1969 – British comedy troupe Monty Python forms, made up of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin
0330 – Newly built city of Constantinople (Byzantium) dedicated, becomes the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire
868 – The earliest surviving dated printed book is produced in China – The “Diamond Sutra” is one of the most important texts in Mahayana Buddhism. The British Library in London presently houses the copy.
1189 – Emperor Frederik I Barbarossa & 100,000 crusaders depart Regensburg
1310 – 54 members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake in France for being heretics.
1330 – Constantinople (Istanbul) becomes new capital by Roman Emperor Constantine for Eastern Roman Empire
1421 – Jews are expelled from Styria Austria
1573 – Henry of Anjou became the first elected king of Poland.
1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor.
1678 – French admiral Jean d’Estrees’ naval fleet runs aground on Aves-islands, Curacao, ends French control and ushers in an age of Piracy in the Caribbean
1689 – French and English naval battle takes place at Bantry Bay.
1745 – French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.
1751 – The first US hospital founded (Pennsylvania Hospital)
1792 – The Columbia River was discovered by Captain Robert Gray.
1800 – French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck gives his first lecture outlining his theories of evolution at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris, France
1812 – British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.
1816 – The American Bible Society was formed in New York City.
1857 – Indian mutineers seized Delhi from the British.
1858 – Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.
1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily.
1889 – Major Joseph Washington Wham takes charge of $28,000 in gold and silver to pay troops at various points in the Arizona Territory. The money was stolen in a train robbery.
1894 – Workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois went on strike.
1904 – Andrew Carnegie donates $1.5m to build the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, an international law administrative building and home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration
1910 – Glacier National Park in Montana was established.
1921 – Tel Aviv is first all Jewish municipality
1929 – First regularly scheduled TV broadcasts (3 nights per week)
1931 – Credit-Anstalt, Austria’s largest bank, fails beginning financial collapse of Central Europe
1935 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that created the Rural Electrification Administration to provide emergency loans.
1934 – A severe two-day dust storm stripped the topsoil from the great plains of the U.S. and created a “Dust Bowl.” The storm was one of many.
1937 – Los Glaciares National Park established in Patagonia, Argentina, the country’s largest national park (UNESCO World Heritage Site 1981)
1944 – A major offensive was launched by the allied forces in central Italy.
1947 – The creation of the tubeless tire was announced by the B.F. Goodrich Company.
1949 – Siam changed its name to Thailand.
1953 – Winston Churchill criticizes John Foster Dulles domino theory
1955 – Israel attacks Gaza
1960 – Israeli soldiers captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1963 – Racial bomb attacks in Birmingham AL
1967 – The siege of Khe Sanh ended.
1969 – British comedy troupe Monty Python forms, made up of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin
1972 – John Lennon says his phone is tapped by the FBI on Dick Cavett Show
1973 – The espionage trial, the “Pentagon Papers” case, of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo ended. Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges due to government misconduct.
1978 – Margaret A Brewer is first female general in the US Marine Corps
1981 – The musical Cats is premiered – The piece sparked a musical craze around the world and catapulted the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to stardom.
1983 – In West Pubnico Nova Scotia a mob of 100 fishermen burn and sink two fisheries patrol boats at to protest lobster quotas.
1984 – A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
1987 – Trial of former Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie begins in France for war crimes during World War II
1989 – Kenya announces worldwide ban on ivory to preserve its elephant herds
1994 – 6 white racists sentenced to death in South Africa
1995 – The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely. The treaty limited the spread of nuclear material for military purposes.
1998 – India conducted its first underground nuclear tests, three of them, in 24 years. The tests were in violation of a global ban on nuclear testing.
2000 – India’s population officially reached 1 billion.
2001 – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his decision to approve a 30-day delay of the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh had been scheduled to be executed on May 16, 2001. The delay was because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had failed to disclose thousands of documents to McVeigh’s defense team.
2009 – An American soldier in Iraq opened fire on a counseling center at Camp Liberty in Bagdhad, leaving 5 other US soldiers dead and 3 soldiers wounded
2010 – David Cameron, at age 43, became Britain’s youngest prime minister in nearly 200 years.
2014 – Thousands protest against the construction of a waste incineration plant in Hangzhou, China
2016 – Brazilian senate votes to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial for budgetary violations
2019 – American actress and #MeToo activist Alyssa Milano urges women to go on a “sex strike” after Georgia state passes new abortion law
2020 – Twitter announced that it would add a warning label to any tweet they decided contained disputed or misleading information about the coronavirus.
2021 – First major US offshore windfarm off the coast of Massachusetts approved by Biden administration
2022 – First ever US government report into Indian boarding school deaths released (not complete), documents more than 500 deaths across 400 schools and 50 gravesites over 150 years
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
