1978 – Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death while walking a cable strung between to hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
0238 – Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman emperor
1349 – Townspeople of Fulda, Germany massacre Jews, blaming them for the Black Death
1457 – Gutenberg Bible became the first printed book.
1565 – Turkish Armada leaves Constantinople bound for the siege of Malta with about 193 ships
1621 – Dutch jurist Hugo de Groot (Hugo Grotius) escapes in book chest from Loevestein Castle in the Netherlands
1622 – Indians attacked a group of colonist in the James River area of Virginia. 347 residents were killed.
1630 – The first legislation to prohibit gambling was enacted. It was in Boston, MA.
1638 – Anne Hutchinsoon, a religious dissident, was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1664 – Charles II gives large tracts of land from west of the Connecticut River to the east of Delaware Bay in North America to his brother James, the Duke of York.
1719 – Frederick William abolished serfdom on crown property in Prussia.
1733 – Joseph Priestly invented carbonated water (seltzer).
1765 – The Stamp Act was passed. It was the first direct British tax on the American colonists. It was repealed on March 17, 1766.
1775 – British MP Edmund Burke makes a speech to the English Parliament advocating for peace with the American colonies
1784 – The Emerald Buddha is moved with great ceremony to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand
1794 – The U.S. Congress banned U.S. vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.
1829 – The three protecting powers (Britain, France and Russia) establish the borders of Greece
1832 – British Parliament, led by Charles Grey, passes the Reform Act, introducing wide-ranging changes to electoral system of England and Wales, increasing electorate from about 500,000 voters to 813,000
1834 – Horace Greeley publishes New Yorker, a weekly literary and news magazine and forerunner of Harold Ross’ more successful The New Yorker.
1871 – William Holden of North Carolina became the first governor to be removed by impeachment.
1872 – Illinois became the first state to require sexual equality in employment.
1873 – Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.
1874 – The Young Men’s Hebrew Association was organized in New York City.
1882 – The U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.
1901 – Japan proclaimed that it was determined to keep Russia from encroaching on Korea.
1902 – Great Britain and Persia agreed to link Europe and India by telegraph.
1903 – Niagara Falls ran out of water due to a drought.
1903 – US Anthracite Coal Commission, set up by President Theodore Roosevelt, submits its recommendations for shorter hours, a 10-per cent wage increase, and an ‘open shop’
1905 – Child miners in Britain received a maximum 8-hour workday.
1907 – Russians troops completed the evacuation of Manchuria in the face of advancing Japanese forces.
1907 – In Paris, it was reported that male cab drivers dressed as women to attract riders.
1915 – A German zeppelin made a night raid on Paris railway stations.
1922 – The Rand Rebellion in Southern Africa, which started as a strike by white mineworkers and became an armed rebellion against the state, is brought to a brutal end by the police
1933 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine containing up to 3.2% alcohol.
1935 – In New York, blood tests were authorized as evidence in court cases.
1935 – Persia was renamed Iran.
1943 – The Dutch workweek was extended to 54 hours.
1943 – Obligatory work for woman ends in Belgium.
1945 – The Arab League is founded, The organization was founded to promote political, economic, and cultural collaboration amongst its member states, which include 21 African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries, from Mauritania in the west to Oman in the east.
1946 – The British granted Transjordan independence.
1946 – The first U.S. built rocket to leave the earth’s atmosphere reached a height of 50-miles.
1948 – The United States announced a land reform plan for Korea.
1954 – Northland Center, the world’s largest shopping mall at the time, opens in Oakpark, Michigan
1954 – The London gold market reopened for the first time since 1939.
1960 – A.L. Schawlow & C.H. Townes obtained a patent for the laser. It was the first patent for any laser.
1963 – The Beatles release their first album, Please Please Me, which included the hit single “Love Me Do” is regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time.
1965 – U.S. confirmed that its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong.
1972 – In Eisenstadt v. Baird the US Supreme Court rules unmarried people have same right to contraception as married people.
1972 – The U.S. Senate passes the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails to achieve ratification.
1974 – The Viet Cong proposed a new truce with the U.S. and South Vietnam. The truce included general elections.
1975 – Walt Disney World Shopping Village opened.
1978 – Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death while walking a cable strung between to hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1979 – The National Hockey League (NHL) voted to accept 4 WHA teams, the Oilers, Jets, Nordiques & Whalers.
1980 – People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco.
1981 – RCA put its Selectra Vision laser disc players on the market.
1981 – A group of twelve Green Berets arrived in El Salvador. This brought the total number of advisors to fifty-four.
1984 – Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
1987 – A barge loaded with 32,000 tons of refuse left Islip, NY, to find a place to unload. After being refused by several states and three countries space was found back in Islip.
1988 – The Congress overrode U.S. President Reagan’s veto of a sweeping civil rights bill.
1989 – Oliver North began two days of testimony at his Iran-Contra trial in Washington, DC.
1989 – The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee reported the class gap was widening.
1990 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found Captain Hazelwood not guilty in the Valdez oil spill.
1991 – Pamela Smart, a high school teacher, was found guilty in New Hampshire of manipulating her student-lover to kill her husband.
1993 – The Intel Corporation produces the first Pentium microprocessor, Intel holds about 80% of the world market share in the PC microprocessor business.
1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returned to Earth after setting a record for 438 days in space.
2004 – Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant group Hamas, and bodyguards killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles
2006 – Three Christian Peacemaker Teams Hostages are freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox
2010 – NASA’s rover ‘Spirit’ gets caught in a sand trap on Mars and ceases communications with Earth
2012 – Largest protest in Quebec’s history occurs in Montreal with over 200,000 people marching against government tuition hikes and for free access to post-secondary education
2013 – 37 people are killed and 200 are injured in a refugee camp fire in Ban Mae, Thailand
2016 – Suicide bombings at Brussel’s Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station, leave around 28 victims dead and 260 injured, ISIS claim responsibility
2017 – In Jerusalem, the tomb of Jesus reopened after a restoration project.
2017 – Terrorist attack on London’s Westminster Bridge and Houses of Parliament kills 4 including a police officer and injures 40
2018 – The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” between Hawaii and California has 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and increasing rapidly according to new research
2018 – US President Donald Trump imposes $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports
2019 – US Special Council Robert S. Mueller submits his findings on the 2016 election (The Mueller Report) to Deputy US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and US Attorney William Barr
2020 – Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei refuses American COVID-19 help, refers to conspiracy theory that it was manufactured by the US
2021 – Evanston, Illinois, votes to become first US city to pay reparations to Black residents for past discriminations and effects of slavery, giving $400,000 to each household
2021 – Sanctions imposed on Chinese officials over rights abuses against Uighurs in China by EU, UK, US and Canada
2022 – Microplastics found in human blood for first time through new research conducted at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
