8 Roman Empire general Tiberius defeated Dalmatians on the river Bathinus.
881 Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeated the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied.
1492 Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.
1527 First known letter was sent from North America by John Rut.
1645 Thirty Years’ War: Second Battle of Nördlingen (Battle of Allerheim).
1678 Robert LaSalle built the Le Griffon, the first known ship built on the Great Lakes.
1783 Mount Asama erupted in Japan, killing 35,000 people.
1801 Joseph Paxton, English gardener, was born (d. 1865).
1811 Elisha Graves Otis, American inventor, was born (d. 1861).
1811 First ascent of Jungfrau, third highest summit in the Bernese Alps.
1852 First Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event. Harvard won.
1860 The Second Land War began in New Zealand.
1860 W. K. Dickson, Scottish inventor, was born (d. 1935).
1867 Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born (d. 1947).
1872 – Anthony Trollope, one of the Victorian era’s most famous novelists, landed at Bluff at the start of a two-month tour of New Zealand.
1887 Rupert Brooke, English poet, was born (d. 1915).
1900 The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company was founded.
1913 Wheatland Hop Riot.
1914 – World War I: Germany declared war against France.
1916 Battle of Romani – Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeated an attacking Ottoman army, under the command ofFriedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal, and beginning the Ottoman retreat from t.e Sinai.
1920 P. D. James, English novelist, was born (d.2014).
1923 Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th President of the United States following the death of Warren G. Harding the previous day.
1924 Leon Uris, American novelist, was born (d. 2003).
1926 Tony Bennett, American singer, was born.
1934 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of President and Chancellor into Führer.
1936 Jesse Owens won the 100 meter dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics.
1938 Terry Wogan, Irish television presenter, was born.
1940 Italy began the invasion of British Somaliland.
1941 Five days after its arrival in Wellington, the four-masted barquePamir was seized in prize by the New Zealand government, which then regarded Finland as ‘territory in enemy occupation’.
1941 Martha Stewart, American media personality, was born.
1949 The National Basketball Association was founded in the United States.
1958 The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travelled beneath the Arctic ice cap.
1960 Niger gained independence from France.
1972 The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1975 A privately chartered Boeing 707 crashed into the mountainside near Agadir, Morocco killing 188.
1981 Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launched the Antiimperialist Action Front-Suxxali Reew Mi.
1985 Sonny Bill Williams, New Zealand rugby and league footballer, was born.
1997 Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria; 40-76 villagers killed.
2001 The Real IRA detonated a car bomb in Ealing injuring seven people.
2005 President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya of Mauritania was overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia.
2007 Keeping Stock was launched.
2010 – Widespread rioting erupted in Karachi, Pakistan, after the assassination of a local politician, leaving at least 85 dead and at least 17 billion Pakistani rupees (US$200 million) in damage.
2014 – A 6.1 magnitude earthquake killed at least 617 people and injured more than 2,400 in Yunnan, China.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia