63 BC Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations.
663 – Fourth Council of Toledo.
1360 The French Franc was created.
1408 – Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reached Moscow.
1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputised Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and led to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.
1492 Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti.
1496 – King Manuel I of Portugal issued a decree of expulsion of “heretics” from the country.
1590 – Niccolò Sfondrati became Pope Gregory XIV.
1766 James Christie held his first sale.
1830 Christina Rossetti, English poet, was born (d. 1894).
1839 George Armstrong Custer, American general, was born (d. 1876
1848 California Gold Rush: US President James K. Polk confirmed that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
1859 John Jellicoe, British admiral, was born (d. 1935).
1872 Harry Nelson Pillsbury, American chess player, was born (d. 1906).
1879 Clyde Cessna, American aeroplane manufacturer, was born (d 1954).
1890 New Zealand’s first one-man-one-vote election took place.
1901 Walt Disney, American animated film producer, was born (d. 1966).
1932 German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein was granted an American visa.
1932 Little Richard, American singer and pianist, was born.
1933 Prohibition in the United States ended when : Utah ratified theTwenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States).
1938 J. J. Cale, American songwriter, was born (d. 2013).
1943 Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attacked Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city.
1936 The Soviet Union adopted a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
1945 Flight 19 was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
1955 E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott
1957 Sukarno expelled all Dutch people from Indonesia.
1958 Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
1958 The Preston bypass, the UK‘s first stretch of motorway, opened to traffic for the first time.
1963 Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, English ski jumper was born.
1964 Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the Vietnam War.
1983 Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina.
2005 – The Lake Tanganyika earthquake caused significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2005 – The Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership was registered there.
2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government in Fiji.
2007 – Westroads Mall massacre: A gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.
2012 – At least 8 people were killed and 12 others injured after a 5.6 earthquake struck Iran’s South Khorasan Province.
2013 – Militants attacked a Defense Ministry compound in Sana’a, Yemen, killing at least 56 people and injuring 200 others.
2014 – The first flight test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft launched successfully.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
Posted by homepaddock 
