1997 – An explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant caused 35 workers to be exposed to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan’s history.
1425 BC – Thutmose III, Pharaoh of Egypt, dies (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).
0537 – The Goths began their siege on Rome.
0843 – Icon veneration officially re-instated in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople
0928 – Trpimir II succeedes to the Croatian throne
1302 – The characters Romeo and Juliet were married this day according to William Shakespeare.
1502 – Tebriz shah Ismail I of Persia crowned
1649 – The peace of Rueil was signed between the Frondeurs (rebels) and the French government.
1665 – A new legal code was approved for the Dutch and English towns, guaranteeing religious observances unhindered.
1708 – Queen Anne withholds Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, the last time a British monarch vetoes legislation
1779 – Army Corps of Engineers for the United States was authorized by the Congress
1789 – Benjamin Banneker with L’Enfant begin to lay out Washington DC
1801 – Paul I of Russia is assassinated, leading the way for his son Alexander I to accede the throne
1810 – The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.
1812 – Citizenship granted to Prussian Jews
1824 – The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seneca Indian Ely Parker became the first Indian to lead the Bureau.
1845 – Seven hundred Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burned the small town of Kororareka. The act was in protest to the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, which was a breach of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
1862 – Lincoln removes McClellen as general-in-chief & makes him head of Army of the Potomac. Gen Henry Halleck is named general-in-chief
1865 – Union General William Sherman and his forces occupied Fayetteville, NC.
1867 – In Hawaii, the volcano Great Mauna Loa erupted.
1888 – The “Blizzard of ’88” began along the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard shutting down communication and transportation lines. More than 400 people died.
1900 – British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejected the peace overtures offered from the Boer leader Paul Kruger.
1901 – U.S. Steel was formed when industrialist J.P. Morgan purchased Carnegie Steep Corp. The event made Andrew Carnegie the world’s richest man.
1904 – After 30 years of drilling, the north tunnel under the Hudson River was holed through. The link was between Jersey City, NJ, and New York, NY.
1905 – The Parisian subway was officially inaugurated.
1907 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt induced California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation.
1917 – World War I: Baghdad falls to the Anglo-Indian forces commanded by General Stanley Maude.
1918 – First confirmed cases of the Spanish Flu observed at Fort Riley, Kansas
1927 – The Flatheads Gang was responsible for the first armored-car robbery — near Pittsburgh, PA. It was reported that $104,250 was taken in the heist.
1930 – U.S. President Howard Taft became the first U.S. president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.
1935 – The German Air Force became an official department of the Reich.
1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the act of providing war supplies to the Allies.
1946 – Communists and Nationalists began fighting as the Soviets pulled out of Mukden, Manchuria.
1947 – The DuMont network aired “Movies For Small Fry.” It was network television’s first successful children’s program.
1948 – Reginald Weir became the first black tennis player to participate in a U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association tournament.
1953 – An American B-47 accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on South Carolina, the bomb doesn’t go off due to 6 safety catches
1954 – US Army charges Senator Joseph McCarthy used undue pressure tactics
1960 – Pioneer 5 launched into solar orbit between Earth & Venus
1964 – U.S. Senator Carl Hayden broke the record for continuous service in the U.S. Senate. He had worked 37 years and seven days.
1965 – The American navy began inspecting Vietnamese junks in an effort to end arms smuggling to the South.
1966 – President Sukarno of Indonesia was forced to give up his executive power.
1967 – U.S. 1st Infantry Division troops engage in one of the heaviest battles of Operation Junction City. The fierce fighting resulted in 210 reported North Vietnamese casualties.
1969 – Levi-Strauss started selling bell-bottomed jeans.
1970 – Iraq Ba’th Party recognizes Kurd nation
1975 – Portugal military coup under General Spinola fails
1977 – 34 Israelis killed by Palestinians on the Tel Aviv-Haifa highway
1977 – Moslems hold 130 hostages in Washington DC
1978 – Nine Palestinian Al Fatah guerillas hijack a bus in Israel, killing 34 civilians and wounding 70 before being killed by security forces. The Israelis retaliate by invading southern Lebanon three days later, under codename Operation Litani.
1982 – Harrison Williams (Senator-Democrat-NJ) resigned rather than face expulsion
1984 – In the Magdalen Islands seal hunter damage helicopter chartered by International Fund for Animal Welfare protesters.
1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev was named the new chairman of the Soviet Communist Party.
1986 – Popsicle announced its plan to end the traditional twin-stick frozen treat for a one-stick model.
1988 – A cease-fire was declared in the war between Iran and Iraq.
1990 – Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. It was the first Soviet republic to break away from Communist control.
1992 – Former U.S. President Nixon said that the Bush administration was not giving enough economic aid to Russia.
1993 – North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refusing to open sites for inspection.
1994 – In Chile, Eduardo Frei was sworn in as President. It was the first peaceful transfer of power in Chile since 1970.
1997 – An explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant caused 35 workers to be exposed to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan’s history.
1998 – The International Astronomical Union issued an alert that said that a mile-wide asteroid could come very close to, and possibly hit, Earth on Oct. 26, 2028. The next day NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that there was no chance the asteroid would hit Earth.
2002 – Two columns of light were pointed skyward from ground zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
2004 – The Madrid train bombings (also known as 3/11 and -in Spanish- as 11-M [1]) consisted of a series of coordinated bombings against the CercanÃas (commuter train) system of Madrid, Spain on the morning of 11 March 2004 (three days before Spain’s general elections), killing 191 people and wounding 2,050
2009 – Winnenden school shooting – 17 people are killed at a school in Germany.
2012 – US soldier kills 16 civilians in Afghanistan
2013 – European Union bans the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals
2018 – China’s National People’s Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, allowing Xi Jinping to be presidency for life
2019 – Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, refutes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”
2020 – COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths
2023 – China’s government appoints Li Qiang, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, as the country’s new Premier
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
