1820 – The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.
1079 – Omar Khayym completes the Iranian calendar.
1323 – Treaty of Paris – Flemish relinquish claims over the County of Zeeland
1454 – Thirteen Years’ War: Delegates of the Prussian Confederation pledged allegiance to Casimir IV of Poland, and the Polish king agreed to help in their struggle for independence from the Teutonic Knights.
1521 – Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam.
1714 – Treaty of Rastatt signed by Austria and France ending hostilities between them during the War of the Spanish Succession
1788 – The British First Fleet arrives at Australian territory of Norfolk Island to found a convict settlement
1820 – The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.
1831 – Edgar Allan Poe court-martialed and dismissed from West Point military academy for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders
1836 – Battle of the Alamo: After 13 days of fighting 1,500-3,000 Mexican soldiers overwhelm the Texan defenders, killing 182-257 Texans including William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett
1854 – At the Washington Monument, several men stole the Pope’s Stone from the lapidarium.
1857 – The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision ruled that black people could not sue in federal court to be citizens.
1869 – The first periodic table of chemical elements is presented, Dmitri Mendeleev presented the system to the Russian Chemical Society on that day.
1899 – Aspirin was patented by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.
1900 – After a meeting in Indianapolis, USA, a group forms the Social Democratic Party and nominates Eugene Debs as its candidate for President in the forthcoming election (becomes the Socialist Party in 1901)
1901 – An assassin tried to kill Wilhelm II of Germany in Bremen.
1907 – British creditors of the Dominican Republic claimed that the U.S. had failed to collect debts.
1921 – Police in Sunbury PA issue an edict requiring Women to wear skirts at least 4 inches below the knee
1925 – 12,000 Nova Scotia coal miners go on strike until August 6
1928 – A Communist attack on Peking, China resulted in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fled to Swatow.
1930 – Brooklyn’s Clarence Birdseye develops a method for quick freezing food
1939 – In Spain, Jose Miaja took over the Madrid government after a military coup and vowed to seek “peace with honor.”
1940 – Winter War: An armistice is signed by Finland and the Soviet Union.
1944 – During World War II, U.S. heavy bombers began the first American raid on Berlin. Allied planes dropped 2000 tons of bombs.
1945 – Dutch resistance fighters kill two, and injure one Nazi officer in an attempt to hijack food supplies at de Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands
1946 – Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, struck an agreement with France that recognized his country as an autonomous state within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
1947 – Winston Churchill announced that he opposed British troop withdrawals from India.
1951 – The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and Morton Sobell began in US District Court, New York City. All four were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and sentenced on April 5
1953 – Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Josef Stalin as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1957 – Ghana becomes the first African country to gain independence from colonial rule
1960 – Switzerland granted women the right to vote in municipal elections.
1962 – US promise Thailand assistance against communist aggression
1964 – Prophet Elijah Muhammad officially gives Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali meaning “beloved of Allah”
1967 – Stalin’s daughter defects to the West, The Soviet dictator’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, caused an international uproar when she approached the United States embassy in New Delhi and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
1970 – Charles Manson released his album “Lies” to finance his defense against murder charges.
1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed price controls on oil and gas.
1975 – Iran and Iraq announced that they had settled their border dispute.
1978 – Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and his lawyer shot by a militant white supremacist sniper in Georgia, leaving Flynt crippled and wheelchair bound
1980 – Islamic militants in Tehran said that they would turn over American hostages to the Revolutionary Council.
1981 – U.S. President Reagan announced a plan to cut 37,000 federal jobs.
1983 – The United States Football League began its first season of pro football competition.
1984 – Twelve-month-long strike in British coal industry begins.
1990 – In Afghanistan, an attempted coup to remove President Najibullah from office failed
1991 – Following Iraq’s capitulation in the Persian Gulf conflict, President Bush told Congress that “aggression is defeated; The war is over”
1992 – The computer virus “Michelangelo” went into effect.
1997 – A gunman stole “Tete de Femme,” a million-dollar Picasso portrait, from a London gallery. The painting was recovered a week later.
1998 – A Connecticut state lottery accountant, Matt Beck, gunned down three supervisors and the lottery chief before killing himself.
2001 – US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham establishes the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve to be used in emergency circumstances
2006 – South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signs a bill into legislation that would ban most abortions in the state.
2007 – Former White House aide I. Lewis Libby, Jr. was found guilty on four of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice trial
2014 – Crimean parliament votes unanimously to make the Crimea part of Russia
2015 – The NASA space probe Dawn entered orbit around the protoplanet Ceres in the asteroid belt.
2017 – US President Donald Trump signs his second executive order barring travelers from 6 mostly-Muslim countries for 90 days but leaves out Iraq
2018 – American WWII aircraft carrier USS Lexington rediscovered in Australia’s Coral Sea, lost during 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea
2019 – US trade deficit rises to 10-year high of $621 billion
2020 – Russia refuses to reduce oil production over COVID-19 fears, breaking with Saudi Arabia and OPEC and prompting a price war
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
