1924 – Fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The killers were students at the University of Chicago.
878 – Syracuse is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily.
996 – Sixteen year old Otto III was crowned the Roman Emperor.
1216 – French crown prince Louis, invades England with 700 ships, having been invited by English barons at war with King John
1260 – Hao Jing, envoy of Mongol leader Kublai Khan imprisoned by order of the high Chancellor of China, Jia Sidao at the Song Dynasty court of Emperor Lizong while attempting to negotiate with the Song
1420 – Treaty of Troyes: Henry V of England and his heirs will inherit the throne of France upon the death of King Charles VI of France (later rendered moot by the military victory of Charles VII)
1471 – King Edward IV enters London in triumph after victory at the Battle of Teekesbury with Queen Margaret as captive
1502 – The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese navigator Joo da Nova.
1536 – The Reformation was officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.
1602 – Martha’s Vineyard was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.
1674 – The nobility elects John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
1725 – The Order of St. Alexander Nevsky was instituted in Russia by the empress Catherine I. It would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky.
1758 – Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War.
1790 – Paris was divided into 48 zones.
1819 – Bicycles were first seen in the U.S. in New York City. They were originally known as “swift walkers.”
1832 – In the U.S., the Democratic Party held its first national convention.
1840 – New Zealand was declared a British colony.
1856 – Lawrence, Kansas was captured by pro-slavery forces.
1871 – French Government troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting. By the close of “”Bloody Week”” some 20,000 communards have been killed and 38,000 arrested
1881 – The American branch of the Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton.
1891 – Peter Jackson and Jim Corbett fought for 61 rounds only to end in a draw.
1900 – Russia annexes Manchuria
1904 – Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded.
1917 – Leo Pinckney, first American drafted during WWI
1920 – Mexican President Venustiano Carranza is executed by army generals after fleeing an armed rebellion in Mexico
1922 – The cartoon, “On the Road to Moscow,” by Rollin Kirby won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the first cartoon awarded the Pulitzer.
1924 – Fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The killers were students at the University of Chicago.
1927 – Charles A. Lindberg completed the first solo nonstop airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip began May 20.
1929 – The first automatic electric stock quotation board was used by Sutro and Company of New York City.
1933 – Mount Davidson Cross, San Francisco, lit by FDR via telegraph
1934 – Oskaloosa, IA, became the first city in the U.S. to fingerprint all of its citizens.
1936 – Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover’s severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon became one of Japan’s most notorious scandals.
1941 – World War II: 950 miles off the coast of Brazil, the freighter SS Robin Moor becomes the first United States ship sunk by a German U-boat.
1944 – WWII: West Loch Disaster – explosion during munition loading kills at least 160 sailors, injures nearly 400, destroys six ships and damages 3 piers and several buildings at Pearl Harbor U.S. Naval Base in Oahu, Hawaii; details were kept classified until the early 1960s
1945 – German war criminal Heinrich Himmler captured
1946 – Physicist Louis Slotin is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation while preparing a plutonium core experiment at the Los Alamos lab, he dies 9 days later and the accident ends all hands-on nuclear assembly work at Los Alamos
1947 – Joe DiMaggio and five of his New York Yankee teammates were fined $100 because they had not fulfilled contract requirements to do promotional duties for the team.
1950 – Vietnamese troops of Ho Chi-Minh attack Cambodia
1954 – US Twenty-sixth amendment to give 18-year-olds right to vote is defeated
1956 – The U.S. exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean over Bikini Atoll.
1961 – Governor Patterson declared martial law in Montgomery, AL.
1964 – The first nuclear-powered lighthouse begins operations (Chesapeake Bay)
1968 – The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
1970 – The National Guard was mobilized to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.
1979 – White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
1980 – The movie “The Empire Strikes Back” was released.
1982 – The British landed in the Falkland Islands and fighting began.
1985 – Israel exchanges 1,150 prisoners with the PFLP-GC in return for 3 Israeli soldiers
1987 – Military coup in Fiji Islands under Lieutenant Colonel Sitivani Rabuka
1991 – In Madras, India, the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a bouquet of flowers that contained a bomb.
1992 – New Jersey senate overrides Governor Florio’s veto & lowers sales tax to 6%
1994 – South Yemen secedes from Yemen
1998 – An expelled student, Kipland Kinkel, in Springfield, OR, killed 2 people and wounded 25 others with a semi-automatic rifle. Police also discovered that the boy had killed his parents before the rampage.
2001 – French Taubira law which officially recognize the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity.
2006 – The Republic of Montenegro holds a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. The Montenegrin people choose independence with a majority of 55%.
2011 – End of World prediction – Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation).
2012 – 120 people are killed and 350 injured by a suicide bomb in Sana’a, Yemen
2014 – Russian President Putin signs agreements with China in Beijing in relation to trade and infrastructure
2016 – Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban is reportedly killed by a US drone in Pakistan
2017 – Barnum & Bailey Circus performs for the last time at the Nassau Coliseum in NYC after 146 years
2018 – US Justice Department says it is expanding its internal investigation into whether FBI infiltrated Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign
2019 – Oldest and most distant gravitational waves detected from collision of two black holes with first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered, 7 billion light years away
2022 – US Navy posthumously awards Navy and Marine Corps Medal to Charles J. French, known as ‘the Human Tugboat’ for heroic actions in the South Pacific in 1942; award presented at Naval Base San Diego in ceremony which also dedicates base’s rescue swimmer training pool in French’s honor
2023 – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky makes a surprise appearance at G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, with world leaders also making a statement to condemn Chinese acts of “economic coercion”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
