still at large.
2006 – Jack Dorsey sends the world’s first Twitter message, or tweet, The microblogging service revolutionized the communication and social networking landscape. In 2012, about 340 million tweets were posted per day.
2006 – Immigrant workers constructing the Burj Dubayy in Dubai, The United Arab Emirates and a new terminal of Dubai International Airport join together and riot, causing $1M in damage.
2012 – Five former Guatemalan paramilitaries are sentenced to 7,710 years in jail for their role in the Plan de Sanchez massacre in 1982
2013 – 12 people are killed and 30 are injured by a car bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan
2013 – 42 people are killed and 84 are injured by a bombing in a mosque in Damascus, Syria
2016 – It was reported that the Kepler space telescope had captured the visible light of a “shock breakout” when the star KSN 2011a exploded. It was the first time an exploding star’s brilliant flash shockwave had been captured.
2018 – Austin bombing suspect Mark Conditt kills himself in chase with police in Austin, Texas
2018 – China announces greater controls over the media, including merging state-run radio and television broadcasters into a single conglomerate called “Voice of China”
2018 – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admits they “made mistakes” after data on 50 million users is harvested by Cambridge Analytica
2018 – Nigerian government confirms 101 out of 110 schoolgirls kidnapped from Dapchi returned
2018 – Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi accepts plea deal for 8 months in prison after slapping Israeli officer
2019 – Bangladeshi woman with two uteruses safely gives birth to twins 26 days after giving birth to another child
2019 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons, 6 days after the Christchurch terrorist attack
2021 – 45 crushed to death in a crowd paying respects to the late President John Magufuli at a stadium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
