43 BC Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar’s assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeated the forces of the consul Pansa, who was killed.
69 – Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeated Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
1028 Henry III, son of Conrad, was elected king of the Germans.
1205 Battle of Adrianople between Bulgarians and Crusaders.
1294 Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong.
1341 Sacking of Saluzzo by Italian-Angevine troops under Manfred V of Saluzzo.
1434 The foundation stone of Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes was laid.
1471 The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians under Warwick at the battle of Barnet; the Earl of Warwick was killed and Edward IV resumed the throne.
1699 Birth of Khalsa the brotherhood of the Sikh religion, in Northern India in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1775 The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage – the first abolitionist society in North America – was organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
1828 Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary.
1846 The Donner Party of pioneers left Springfield, Illinois, for California, on what became a year-long journey of hardship, cannibalism, and survival.
1849 Hungary declared itself independent of Austria with Lajos Kossuth as its leader.
1860 The first Pony Express rider reached Sacramento, California.
1864 Battle of Dybbøl: A Prussian-Austrian army defeated Denmark and gained control of Schleswig. Denmark surrendered the province in the following peace settlement.
1865 Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1865 U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family were attacked in their home by Lewis Powell.
1866 Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, was born (d. 1936).
1881 The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupted in El Paso, Texas.
1890 The Pan-American Union was founded by the First International Conference of American States.
1894 Thomas Edison demonstrated the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence.
1904 Sir John Gielgud, English actor, was born (d. 2000).
1912 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11.40pm in the North Atlantic, and sank the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
1927 The first Volvo car premiered in Gothenburg.
1927 Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist, Nobel laureate, was born (d. 2007).
1931 Spanish Cortes Generales deposed King Alfonso XIII and proclaimed the 2nd Spanish Republic.
1932 A crowd of about 1500 rioted in Queen Street.
1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was born.
1935 Black Sunday Storm, the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl.
1941 Julie Christie, British actress, was born.
1941 World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organisation was put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Power after theOperation 25 invasion.
1941 – Rommel attacked Tobruk.
1944 Bombay Explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbour killsed300 caused economic damage valued then at 20 million pounds.
1945 – Osijek, Croatia, was liberated from fascist occupation.
1945 – Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, 8th Prime Minister of Samoa, was born.
1945 Ritchie Blackmore, English guitarist (Deep Purple), was born.
1951 Julian Lloyd Webber, English cellist, was born.
1956 In Chicago videotape was first demonstrated.
1958 The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 fell from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1961 Robert Carlyle, British actor, was born.
1969 Academy Award for Best Actress was a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.
1973 David Miller, American tenor (Il Divo), was born.
1978 – Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in Tbilisi against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
1981 The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102) completed its first test flight.
1986 In retaliation for the April 5 bombing in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen, U.S. president Ronald Reagan ordered major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people.
1986 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) hailstones fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92 – these were the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1988 The USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will.
1988 The Soviet Union signed an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1994 In a U.S. friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two United States Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
1999 NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees.
1999 A severe hailstorm struck Sydney causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
2002 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country’s military.
2003 The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
2003 U.S. troops in Baghdad captured Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the MS Achille Lauro in 1985.
2005 The Oregon Supreme Court nullified marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County.
2007 At least 200,000 demonstrators in Ankara protested against the possible candidacy of incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
2010 – Nearly 2,700 people were killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.
2014 – Twin bomb blasts in Abuja, Nigeria, killed at least 75 people and injured 141 others.
2014 – Two hundred seventy-six schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok, Northeastern Nigeria.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
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