1333 The River Arno flooding caused massive damage in Florence.
1429 Joan of Arc liberated Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
1576 Eighty Years’ War: Spain captured Antwerp.
1677 The future Mary II of England married William, Prince of Orange.
1737 The Teatro di San Carlo was inaugurated.
1783 W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 was performed for the first time.
1791 The Western Confederacy of American Indians won a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
1825 The Erie Canal was completed with Governor DeWitt Clinton performing the Wedding of The Waters ceremony in New York Harbour.
1839 The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
1852 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour became the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia.
1853 – Anna Bayerová, Czech physician, was born (d. 1924).
1861 The University of Washington opened in Seattle, Washington as the Territorial University.
1864 American Civil War: Battle of Johnsonville – Confederate troops bombarded a Union supply base and destroyed millions of dollars in material.
1879 – Will Rogers, American actor and screenwriter, was born (d. 1935).
1889 Menelek of Shoa obtained the allegiance of a large majority of the Ethiopian nobility, paving the way for him to be crowned emperor.
1890 London’s first deep-level tube railway opened between King William Street and Stockwell.
1915 – Marguerite Patten, English economist and author, was born (d. 2015).
1916 Ruth Handler, American businesswoman and inventor of the Barbie doll, was born (d. 2002).
1918 World War I: Austria-Hungary surrendered to Italy.
1918 The German Revolution began when 40,000 sailors took over the port in Kiel.
1921 The Sturmabteilung or SA was formed by Adolf Hitler.
1921 Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi was assassinated in Tokyo.
1921 The Italian unknown soldier was buried in the Altare della Patria (Fatherland Altar) in Rome.
1922 In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men found the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun‘s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the first female governor in the United States.
1930 Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup.
1937 Loretta Swit, American actress, was born.
1939 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
1942 Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel led his forces on a five-month retreat.
1944 World War II: Bitola Liberation Day.
1946 – Laura Bush, American educator, 50th First Lady of the United States was born.
1950 Charles Frazier, American author, was born.
1952 The United States government established the National Security Agency.
1955 After being totally destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopened with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
1956 James Honeyman-Scott, English guitarist (The Pretenders), was born (d. 1982)
1956 Soviet troops entered Hungary to end the Hungarian revolutionagainst the Soviet Union.
1957 Tony Abbott, Australia politician, Liberal leader, was born.
1962 In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope was successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island – the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.
1966 Two-thirds of Florence was submerged as the River Arno floodedwith the contemporaneous flood of the Po River which led to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.
1970 Genie, a 13-year-old feral child was found in Los Angeles, California having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.
1973 The Netherlands experienced the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis.
1979 Iran hostage crisis began: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invaded the US embassy in Tehran and took 90 hostages.
1993 A China Airlines Boeing 747 overran Runway 13 at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International Airport while landing during a typhoon, injuring 22 people.
1994 First conference that focused exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
1995 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extremist Orthodox Israeli.
2002 Chinese authorities arrested cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.
2008 Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.
2008 Proposition 8 passed in California, representing the first elimination of an existing right to marry for LGBT couples.
2010 – Qantas Flight 32, an Airbus A380, suffered an uncontained engine failure over Indonesia shortly after taking off from Singapore, crippling the jet. The crew manage to safely return to Singapore, saving all 469 passengers and crew.
2011 – The Hellenic Parliament rejected a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou following a failed attempt to hold a referendum on a Eurozone bailout.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
