1940 – The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz was the biggest extermination camp during World War II. From 1940 to 1945, the Nazi regime murdered at least 1.1 million people here.
0325 – The Ecumenical council was inaugurated by Emperor Constantine in Nicea, Asia Minor.
0526 – An earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.
1303 – A peace treaty was signed between England and France over the town of Gascony.
1310 – Shoes were made for both right & left feet
1347 – Cola di Rienzo took the title of tribune in Rome.
1501 – Joao da Nova Castell discovers Ascension Islands
1506 – In Spain, Christopher Columbus died in poverty.
1520 – Hernando Cortez defeated Spanish troops that had been sent to punish him in Mexico.
1631 -The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.
1639 – Dorchester, Massachusetts funds the first school in the US from local taxes
1690 – England passed the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1774 – Britain’s Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to punish the American colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior
1775 – Citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declare independence of Britain
1784 – The Peace of Versailles ended a war between France, England, and Holland.
1813 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ends the next day with a French victory.
1845 – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sail from the River Thames in England, beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage. All hands are lost.
1861 – North Carolina became the eleventh state to secede from the Union.
1861 – During the American Civil War, the capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, AL, to Richmond, VA.
1873 – Levi Strauss began marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.
1875 – The International Bureau of Weights and Measures was established.
1899 – Jacob German of New York City became the first driver to be arrested for speeding. The posted speed limit was 12 miles per hour.
1902 – The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ended.
1902 – Cuba gained its independence from Spain.
1910 – Funeral for Britain’s King Edward VII held in Westminster Abbey, has one of the largest assemblages of European royalty
1916 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (“”Boy with Baby Carriage””)
1916 – The small town of Codell, Kansas is struck by a tornado. Incredibly, the same town was also hit in 1917 and 1918 on the exact same date
1917 – Turkish Government authorizes Jews to return to Tel Aviv & Jaffa
1918 – The first electrically propelled warship (the New Mexico)
1926 – The U.S. Congress passed the Air Commerce Act. The act gave the Department of Commerce the right to license pilots and planes.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh took off from New York to cross the Atlantic for Paris aboard his airplane the “Spirit of St. Louis.” The trip took 33 1/2 hours.
1927 – By the Treaty of Jedda, the United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
1932 – Amelia Earhart took off to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She became the first woman to achieve the feat.
1933 – “Charlie Chan” was heard for the final time on the NBC Blue radio network, after only six months on the air.
1940 – The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz was the biggest extermination camp during World War II. From 1940 to 1945, the Nazi regime murdered at least 1.1 million people here.
1941 – Germany invaded Crete by air.
1942 – Japan completed the conquest of Burma.
1954 – Chiang Kai-shek is selected for another term as President of the Republic of China by the National Assembly
1959 – Ford wins battle with Chrysler to call its new car “”Falcon”
1961 – A white mob attacked the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, AL. The event prompted the federal government to send U.S. marshals.
1969 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, which was referred to as Hamburger Hill.
1970 – 100,000 people marched in New York supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.
1978 – US launches Pioneer Venus 1; produces first global radar map of Venus
1980 – 710 families in Love Canal area (Niagara Falls NY) are evacuated
1980 – The submarine Nautilus was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
1980 – In a Referendum in Quebec, the population rejects by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.
1983 – First publications of the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo individually.
1983 – In South Africa, a car bomb planted by anti-Apartheid activists kills 19
1985 – The FBI arrested U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer John Walker. Walker had begun spying for the Soviet Union in 1968.
1985 – Radio Marti, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba
1985 – Israel exchanges 1150 Lebanese/Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers
1989 – The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.
1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs.
1995 – In a second Referendum in Quebec, the population rejects by a slight majority the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.
1996 – Gay rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians
1999 – At Heritage High School in Conyers, GA, TJ Solomon a 15-year-old student shot and injured six students. He then surrendered to an assistant principal at the school.
2002 – The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself was the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976)
2006 – The Three Gorges Dam is officially opened, The hydroelectric dam is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity. Despite its benefits, the project remains controversial because it flooded archeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people.
2010 – Scientists announced that they had created a functional synthetic genome.
2013 – 133 people are killed and 283 are injured in a continued wave of insurgency in Iraq
2015 – 5 major world banks (JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup, RBS and UBS) fined US$5.7bn for manipulating currency markets – some of the largest ever fines
2018 – President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela wins a second term in an election marked by boycotts and accusations of vote rigging
2019 – Bangladesh imposes a 65-day ban on coastal fishing to conserve fish stocks
2021 – Israel and Hamas agree to a bilateral ceasefire in Gaza after nearly two weeks of fighting, amid international diplomatic efforts
2021 – One of Sri Lanka’s worst ecological disasters as cargo ship MS X-Press Pearl, carrying toxic chemicals, catches fire off the country’s coast and begins spilling debris
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
