1764 – Bostonian lawyer James Otis denounced “taxation without representation” and called for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.
1153 – Malcolm IV becomes king of Scotland
1218 – The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt.
1276 – Magnus Laduls crowned King of Sweden in Uppsala Cathedral.
1300 – King Philip IV occupies Flanders, Earl Gwijde captured
1487 – Imposter Lambert Simnel ceremony crowned as King Edward VI in Dublin
1610 – Sir Thomas Gates institutes “laws divine moral and marshal,” a harsh civil code for Jamestown.
1624 – After years of unprofitable operation Virginia’s charter was revoked and it became a royal colony.
1689 – The English Parliament passed Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics were specifically excluded from exemption.
1738 – The Methodist Church was established. John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.
1755 – Smuggler Louis Mandrin considered the French Robin Hood is sentenced to be broken on the wheel, a medieval form of torture and execution that breaks the bones of the subject
1764 – Bostonian lawyer James Otis denounced “taxation without representation” and called for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.
1798 – Believing that a French invasion of Ireland was imminent, Irish nationalists rose up against the British occupation.
1818 – General Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola FL
1822 – At the Battle of Pichincha, Bolivar secured independence of the Quito.
1830 – The first passenger railroad service in the U.S. began service.
1844 – Samuel F.B. Morse formally opened America’s first telegraph line. The first message was sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD. The message was “What hath God wrought?”
1856 – John Brown and his men murder five slavery supporters at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas
1859 – Charles Gounod’s “Ave Maria” was performed by Madame Caroline Miolan-Carvalho for the first time in public.
1863 – Bushwackers led by Captain William Marchbanks attacked a U.S. Federal militia party in Nevada, Missouri.
1883 – After 14 years of construction the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic.
1884 – Anti-Monopoly party & Greenback Party form People’s Party in the US
1895 – Playright Oscar Wilde is convicted on a morals charge in London and sentenced to prison
1913 – The U.S. Department of Labor entered into its first strike mediation. The dispute was between the Railroad Clerks of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
1916 – French driven out of Fort Douaumont after 500 killed or injured
1921 – Bulhoek Massacre: police commissioner Colonel Theodore Truter leads 6 squadrons and artillery detachment against Israelite religious sect collected at annual gathering on land of leader Enoch Mgijima at Ntabalanga; 190 killed
1924 – Canada grants women the right to vote in federal elections, though First Nations women still unable to without giving up their status
1930 – Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
1931 – B&O Railroad began service with the first passenger train to have air conditioning throughout. The run was between New York City and Washington, DC.
1935 – The Cincinnati Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies in the first major league baseball game at night. The switch for the floodlights was thrown by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.
1941 – The HMS Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Only three people survived.
1943 – Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer in Auschwitz concentration camp.
1946 – Transjordan (now known as Jordan) becomes a kingdom, with King Abdulla Ibn Ul-Hussein as the new monarch
1950 – ‘Sweetwater’ (Nat) Clifton’s contract was purchased by the New York Knicks. Sweetwater played for the Harlem Globetrotters.
1951 – Racial segregation in Washington DC restaurants ruled illegal
1954 – IBM announces vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour
1958 – United Press International was formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.
1959 – 1st house with built-in bomb shelter exhibited (Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania)
1962 – The officials of the National Football League ruled that halftime of regular season games would be cut to 15 minutes.
1965 – Supreme Court declares federal law allowing post office to intercept communist propaganda is unconstitutional
1968 – FLQ separatists bomb the U.S. consulate in Quebec City
1970 – The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the USSR
1975 – A group of 80 reporters and cameramen are the first Westerners allowed to leave Saigon in South Vietnam since it fell to communist forces on April 29.
1976 – Britain and France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.
1978 – American management consultant Marilyn Loden first coins the term “glass ceiling” to describe invisible career barriers for women
1980 – The International Court of Justice issued a final decision calling for the release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.
1983 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate.
1988 – Section 28 passed as law by Parliament in the United Kingdom prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality. Repealed 2001/2004
1989 – Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, is awarded a six-figure sum in damages after winning a libel action against Private Eye.
1990 – A car carrying American Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney explodes in Oakland, California, critically injuring both
1992 – The last Thai dictator, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, resigns following pro-democracy protests.
1993 – Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posada Ocampo and six other people were killed at the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport in a shootout that involved drug gangs.
1994 – The four men convicted of bombing the New York’s World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
1999 – 39 miners were killed in an underground gas explosion in the Ukraine.
2000 – Five people were killed and two others wounded when two gunmen entered a Wendy’s restaurant in Flushing, Queens, New York. The gunmen tied up the victims in the basement and then shot them.
2004 – North Korea bans mobile phones.
2011 – NASA announced the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) spacecraft. It is intended to facilitate exploration of the Moon, asteroids and Mar
2014 – Yingluck Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand, is detained by the army after a military coup
2016 – Kaduna state in Nigeria declares a state of emergency due to ‘Tomato Ebola’, as moth destroys 80% of tomato crops
2018 – US President Donald Trump signs into law the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act easing financial regulations and reducing oversight for banks
2019 – Brazil’s Supreme Court votes to make homophobia and transphobia crimes
2020 – Millions of cicadas in a once in 17-year event about to emerge from the earth in the US south posing crop danger and noise issues, according to scientists from Virginia Tech
2021 – Constitutional crisis deepens in Samoa after Speaker of the House shuts out Fiame Naomi Mata’afa from being sworn in as the country’s first woman leader in 56 years
2022 – 19 children and two teachers shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, by an 18-year-old gunman
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
