1373 Julian of Norwich had visions which were later transcribed in herRevelations.
1497 Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola.
1515 Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk were officially married at Greenwich.
1568 Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots, were defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.
1619 Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was executed in The Hague after being convicted of treason.
1648 Construction of the Red Fort at Delhi was completed.
1730 Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born (d. 1782).
1779 War of Bavarian Succession: Russian and French mediators at theCongress of Teschen negotiated an end to the war.
1780 Cumberland Compact signed by leaders of the settlers in early Tennessee.
1787 Captain Arthur Phillip left Portsmouth with eleven ships full of convicts (First Fleet) to establish a penal colony in Australia.
1804 Forces sent by Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli to retake Derne from the Americans attacked the city.
1830 Ecuador gained its independence from Gran Colombia.
1842 Arthur Sullivan, English composer, was born(d. 1900).
1846 – Mexican-American War: The United States declared war on Mexico.
1848 First performance of Finland’s national anthem.
186 American Civil War: Queen Victoria issueds a “proclamation of neutrality” which recognised the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.
1861 – The Great Comet of 1861 was discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales.
1864American Civil War: Battle of Resaca began with Union General Sherman fighting toward Atlanta, Georgia.
1865 American Civil War: Battle of Palmito Ranch – in far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War ended with a Confederate victory.
1880 Thomas Edison performed the first test of his electric railway.
1883 Georgios Papanikolaou, Greek doctor, inventor of the Pap smear, was born (d. 1962).
1888 With the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”), Brazil abolished slavery.
1907 Dame Daphne du Maurier, English author, was born (d. 1989).
1909 The first Giro d’Italia took place in Milan. Italian cyclist Luigi Gannawas the winner.
1912 The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) was established in the United Kingdom.
1913 Igor Sikorsky became the first man to pilot a four-engine aircraft.
1917 Three children reported the first apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal.
1922 Beatrice Arthur, American actress, was born (d. 2009).
1936 NZ National Party was formed.
1937 Trevor Baylis, English inventor (wind up radio) was born.
1939 The first commercial FM radio station in the United States was launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut – it later became WDRC-FM.
1940 Bruce Chatwin, British writer, was born (d. 1989).
1940 World War II: Germany’s conquest of France started as the German army crossed the Meuse River. Winston Churchill made his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech to the House of Commons.
1940 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fled the Nazi invasion in the Netherlands to Great Britain. Princess Juliana took her children to Canada.
1941 World War II: Yugoslav royal colonel Dragoljub Mihailović started fighting with German occupation troops, beginning the Serbian resistance.
1943 World War II: German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrendered to Allied forces.
1947 Francis Hodgkins, the first New Zealand artist to exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts, died.
1947 – Mabel Howard became New Zealand’s, and the Commonwealth’s, first female Cabinet Minister.
1948 Arab-Israeli War: the Kfar Etzion massacre was committed by Arab irregulars.
1950 Danny Kirwan, British musician (Fleetwood Mac), was born.
1950 Stevie Wonder, American singer and musician, was born.
1950 The first round of the Formula One World Championship was held atSilverstone.
1952 The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India, held its first sitting.
1954 Johnny Logan, Irish singer and songwriter, was born.
1954 Anti-National Service Riots, by Chinese Middle School students in Singapore.
1958 During a visit to Caracas, Vice President Richard Nixon‘s car was attacked by anti-American demonstrators.
1958 The trade mark Velcro was registered.
1958 – May 1958 crisis: a group of French military officers lead a coup in Algiers, demanding that a government of national unity be formed with Charles de Gaulle at its head in order to defend French control of Algeria.
1960 Hundreds of UC Berkeley students congregated for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thirty-one students were arrested, and the Free Speech Movement was born.
1967 Dr. Zakir Hussain became the third President of India – the first Muslim President of Indian Union.
1969 Race riots in Kuala Lumpur.
1972 Faulty electrical wiring ignited a fire underneath the Playtown Cabaret in Osaka, Japan. Blocked exits and non-functional elevators cause 118 fatalities, with many victims leaping to their deaths.
1972 – The Troubles: a car bombing outside a crowded pub in Belfast sparked a two-day gun battle involving the Provisional IRA, Ulster Volunteer Force and British Army. Seven people were killed and over 66 injured.
1980 An F3 tornado hit Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
1981 Mehmet Ali Ağca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
1985 Police stormed MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.
1986 Alexander Rybak, Norwegian Eurovision Song Contest winner, was born.
1989 Large groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike.
1992 Li Hongzhi gave the first public lecture on Falun Gong in Changchun, China.
1994 Johnny Carson made his last television appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.
1995 – New Zealand won the Americas Cup for the first time.
1996 Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh killed 600 people.
1998 Race riots break out in Jakarta, shops owned by Indonesians of Chinese descent were looted and women raped.
1998 – India carried out two nuclear tests at Pokhran.
2000 In Enschede, the Netherlands, a fireworks factory exploded, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.
2005 The Andijan Massacre in Uzbekistan.
2006 A major rebellion occurs in several prisons in Brazil.
2007 – Construction of the Calafat-Vidin Bridge between Romania and Bulgaria started.
2011 – 2011 Charsadda bombing: in the Charsadda District of Pakistan, two bombs exploded, resulting in 98 deaths 140 wounded.
2014 – An explosion at an underground coal mine in south-western Turkey killed 301 miners.
2014 – Major floods in Southeast Europe killed at least 47 people.
2015 – An industrial fire in Valenzuela, Philippines killed 72 people.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
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