1963 – Birmingham officials turn high pressure hoses and dogs on children’s crusade protest against segregation prompting widespread condemnation
1374 BC – Solar eclipse (2m 07s) seen at Ugarit by Mesopotamian astronomers “On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with Mars in attendance.”
0738 – Maya ruler 18 Rabbit (Uaxaclajuun Ub’aah K’awiil) of Copán is captured and beheaded by ruler Cauac Sky from the rival city of Quiriguá
1382 – Battle of Beverhoutsveld near Bruges in modern-day Belgium – the army of Ghent beats a drunken Bruges militia
1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of Joo I
1494 – Christopher Columbus first sights land that will be called Jamaica.
1558 – Ferdinand I officially appointed Holy Roman Emperor after his brother Charles abdicated in 1556
1568 – French forces in Florida slaughtered hundreds of Spanish.
1621 – After confessing to corruption, Lord Chancellor of England Francis Bacon is sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London, a large £40,000 fine and banishment from court, Parliament and public office
1640 – English Upper house accept Act of Attainder
1654 – Bridge at Rowley MA begins charging tolls for animals
1715 – Edmond Halley observes total eclipse phenomenon “Baily’s Beads”
1791 – The May Constitution of Poland (first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Polish Sejm
1815 – Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples is defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1845 – Macon B. Allen became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden begins – the last of the German revolutions of 1848
1859 – France declared war on Austria.
1901 – Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida
1916 – Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.
1921 – West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.
1926 – U.S. Marines landed in Nicaragua and stayed until 1933.
1938 – Concentration camp at Flossenburg goes into use
1942 – Japanese troop attack Tulagi, Gavutu & Tanambogo, Solomon Islands
1944 – Wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended in the U.S.
1945 – Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.
1946 – World War II: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 – Japan’s post-war constitution goes into effect, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan’s right to make war
1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to black people and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1952 – U.S. Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the North Pole.
1958 – Truman Capote’s book Breakfast at Tiffany’s is published
1963 – Birmingham officials turn high pressure hoses and dogs on children’s crusade protest against segregation prompting widespread condemnation
1965 – Cambodia drops diplomatic relations with the US
1967 – Black students seize finance building at Northwestern University
1968 – After three days of battle, the U.S. Marines retook Dai Do complex in Vietnam. They found that the North Vietnamese had evacuated the area.
1971 – Anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe begin four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation’s capital.
1978 – “Sun Day” solar energy events are held in US
1979 – Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher to become United Kingdom’s first female prime minister as the Labour government is ousted in parliamentary elections.
1982 – President Reagan begins 5 minute weekly radio broadcasts
1986 – In NASA’s first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff. Safety officers destroyed it by remote control.
1987 – The Miami Herald reported that Donna Rice had been spending “Friday night and most of Saturday” at Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart’s Washington townhouse. The resulting controversy ended Hart’s presidential bid.
1988 – The White House acknowledged that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological advice to help schedule her husband’s activities.
1992 – Five days of rioting and looting ended in Los Angeles, CA. The riots, that killed 53 people, began after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
1997 – The “Republic of Texas” surrendered to authorities ending an armed standoff where two people were held hostage. The group asserts the independence of Texas from the U.S.
1999 – Mark Manes, at age 22, was arrested for supplying a gun to Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold, who later killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado.
2000 – The trial of two Libyans accused of killing 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 (over Lockerbie) opened.
2001 – The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses.
2006 – In Alexandria, VA, Al-Quaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was given a sentence of life in prison for his role in the terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
2007 – British girl Madeleine McCann disappears from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal
2013 – Aorun zhaoi, a Theropod dinosaur, dating from 161 million years ago, is discovered in China
2018 – In Detroit, a federal grand jury indicted former Volkwagen CEO Martin Winterkorn on charges related to the company’s diesel emission cheating scandal. Winterkorn could not be extradited to the U.S. under Germany’s constitution.
2020 – Investor Warren Buffett dumps his holdings in four major US airlines saying “the world has changed” for aviation, reflecting an increasingly bleak outlook for the industry
2021 – German police announce operation and arrests into ‘Boystown’ world’s largest child abuse image website with 400,000 members worldwide
2023 – 13-year-old Serbian student shoots and kills nine people at his Belgrade school, eight students and a security guard, before handing himself in
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
