- 491 Flavius Anastasius becomes the Byzantine Emperor, as Anastasius I Dicorus, when he is chosen by Empress-dowager Ariadne
- 672 Deusdedit II begins his reign as Catholic Pope
- 1079 Bishop Stanislaus of Kraków is executed by order of Bolesław II of Poland
- 1241 Battle of Mohi: Mongols led by Batu and Subedei defeat Hungarian King Béla IV in the major battle in during Mongolian invasion of Hungary, with 30,000 Hungarians slain
1512 Battle of Ravenna: French forces under Gaston de Foix defeat the Holy League in a major battle of the Italian Wars
- 1551 English premier John Dudley appointed Duke of Northumberland
- 1564 England and France sign the Treaty of Troyes
- 1564 Liege Prince-Bishop Robert van Bergen resigns
- 1579 Venlo joins the Union of Utrecht
- 1580 Drenthe joins the Union of Utrecht
- 1612 Last public burning at the stake in England - Edward Wightman for heresy in Lichfield
- 1654 Anglo-Swedish alliance: commercial trade agreement between England and Sweden is signed
Battle of Cassel
1677 Battle of Cassel: French troops defeat a combined Dutch-Spanish force under William of Orange
- 1689 King William III and Queen Mary II crowned as joint rulers of England, Scotland and Ireland
- 1713 Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Prussia, Savoy, Portugal & France agree the Treaty of Utrecht; France cedes Maritime provinces in North America to Britain
- 1750 Jack Slack retains the Champion of England boxing title after defeating Frenchman Jean Petit in 7 rounds in Harlston, England, acknowledged as the first international prizefight
- 1783 Hostilities formally cease in the American Revolutionary War after the Continental Congress proclaims the "Cessation of Arms" against His Britannic Majesty [1]
- 1801 Johann von Schiller's "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" premieres in Leipzig
Napoleon Exiled to Elba
1814 Napoléon Bonaparte abdicates unconditionally and is exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean
- 1828 Foundation of Bahia Blanca, Argentina
Schumann Hears Paganini Play
1830 Robert Schumann hears Italian violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt
1831 The 12th century Lewis chess pieces are exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shortly after their rediscovery in a sand bank on the Scottish Isle of Lewis
- 1848 Hungary becomes constitutional monarchy under King Ferdinand of Austria
- 1853 Steamboat ferry 'Jenny Lind' boiler explosion kills at least 31 passengers in San Francisco Bay, California
- 1856 Battle of Rivas; Costa Rica beats William Walker's invading Nicaraguans
- 1862 Confederates surrender at Fort Pulaski, Georgia
- 1863 Battle of Suffolk, Virginia (Norfleet House)
Lincoln Urges Conciliation
1865 Abraham Lincoln urges a spirit of generous conciliation during reconstruction
- 1865 Battle of Mobile, Alamaba evacuated by Confederates
- 1868 The Shogunate is abolished in Japan
- 1881 Spelman College founded as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in basement of Friendship Baptist Church, Atlanta
- 1888 The Concertgebouw concert hall in Amsterdam is inaugurated
- 1890 Ellis Island, New York, designated as an immigration station
- 1891 8-year old Jewish tailor's daughter disappears in Greece, rumor spreads that she was a Christian girl ritually killed by Jews
- 1895 Anaheim completes its new electric light system
- 1896 Hungarian swimmer Alfréd Hajós beats Otto Herschmann of Austria by 0.6s to win the inaugural Olympic 100m freestyle final in 1:22.2 at the Athens Games; also takes out the 1,200m on the same day
- 1896 Irish tennis player John Boland, representing Great Britain wins both the men's singles and doubles finals at the Athens Olympics; Dionysios Kasdaglis of Greece loses both matches
1898 President McKinley asks for Spanish–American War declaration
- 1899 Treaty of Paris ratifies ends war; Spain cedes Puerto Rico to US
1900 The first modern submarine, designed and built by John Philip Holland, USS Holland, is acquired by the U.S. Navy
- 1902 Second Boer War: British forces defeat Boer commandos in Battle of Rooiwal, South Africa
- 1907 New York Giants future Baseball Hall of Fame backstop Roger Bresnahan becomes first catcher to wear shin guards
- 1909 Establishment of Tel Aviv by Jewish settlers (named 1910)
- 1912 Cornerstone of Technion laid in Haifa, Palestine
- 1912 The UK Parliament introduce a Irish home rule bill, granting Ireland its own bicameral parliament and be required to send a representative to the British House of Commons; Protestants in Ulster resist
Huerta Breaks with US
1914 Mexican President Victoriano Huerta breaks off diplomatic relations with the US
- 1919 The International Labour Organization is founded.
- 1921 Iowa imposes first state cigarette tax
- 1921 KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania broadcasts 1st radio sporting event, a boxing match between lightweights Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee
- 1921 The Emirate of Transjordan created
- 1921 Turkestan ASSR forms in Russian SFSR
- 1924 1st men's college swimming championships begin
- 1924 Socialists win Danish parliamentary elections
- 1924 WLS-AM in Chicago IL begins radio transmissions
- 1925 Abd el-Krims Rifkabylen beats French army in Morocco
- 1926 Flemish Economic Covenant (VEV) forms in Ghent
- 1927 Chilean general Carlos Ibáñez names himself president
- 1929 KLO-AM in Ogden UT begins radio transmissions
- 1929 Loetafoon celluloid film system demonstrated in Amsterdam
- 1936 First Butlins holiday camp opens in the UK at Ingoldmells, near Skegness
1936 Stanley Cup Final, Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, ON: Detroit Red Wings beat Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 for a 3-1 series win; Red Wings first SC Championship
- 1939 Hungary leaves League of Nations
1941 Germany blitzes Coventry, England
- 1941 Jewish Weekly newspaper taken control by Nazis
- 1941 Nazi occupiers in Netherlands confiscate Jewish assets
- 1942 US Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal established
- 1943 American helicopter designer Frank Piasecki, founder of Vertol, flies his first single-rotor craft [1]
- 1944 RAF bombs census bureau in The Hague
- 1945 Allied troops liberate Basket-Compascuum
1945 Four soldiers in the Sixth Armored Division of the US Third Army liberate the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, freeing thousands including Elie Wiesel
- 1945 SS burns & shoots 1,100 at Gardelegen
- 1945 US captures Tsugen Shima
- 1945 US troops conquers Mulheim, Oberhausen, Bochum, Unna, Essen
- 1950 US B-29 bomber shot down over Latvia
- 1952 The Battle of Nanri island takes place.
- 1953 Oveta Culp Hobby becomes 1st at Health, Education, & Welfare
- 1953 US Department of Health, Education and Welfare created
Marty
1955 "Marty" directed by Delbert Mann and starring Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, premieres in New York (Best Picture 1956)
Attempt on Chinese Premier
1955 Chartered Air India plane "Kashmir Princess" is bombed and crashes into the South China Sea in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by a Kuomintang secret agent
- 1956 French government decides to send 200,000 reservists to Algeria
- 1956 Singer Nat Cole attacked on stage of Birmingham theater in racial incident
- 1957 Britain agrees to Singaporean self-rule
Neruda Arrested
1957 Chilean poet Pablo Neruda arrested in Buenos Aires (later released)
- 1957 Ryan X-13 Vertijet becomes 1st jet to take-off & land vertically
- 1958 Brooks Hall in Civic Center dedicated in San Francisco, California
Drysdale's 2nd Opening Day HR
1959 Dodger pitcher Don Drysdale hits his 2nd Opening Day HR
- 1959 Dutch Prince Bernhard visits Lockheed factory
- 1961 Austrian 4th & last government of Raab resigns
Dylan at Folk City
1961 Bob Dylan makes his 1st appearance at Folk City, Greenwich Village, New York City
- 1962 New York Mets make a losing debut
Spahn's Left-Handed Record
1963 Milwaukee Braves future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn beats NY Mets, 6-1 for his 328th win; most by a left-hander in MLB history
Catholic Encyclical
1963 Pope John XXIII publishes encyclical "Pacem in terris", that peace between all peoples must be based on truth, justice, love and freedom
- 1963 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1965 40 tornadoes strike US midwest killing 272 & injuring 5,000
- 1966 Emmett Ashford becomes first African American major league baseball umpire in Washington Senators’ game against the Cleveland Indians at D.C. Stadium
Strangers in the Night
1966 Frank Sinatra records "Strangers in the Night" single for his album of the same name, later reaches #1 on the Billboard charts
Election of Interest
1967 Harlem (NYC) voters defy Congress and re-elect Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in special election to fill the seat from which he had been expelled
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead
1967 Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" debuts in London at the Old Vic Theatre
- 1968 Polish Marshal Spychalski succeeds Ochab as president
- 1968 Political activist Rudi Dutschke (28) seriously wounded by an East German neo-Nazi's assassination attempt in West Berlin, West Germany
- 1968 WHED TV channel 15 in Hanover, NH (PBS) begins broadcasting
- 1970 Apollo 13 launched to Moon; unable to land, returns in 6 days
- 1970 Beatles' "Let It Be" single goes #1 and stays #1 for 2 weeks
- 1970 San Francisco beats Cincinnati 2-1, only day Reds aren't in 1st place in 1970
- 1971 "Johnny Johnson" opens/closes at Edison Theater NYC for 1 performance
- 1971 WBFF TV channel 45 in Baltimore, MD (IND) begins broadcasting
- 1972 Benjamin Hooks named to Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 1st African-American to serve
- 1972 USSR performs underground nuclear test
- 1974 WW II war criminal JP Philippa arrested
Baseball Trade
1975 Hank Aaron returns to County Stadium as a Milwaukee player after his off-season trade from the Atlanta Braves; Brewers beat Cleveland Indians, 6-2
- 1975 J. P. Parisé scores an 11 sec OT goal, to see the NY Islanders eliminate the NY Rangers in their ever 1st playoff advance
Luckenbach, Texas
1977 "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)" single released by Waylon Jennings (Billboard Song of the Year, 1977)
- 1977 Ireland sets fishing zone at 50 mile
Fall of Kampala
1979 Tanzanian army captures Kampala, the capital of Uganda forcing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to flee into exile in Libya
- 1980 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulates sexual harassment
- 1981 Race riot in London area of Brixton
Event of Interest
1981 Ronald Reagan arrives home from hospital after Hinkley shot him
- 1983 In the first 'supergrass' trial in Northern Ireland, fourteen Ulster Volunteer Force members are jailed for a total of two hundred years
- 1983 NASA launches RCA-F
- 1984 Challenger astronauts complete first in-space satellite repair
- 1984 Chinese troops invade Vietnam
- 1984 Soyuz T-11 returns to Earth
- 1986 A 1921 Canadian 50 cent coin is auctioned in New York for $22,000
- 1986 Dodge Morgan sailed solo nonstop around world in 150 days
- 1986 Halley's Comet makes closest approach to Earth this trip, 63 M km
- 1986 KXA-AM in Seattle WA changes call letters to KRPM
- 1987 Yankees score 12 runs in 7th inning vs KC Royals
- 1987 Zoja Ivanova wins 2nd female World Cup marathon (2:30:39)
- 1988 Royal Concert building in Amsterdam reopens
Sports History
1989 1st playoff goal scored by a goalie, Ron Hextall of visiting Philadelphia Flyers shoots into Washington Capitols empty net while his team is shorthanded in 8-5 win
- 1989 Flyers, scores short-handed into an empty net beating Caps 8-5
- 1990 Customs officers in Middlesbrough, United Kingdom, say they have seized what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq.
- 1990 MLB California Angels Mark Langston & Mike Witt, no-hit Seattle, 1-0
- 1990 NY Lotto pays $35 million to two winners (numbers are 6-14-24-32-34-51)
- 1990 NY Rangers beat NY Islanders 6-1, Rangers lead 3-1 in preliminary playoffs
- 1991 NYC's Museum of Broadcasting becomes "Museum of Radio & Television"
- 1991 Space Shuttle STS 37 (Atlantis 8) lands at Edwards Air Force Base, California
- 1991 UN Security Council issues formal cease fire with Iraq declaration
- 1992 BPAA US Open by Robert Lawrence
- 1992 Irish Republican Army bombs London financial district, killing 3
- 1992 MLB Cleveland Indians set team record for long game loss to Boston Red Sox (19 innings - 6½ hr)
- 1993 450 prisoners riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continue for ten days, citing grievances about prison conditions and the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis)
- 1993 Kirsan Ilumzjinov installed as president of Kalmukkie
- 1996 Detroit Red Wings become 2nd NHL team to win 60 games in a season
- 1996 Revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical "The King & I", starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Donna Murphy, premieres at Neil Simon Theater, NYC; runs for 781 performances
- 2000 MLB: Pacific Bell Park (now Oracle Park) in San Francisco, California and Comerica Park in Detroit, Michigan open
- 2001 Detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, People's Republic of China after a collision with an J-8 fighter are released
Coup d'état
2002 An attempted coup d'état takes place in Venezuela against President Hugo Chávez
- 2002 The Ghriba synagogue bombing by Al Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia
- 2007 Two bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers kill 33 people and wounds a further 222
Event of Interest
2009 Michael van Gerwen wins his first tournament victory in the PDC by beating Vincent van der Voort in the final of the Players Championship in Taunton
- 2010 "The night of Sora Aoi", Japanese actress and adult video star Sora Aoi joins twitter prompting many Chinese fans to try and circumnavigate Chinese censorship
- 2011 Minsk Metro bombing in Belarus kills at least 15 and injures over 200
- 2012 2011 London riot looter is jailed for 11 years after starting a fire at a furniture retailer
- 2012 8.6 magnitude earthquake and 8.2 aftershock occurs off the coast of Indonesia
Buffett Diagnosed with Cancer
2012 Billionaire Warren Buffett is diagnosed with prostate cancer
- 2012 Prime Minister of Greece, Lucas Papademos, resigns and calls an election for May 6
- 2012 South Korean legislative elections result in the governing Saenuri Party retaining governance
- 2013 14 people are killed in clashes between drug traffickers and police in Michoacán, Mexico
- 2013 57 people are killed by the Syrian Army in Daraa Governorate, Syria
- 2013 Fossilized dinosaur eggs with embryos are discovered in China
- 2013 Two women are beheaded for sorcery in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
- 2015 Amy Schumer hosts the 2015 MTV Movie Awards
Obama Meets Castro
2015 Barack Obama and Raúl Castro meet in Panama, the first meeting of US and Cuban heads of state since the Cuban Revolution
- 2016 UN-backed ceasefire comes into effect in Yemen conflict between Iranian-backed Houthis rebels and government forces
- 2016 Updated "Tree of Life" published in "Nature Microbiology" by scientists from Berkeley University in California
- 2019 EU leaders agree to a six-month extension to Brexit after UK parliament fails to reach any consensus
Pope Blames the 1960s
2019 Ex-Pope Benedict XVI claims Catholic sexual abuse caused in part by 1960s sexual revolution
- 2019 First day of voting in Indian general elections, the world's largest democracy with 900 million eligible voters in the world's largest-ever election (till 23rd May)
- 2019 Israel's Beresheet spacecraft, the first privately-funded mission to the moon, crashes on the moon
2019 Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is overthrown and arrested by the army in Khartoum after 30 years in power following massive street protests
Assange Arrested
2019 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by police and arrested on failure to appear in court on US extradition charges
- 2020 Brazil is the 1st country in the southern hemisphere to report more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19, with 1,056 deaths and 19,638 cases
- 2021 20-year-old Daunte Wright shot and killed at a traffic stop by police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, who says they mistook their gun for a taser
- 2021 Peruvian general election: Free Peru party wins most seats but not a majority, Pedro Castillo wins presidency (not declared till 19 July)
- 2021 Tropical cyclone Seroja makes landfall in Western Australia near the town of Kalbarri with winds up to 170km/h (105mph)
- 2022 Mayor of Ukrainian city Mariupol says over 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege, with the likely death toll twice this, as bodies are "carpeted through the streets" [1]
PM Shehbaz Sharif
2022 Shehbaz Sharif elected Pakistan's new Prime Minister by the country's parliament, replacing Imran Khan [1]
- 2023 Largest cosmic explosion ever recorded (AT2021lwx); fireball 100 times the size of the solar system with a brightness 2 trillion times the sun’s, thought to be a large gas cloud entering a supermassive black hole eight million light-years away [1]
- 2023 Myanmar military kill at least 133 civilians, including children, in an airstrike on Kanbalu township in an area not under control of the military junta [1]
- 2023 NHL Boston Bruins break record for most team points in a season at 133, in a 5-2 victory over visiting Washington Capitols; Montreal Canadiens held record of 132 since 1977
- 2023 Russian volcano Shiveluch erupts spewing ash 20 kilometers into the air in the country's eastern Kamchatka region [1]
- 2024 Bogotá begins water rationing for the first time, as water reservoirs run very low due to drought and El Niño [1]
- 2024 Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan sentenced to death for embezzlement, bribery and banking violations worth 304 trillion dong ($12.46 billion), the country's largest-ever fraud case [1]
- 2025 China raises US tariffs to 125% in retaliation against Trump excluding China from the 90-day tariff pause and increasing China's tariffs to 145% [1]
