1881 – The “Gunfight at the OK Corral” took place in Tombstone, AZ. The fight was between Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang.
1387 – Amsterdam buccaneer Herman of Kuinre signs loyalty vow for peace
1407 – Mobs attack Jewish community of Kraków
1492 – Lead (graphite) pencils first used
1524 – Spanish troops give Milan to France
1640 – The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Scotland and Charles I of England.
1664 – The British Marines are organized.
1682 – William Penn accepts area around Delaware River from Duke of York
1749 – Georgia Colony reverses itself & rules slavery is legal
1774 – The First Continental Congress of the U.S. adjourned in Philadelphia.
1776 – Benjamin Franklin departed from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
1825 – The Erie Canal opened in upstate New York. The 363-mile canal connected Lake Erie and the Hudson River at a cost of $7,602,000.
1850 – Robert McClure sights the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time (from Banks Island towards Melville Island)
1858 – H.E. Smith patented the rotary-motion washing machine.
1860 – Meeting of Teano. Giuseppe Garibaldi, conqueror of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, gives it to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.
1861 – The Pony Express officially ceased operations
1868 – White terrorists kill several blacks in St Bernard Parish La
1878 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly shoots and kills three police officers at Stringybark Creek, Victoria.
1881 – The “Gunfight at the OK Corral” took place in Tombstone, AZ. The fight was between Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang.
1905 – Norway gained independence from Sweden.
1909 – Itō Hirobumi, Resident-General of Korea, and former Japanese Prime Minister is shot and killed by Korean nationalist An Jung-geun in Harbin, China
1916 – Margaret Sanger arrested for obscenity (advocating birth control)
1917 – Battle of Caporetto: Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Germany during the World War I.
1918 – Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations
1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation.
1939 – Polish Jews forced into obligatory work service
1941 – US savings bonds go on sale
1942 – The U.S. ship Hornet was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz during World War II.
1944 – During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf ended. The battle was won by American forces and brought the end of the Pacific phase of World War II into sight.
1948 – Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania
1949 – U.S. President Harry Truman raised the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.
1950 – In London King George VI opens the restored House of Commons chamber, destroyed in a 1941 bombing raid
1955 – New York City’s “The Village Voice” was first published.
1957 – The Soviet Union announced that defense minister Marchal Georgi Zhukov had been relieved of his duties.
1958 – Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York City to Paris.
1962 – The Soviet Union made an offer to end the Cuban Missile Crisis by taking their missile bases out of Cuba if the U.S. agreed to not invade Cuba and would remove Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
1964 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.
1967 – The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.
1970 – “Doonesbury,” the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S.
1972 – U.S. National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam.
1975 – Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to officially visit to the United States.
1977 – The experimental space shuttle Enterprise successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
1979 – South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
1980 – Israeli President Yitzhak Navon became the first Israeli head of state to visit Egypt.
1984 – “Baby Fae” was given the heart of baboon after being born with a severe heart defect. She lived for 21 days with the animal heart.
1985 – Approximately 110,000 people marched past the U.S. and Soviet embassies in London to pressure the two countries to end their arms race.
1988 – Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company, announced it was halting the worldwide distribution of RU-486. The pill is used to induce abortions. The French government made the company reverse itself two days later.
1990 – The U.S. State Department issued a warning that terrorists could be planning an attack on a passenger ship or aircraft.
1992 – General Motors Corp. Chairman Robert Stempel resigned after the company recorded its highest losses in history.
1993 – Deborah Gore Dean was convicted of 12 felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress. Dean was a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal.
1994 – Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty.
1996 – Federal prosecutors cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing.
1998 – A French lab found a nerve agent on an Iraqi missile warhead.
2001 – It was announced that Fort Worth’s Lockheed Martin won a defense contract for $200 billion over 40 years. The contract, for the “joint strike fighter,” was the largest defense contract in history.
2002 – Russian authorities pumped a gas into a theater where separatist rebels held over 800 hostages. The gas killed 116 hostages and all 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.
2012 – 41 people are killed and 50 injured by a suicide bombing of a mosque in Maymana, Afghanistan
2015 – World Health Organization classifies processed meat as carcinogenic
2017 – Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand, becoming the world’s youngest female head of government
2018 – Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc arrested for sending 14 pipe bombs to prominent US Democrats
2019 – Raid by US Special Forces kills ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria
2020 – Police officers in Philadelphia shoot and kill black man Walter Wallace Jr. armed with a knife, prompting protests and the city to impose a curfew
2022 – Thousands of protesters in Saqez, Iran defy security forces to mark 40-day Arba’een (period of mourning) for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old who died in police custody for not wearing a hijab properly
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
