1979 – The program, “The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage”, premiered on ABC-TV. The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into “Nightline” in March of 1980.
392 – Roman Emperor Theodosius declares Christian religion the state religion
1519 – 1st meeting of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II and Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan, Mexico
1520 – Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 people.
1620 – Battle of White Mountain, Prague – 1st major victory of the Catholic Habsburgs over the Protestant Alliance in The Thirty Years’ War
1701 – William Penn presents Charter of Privileges, guaranteed religious freedom for the colony in Pennsylvania
1731 – In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin opens 1st library in the north American colonies, the Library Company of Philadelphia
1789 – Bourbon Whiskey 1st distilled from corn by Elijah Craig in Bourbon, Kentucky
1793 – The Louvre Museum, in Paris, opened to the public for the first time.
1798 – Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone is sentenced to death by hanging for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Tone requests to be shot instead so as to die a soldier’s death.
1805 – The “Corps of Discovery” reached the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was led by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The journey had begun on May 14, 1804, with the goal of exploring the Louisiana Purchase territory.
1837 – Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts founded – 1st US college founded for women
1861 – USS San Jacinto commanded by Charles Wilkes captures two Confederate diplomats from the British mail steamer Trent, almost causing a war between the US and the UK
1889 – Montana became the 41st U.S. state.
1895 – Wilhelm Roentgen while experimenting with electricity discovered the scientific principle involved and took the first X-ray pictures.
1901 – Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.
1910 – For the first time since 1894, the US elects a Democratic Congress, including the first socialist ever to sit in Congress, Victor L Berger of Milwaukee
1917 – Telephone Co runs 1st advertisement for Army operators, receives 7,000 applicants
1923 – Adolf Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”
1924 – Austria chancellor Ignaz Seipel, resigns after assassination attempt
1933 – The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The organization was designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed people in the U.S.
1939 – Assassination attempt on Hitler, Johann Georg Elser, a German woodworker, attempted to kill Adolf Hilter and other high ranking members of the Nazi party during the 16th anniversary observances of the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup attempt by Hitler in 1923. The time bomb Elser used in a beer hall called Bürgerbräukeller in Munich went off but failed to kill Hitler. Elser was caught and imprisoned in Dachau for 5 years.
1940 – RAF bombs Munich, Adolf Hitler promises “an attack on the capital of the Nazi movement would not go unpunished”
1942 – During World War II, Operation Torch began as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.
1944 – 25,000 Hungarian Jews are loaned to Nazis for forced labor
1950 – During the Korean conflict, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.
1956 – After turning down 18,000 names, the Ford Motor Company decided to name their new car the “Edsel,” after Henry Ford’s only son.
1962 – Canada’s government orders the nickel changed back to round shape
1965 – The soap opera “Days of Our Lives” debuted on NBC-TV.
1966 – Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California.
1971 – Coup in Thailand, Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn staged a coup against his own government and dismissed the parliament citing increasing communist influence.
1972 – Home Box Office launched, The premium TV channel, informally known as HBO, is the oldest paid TV channel in the United States. The first program to screen on the channel was Sometimes a Great Notion, a movie starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.
1974 – British peer the Earl of Lucan disappears and is never seen again after his nanny is found murdered in London
1979 – The program, “The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage”, premiered on ABC-TV. The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into “Nightline” in March of 1980.
1979 – U.S. Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Mac Mathias (R-MD) introduced legislation to provide a site on the National Mall for the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1980 – Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California announced that they had discovered a 15th moon orbiting the planet Saturn.
1981 – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek asserted that Egypt was “an African State” that was “neither East nor West”.
1985 – A letter signed by four American hostages in Lebanon was delivered to The Associated Press in Beirut. The letter, contained pleas from Terry Anderson, Rev. Lawrence Jenco, David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland to President Reagan to negotiate a release.
1990 – Saddam fires his army chief & threatens to destroy Arabian peninsula
1990- Unconfirmed rumors emerge that Bush might announce an airlift of supplies to US embassy in Kuwait, which could ultimately trigger a military clash
1990 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered more troop deployments in the Persian Gulf, adding about 150,000 soldiers to the multi-national force fighting against Iraq.
1991 – The European Community and Canada imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.
1992 – About 350,000 people rallied in Berlin against racist violence.
1997 – Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
2000 – In Florida, a statewide recount began to decide the winner of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.
2000 – Waco special counsel John C. Danforth released his final report that absolved the government of wrongdoing in the 1993 seige of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council under Resolution 1441 unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”
2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passed 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
2013 – 11 people are killed in a car park bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia
2014 – Mikhail Gorbachev warns that tensions between America and Russia over Ukraine have put the world on the brink of a new Cold War
2014 – US President Obama authorizes deployment of 1,500 additional troops to help train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants
2018 – Authorities report more than 150 people have been killed in week-long assault by government forces on port of Hudaydah in Yemen
2018 – CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House clearance revoked after continuing to question President Donald Trump while an intern tried to wrestle the microphone off him
2018 – Mass grave of 200 people discovered on border of Somali and Oromia regions, Ethiopia, in investigation into atrocities by former regional president Abdi Mohammed
2018 – Qatar delivers $15 million in cash to pay civil servants in Gaza after earlier sending fuel to increase electricity from 4 to 8 hours a day
2020 – More than 50 people beheaded in latest attack by Islamist militants in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique
2021 – US reopens its borders to vaccinated non US citizens after more than 18 months, lifting restrictions imposed because of COVID-19
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
