1960 – The U.S. FDA announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle’s Enovid, making Enovid the world’s first approved oral contraceptive pill.
1457 BC – Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC) between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh. It is the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.
1092 – Lincoln Cathedral is consecrated.
1386 – Treaty of Windsor between Portugal and England is ratified at Windsor cementing and strengthening ties between the two kingdoms.
1450 – ‘Abd al-Latif (Timurid monarch) assassinated.
1460 – Court yard episcopal palace Atrecht has witch burnings
1502 – Christopher Columbus left Spain for his final trip to the Western Hemisphere.
1573 – Polish Parliament selects duke of Anjou as king
1671 – Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England’s Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
1726 – Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap’s molly house in London are executed at Tyburn.
1754 – The first newspaper cartoon in America showed a divided snake “Join or die” in “The Pennsylvania Gazette.”
1768 – John Hancock pays duties on 25 pipes of wine, only one fourth of his ship’s carrying capacity. British officials accuse him of unloading the rest during the night to avoid paying duties on the entire cargo.
1785 – Joseph Bramah patented the beer-pump handle.
1862 – US Naval Academy relocated from Annapolis Maryland to Newport, Rhode Island
1873 – Der Krach: Vienna stock market crash heralds Long Depression
1896 – First horseless carriage show in London (featured 10 models)
1901 – A financial panic begins in the USA following the struggle between two groups to control the railroads between the Great Lakes and the Pacific
1913 – 17th amendment provides for election of senators by popular vote
1915 – German and French forces fought the Battle of Artois.
1920 – Polish-Soviet War: The Polish army under General Edward Rydz-migy celebrated their capture of Kiev with a victory parade on Khreschatyk.
1926 – Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole. Later discovery of Byrd’s diary suggests they may have turned back 150 miles short of the pole due to an oil leak.
1933 – Spanish anarchists call for general strike
1936 – Fascist Italy took Addis Abba and annexed Ethiopia.
1941 – British intelligence at Bletchley Park breaks German spy codes after capturing Enigma machines aboard the weather ship Muenchen
1942 – German SS murder 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast, Ukraine). The victims were shot with machine gun in ravine on the order from Gebietskomissar Eggers and Chief of Gendarmerie Busse
1945 – U.S. officials announced that the midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.
1946 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by his son Umberto II who reigns for only 34 days before the monarchy is abolished
1950 – L. Ron Hubbard publishes his book on Dianetics, entitled “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health”
1951 – The U.S. conducted its first thermonuclear experiment under Operation Greenhouse. “George,” a 225-kiloton device, was detonated on Enewetak Atok in the Marshall Islands.
1956 – War Reparations and Peace Settlement between Philippines and Japan was finally signed at Malacañang Palace under Magsaysay administration
1960 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for sale an oral birth-control pill for the first time.
1961 – US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Newton N. Minow criticizes TV as a “vast wasteland” during a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters
1962 – Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technologay successfully bounced a laser beam off Moon for the first time.
1969 – Carlos Lamarca begins his fight against Brazil’s military dictatorship – Lamarca was a member of the communist organization Vanguardia Popular Revolucionária (VPR) and is well known for his urban guerilla actions. Brazilian forces killed him in 1971.
1970 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 75,000 to 100,000 war protesters demonstrate in front of the White House
1974 – The House Judiciary Committee began formal hearings on the Nixon impeachment.
1978 – The bullet-riddled body of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was found in an automobile in the center of Rome. The Red Brigades had abducted him.
1979 – Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is executed – An Islamic revolutionary tribunal had convicted him of “contacts with Israel and Zionism” and “friendship with the enemies of God”. His execution triggered a Jewish mass exodus from Iran.
1980 – A Liberian freighter hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida. Thirty-five motorists were killed and a 1,400-foot section of the bridge collapsed.
1981 – The Motherland Monument at 62 m (203 ft) high is opened in Kyiv, Ukraine in ceremony attended by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
1989 – Vice President Dan Quayle says in United Negro College Fund speech: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind” instead of “a mind is terrible thing to waste”
1992 – Armenian forces capture Shusha in the Karabakh War, marking a major turning point.
1993 – Paraguay holds its first presidential & parliamentary elections in 50 years
1994 – Nelson Mandela was chosen to be South Africa’s first black president.
1996 – In video testimony to a courtroom in Little Rock, AR, U.S. President Clinton insisted that he had nothing to do with a $300,000 loan in the criminal case against his former Whitewater partners.
1997 – Pete Peterson becomes the first U.S. ambassador to visit Vietnam after the end of the war
2001 – Accra Sports Stadium Disaster: 129 Ghanaian football fans die in a stampede caused by the firing of teargas by police following a decision by the referee in a crucial match between arch-rivals Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko
2002 – In Bethlehem, West Bank, a deal was reached that would end the 38-day standoff at the Church of the Nativity. Thirteen suspected militants were to be deported to several different countries. The standoff had begun on April 2, 2002.
2004 – Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a landmine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.
2006 – 2 miners, Todd Russell and Brant Webb, were freed after 14 days trapped underground in a goldmine at Beaconsfield, Tasmania, Australia
2015 – A gun fight erupts in Macedonian town of Kumanovo between police and Albanian separatists adding to the government crisis
2019 – Pope Francis issued a new church law that required all Catholic priests and nuns to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities.
2020 – In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approved a coronavirus antigen test that could quickly detect virus proteins.
2023 – Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan dramatically arrested at the High Court in Islamabad, prompting violent protests between his supporters and security force
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
