506 The bishops of Visigothic Gaul met in the Council of Agde.
1385 Le Loi, national hero of Viet Nam, founder of the Later Lê Dynasty, was born (d. 1433).
1419 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy was assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France.
1509 An earthquake known as “The Lesser Judgment Day” hit Istanbul.
1547 The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, the last full scale military confrontation between England and Scotland, resulting in a decisive victory for the forces of Edward VI.
1659 Henry Purcell, English composer, was born (d. 1695).
1798 At the Battle of St. George’s Caye, British Honduras defeated Spain.
1813 The United States defeated the British Fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
1823 Simón Bolívar was named President of Peru.
1844 Abel Hoadley, Australian confectioner, was born (d. 1918).
1846 Elias Howe was granted a patent for the sewing machine.
1858 George Mary Searle discovered the asteroid 55 Pandora.
1897 Lattimer massacre: A sheriff’s posse killed 20 unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.
1898 Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated by Luigi Lucheni.
1898 Waldo Semon, American inventor (vinyl), was born (d. 1999).
1914 – An eruption on White Island killed 10 people.
1914 Robert Wise, American film director, was born (d. 2005).
1918 Rin Tin Tin, German shepherd dog, was born (d. 1932).
1919 Austria and the Allies signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain recognising the independence of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
1932 The New York City Subway’s third competing subway system, the municipally-owned IND, was opened.
1933 Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer, was born.
1939 The submarine HMS Oxley was mistakenly sunk by the submarine HMS Triton near Norway becoming the Royal Navy’s first losss.
1942 World War II: The British Army carries out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to re-launch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign.
1951 The United Kingdom began an economic boycott of Iran.
1956 Johnny Fingers, Irish musician The Boomtown Rats, was born.
1960 Colin Firth, English actor, was born.
1961 Italian Grand Prix, a crash caused the death of German Formula One driver Wolfgang von Trips and 13 spectators who were hit by his Ferrari.
1963 20 African-American students entered public schools in Alabama.
1967 The people of Gibraltar voted to remain a British dependency rather than becoming part of Spain.
1974 Guinea-Bissau gaind independence from Portugal.
1976 A British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria DC-9 collided near Zagreb, killing 176.
1977 Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of torture and murder, was the last person to be executed by guillotine in France.
1984 The Te Maori exhibition opened in New York.
1990 The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire – the largest church in Africa was consecrated by Pope John Paul II.
2001 Charles Ingram cheated his way into winning one million pounds on a British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
2003 Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden, was fatally stabbed while shopping.
2007 Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan after seven years in exile, following a military coup in October 1999.
2008 The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history was powered up in Geneva.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.
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