Events Pre-1600 363 – Roman emperor Julian leaves Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sasanian Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death. 1046 – Nasir Khusraw begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama. 1279 – The Livonian Order is defeated in the Battle of Aizkraukle by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.
1601–1900 1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published. 1766 – Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans. 1770 – Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence) five years later. 1811 – Peninsular War: A French force under the command of Marshal Victor is routed while trying to prevent an Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese army from lifting the Siege of Cádiz in the Battle of Barrosa. 1824 – First Anglo-Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma. 1825 – Roberto Cofresí, one of the last successful Caribbean pirates, is defeated in combat and captured by authorities. 1836 – Samuel Colt establishes his first factory to produce the recently patented production-model revolver, the .34-caliber "Paterson". 1850 – The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened. 1860 – Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna vote in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. 1868 – Mefistofele, an opera by Arrigo Boito, receives its premiere performance at La Scala. 1872 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake.
1901–present 1906 – Moro Rebellion: United States Army troops bring overwhelming force against the native Moros in the First Battle of Bud Dajo, leaving only six survivors. 1912 – Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, employing them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines. 1931 – The British Raj: Gandhi–Irwin Pact is signed. 1933 – Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections, which allows the Nazis to later pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship. 1939 – Spanish Civil War: The National Defence Council seizes control of the republican government in a coup d'etat, with the intention of negotiating an end to the war. 1940 – Six high-ranking members of the Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre. 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces capture Batavia, capital of Dutch East Indies, which is left undefended after the withdrawal of the KNIL garrison and Australian Blackforce battalion to Buitenzorg and Bandung. 1943 – World War II: General strike and protest march in Athens against rumours of forced mobilization of Greek workers for work in Germany, resulting in clashes with the Axis occupation forces and collaborationist police. The decree is withdrawn on the next day. 1944 – World War II: The Red Army begins the Uman–Botoșani offensive in the western Ukrainian SSR. 1946 – Cold War: Winston Churchill delivers his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Missouri. 1953 – Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, dies at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage four days earlier. 1957 – Sutton Wick air crash: A Blackburn Beverley of 53 Squadron, Royal Air Forces, crashes into the village of Sutton Wick, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), killing most of the crew and passengers and two local residents. 1960 – Indonesian President Sukarno dismisses the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), 1955 democratically elected parliament, and replaces it with DPR-GR, the parliament of his own selected members. 1963 – American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. 1963 – Aeroflot Flight 191 crashes while landing at Aşgabat International Airport, killing 12. 1965 – March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against the British colonial presence. 1966 – BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707 aircraft, breaks apart in mid-air due to clear-air turbulence and crashes into Mount Fuji, Japan, killing all 124 people on board. 1967 – Lake Central Airlines Flight 527 crashes near Marseilles, Ohio, killing 38. 1968 – Air France Flight 212 crashes into La Grande Soufrière, killing all 63 aboard. 1970 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations. 1973 – An Iberia McDonnell Douglas DC-9 collides in mid-air with a Spantax Convair 990 Coronado over Nantes, France, killing all 68 people aboard the DC-9, including music manager Michael Jeffery. 1974 – Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal. 1978 – The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the German-American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters. 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1 million units around the world. 1982 – Soviet probe Venera 14 lands on Venus. 1991 – Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 109 crashes in Venezuela, killing 45. 1993 – Palair Macedonian Airlines Flight 301 crashes at Skopje International Airport in Petrovec, North Macedonia, killing 83. 2001 – In Mina, Saudi Arabia, 35 pilgrims are killed in a stampede on the Jamaraat Bridge during the Hajj. 2002 – An earthquake in Mindanao, Philippines, kills 15 people and injures more than 100. 2003 – In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed in the Haifa bus 37 suicide bombing. 2011 – An Antonov An-148 crashes in Russia's Alexeyevsky District, Belgorod Oblast during a test flight, killing all seven aboard. 2012 – Tropical Storm Irina kills over 75 as it passes through Madagascar. 2012 – Two people are killed and six more are injured in a shooting at a hair salon in Bucharest, Romania. 2018 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pause the Deir ez-Zor campaign due to the Turkish-led invasion of Afrin. 2021 – Pope Francis begins a historic visit to Iraq amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 – Twenty people are killed and 30 injured in a suicide car bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia. 2023 – The 2023 Estonian parliamentary election is held, with two centre-right liberal parties gaining an absolute majority for the first time. 2023 – A group of four prisoners escape from the Nouakchott Civil Prison, before being caught the next day.
Births
Pre-1600 1133 – Henry II of England (died 1189) 1224 – Saint Kinga of Poland (died 1292) 1324 – David II of Scotland (died 1371) 1326 – Louis I of Hungary (died 1382) 1340 – Cansignorio della Scala, Lord of Verona (died 1375) 1451 – William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, English Earl (died 1491) 1512 – Gerardus Mercator, Flemish mathematician, cartographer, and philosopher (died 1594) 1523 – Rodrigo de Castro Osorio, Spanish cardinal (died 1600) 1527 – Ulrich, Duke of Mecklenburg (died 1603) 1539 – Christoph Pezel, German theologian (died 1604) 1563 – John Coke, English civil servant and politician (died 1644) 1575 – William Oughtred, English minister and mathematician (died 1660) 1585 – John George I, Elector of Saxony (died 1656) 1585 – Frederick I, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg (died 1638)
1601–1900 1637 – Jan van der Heyden, Dutch painter and engineer (died 1712) 1658 – Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, French explorer and politician, 3rd Colonial Governor of Louisiana (died 1730) 1693 – Johann Jakob Wettstein, Swiss theologian and scholar (died 1754) 1696 – Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian painter (died 1770) 1703 – Vasily Trediakovsky, Russian poet and playwright (died 1768) 1713 – Edward Cornwallis, English general and politician, Governor of Gibraltar (died 1776) 1713 – Frederick Cornwallis, English archbishop (died 1783) 1723 – Princess Mary of Great Britain (died 1773) 1733 – Vincenzo Galeotti, Italian-Danish dancer and choreographer (died 1816) 1739 – Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge, American colonel and physician (died 1819) 1748 – Jonas Carlsson Dryander, Swedish botanist and biologist (died 1810) 1748 – William Shield, English violinist and composer (died 1829) 1750 – Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison, French scholar and academic (died 1805) 1751 – Jan Křtitel Kuchař, Czech organist, composer, and educator (died 1829) 1774 – Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse, Danish organist and composer (died 1842) 1779 – Benjamin Gompertz, English mathematician and statistician (died 1865) 1785 – Carlo Odescalchi, Italian cardinal (died 1841) 1794 – Jacques Babinet, French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer (died 1872) 1794 – Robert Cooper Grier, American lawyer and jurist (died 1870) 1800 – Georg Friedrich Daumer, German poet and philosopher (died 1875) 1814 – Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, German historian and academic (died 1889) 1815 – John Wentworth, American journalist and politician, 19th Mayor of Chicago (died 1888) 1817 – Austen Henry Layard, English archaeologist, academic, and politician, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (died 1894) 1830 – Étienne-Jules Marey, French physiologist and chronophotographer (died 1904) 1830 – Charles Wyville Thomson, Scottish historian and zoologist (died 1882) 1834 – Félix de Blochausen, Luxembourgian politician, 6th Prime Minister of Luxembourg (died 1915) 1834 – Marietta Piccolomini, Italian soprano (died 1899) 1853 – Howard Pyle, American author and illustrator (died 1911) 1862 – Siegbert Tarrasch, German chess player and theoretician (died 1934) 1867 – Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, Canadian lawyer and politician, 14th Premier of Quebec (died 1952) 1869 – Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal (died 1952) 1870 – Frank Norris, American journalist and author (died 1902) 1870 – Evgeny Paton, French-Ukrainian engineer (died 1953) 1871 – Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-Russian economist and philosopher (died 1919) 1871 – Konstantinos Pallis, Greek general and politician, Minister Governor-General of Macedonia (died 1941) 1873 – Olav Bjaaland, Norwegian skier and explorer (died 1961) 1874 – Henry Travers, English-American actor (died 1965) 1875 – Harry Lawson, Australian politician, 27th Premier of Victoria (died 1952) 1876 – Thomas Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, English lawyer and politician, 8th Lord Chief Justice of England (died 1947) 1876 – Elisabeth Moore, American tennis player (died 1959) 1879 – William Beveridge, English economist and academic (died 1963) 1879 – Andres Larka, Estonian general and politician, 1st Estonian Minister of War (died 1943) 1880 – Sergei Natanovich Bernstein, Russian mathematician and academic (died 1968) 1882 – Dora Marsden, English author and activist (died 1960) 1883 – Pauline Sperry, American mathematician (died 1967) 1885 – Marius Barbeau, Canadian ethnographer and academic (died 1969) 1886 – Dong Biwu, Chinese judge and politician, Chairman of the People's Republic of China (died 1975) 1886 – Freddie Welsh, Welsh boxer (died 1927) 1887 – Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian guitarist and composer (died 1959) 1894 – Henry Daniell, English-American actor (died 1963) 1898 – Zhou Enlai, Chinese politician, 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China (died 1976) 1898 – Misao Okawa, Japanese super-centenarian (died 2015) 1900 – Lilli Jahn, Jewish German doctor (died 1944) 1900 – Johanna Langefeld, German guard and supervisor of three Nazi concentration camps (died 1974)
1901–present