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 underHernando 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).
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.
1849 – Mary E. Byrd, American astronomer and educator, was born (d. 1934).
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 1944).
1903 – Stewie Dempster, New Zealand cricketer, was born (d. 1974).
1905 Mantovani, Italian-born composer, was born (d. 1980).
1916 – Nita Barrow, Barbadian nurse and politician, 7th Governor-General of Barbados, was born (d. 1995).
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva.
1923 – The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counterInflation 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 theJefferson 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 thatGypsies 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 submarineUSS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1969 – 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstrationagainst 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.
206 – Al Jazeera English launched worldwide..
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.
2016 – Hong Kong High Court banned elected politicians Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from the city’s Parliament.[1]
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
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