655 – Battle of Winwaed: Penda of Mercia was defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
1315 – Battle of Morgarten the Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushed the army of Leopold I.
1515 – Thomas Wolsey was invested as a Cardinal.
1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto met Inca leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca.
1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrived in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1708 William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born (d. 1778).
1769 The British flag flew in New Zealand for the first time.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation.
1791 – The first U.S Catholic college, Georgetown University, opened its doors.
1854 – The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, was given the necessary royal concession.
1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games in Athens.
1861 The first issue of the Otago Daily Times was published.
1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta, Georgia and started Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1889 – Brazil was declared a republic by Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca and Emperor Pedro II was deposed in a military coup.
1891 Erwin Rommel, German field marshal, “The Desert Fox”, was born (d. 1941).
1903 – Stewie Dempster, New Zealand cricketer, was born (d. 1974).
1905 Mantovani, Italian-born composer, was born (d. 1980).
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva.
1923 – The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counter Inflation in the Weimar Republic.
1926 – The NBC radio network opened with 24 stations.
1932 Petula Clark, English singer, was born.
1935 – Manuel L. Quezon was inaugurated as the second president of the Philippines.
1939 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1942 Daniel Barenboim, Argentine-born conductor and pianist, was born.
1942 – First flight of the Heinkel He 219.
1942 – The Battle of Guadalcanal ended in a decisive Allied victory.
1943 – Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered that Gypsies be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.
1945 – Roger Donaldson, Australian- born New Zealand film producer/director, was born.
1945 Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Norwegian-born singer (ABBA) was born.
1948 – Louis Stephen St. Laurent succeeded William Lyon Mackenzie King as Prime Minister of Canada.
1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
1951 – Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis and 11 resistance members, were sentenced to death.
1966 – Gemini 12 splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – Pan Am Flight 708 crashed near Berlin, killing the three people on board.
1967 – The only fatality of the X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams lost control of his aircraft which was destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
1968 – The US Air Force launched Operation Commando Hunt, a large-scale bombing campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail.
1969 – The Soviet submarine K-19 collided with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1969 – 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War, including a symbolic “March Against Death”.
1969 – In Columbus, Ohio, Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s restaurant.
1971 – Intel released world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois took power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favour of independence.
1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashed near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
1979 – A package from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski began smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was founded. Recognised only by Turkey.
1985 – A research assistant was injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor exploded.
1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
1987 – Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9-14 jetliner, crashed in a snowstorm at Denver, Colorado Stapleton International Airport, killing 28 occupants, while 54 survive the crash.
1987 – In Braşov, Romania, workers rebelled against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran was launched on her first and last space flight.
1988 – Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An independent State of Palestine was proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, was launched in the Netherlands.
1989 – Sachin Tendulkar made his debut as an international cricketer.
1990 – Space Shuttle Atlantis launched with flight STS-38.
2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashed after takeoff from Luanda, Angola killing more than 40 people.
2003 – The first day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300.
2005 – Boeing formally launched the stretched Boeing 747-8 variant with orders from Cargolux and Nippon Cargo Airlines.
2007 – Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.
2012 – Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new 7-members Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
2012 – Four people were killed and 16 others injured in the Midland train wreck after a Union Pacific train struck a parade float in Midland, Texas.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
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