- 1256 Augustinian monastic order constituted at the Lecceto Monastery when Pope Alexander IV issues papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae
- 1303 Flemish forces conquer Middelburg in Zeeland
- 1415 Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance
1471 Battle of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire: Final battle between the Houses of Lancaster and York sees Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster, killed and King Edward IV return to his throne, restoring political stability to England until his death in 1483
- 1493 Spanish Pope Alexander VI decrees in the papal bull "Inter caetera" that all lands west of a line 100 leagues west of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands belong to Castile, ultimately dividing the Americas between Spain and Portugal
Carthusian Martyrs Executed
1535 Five Carthusian monks from London Charterhouse monastery hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, London, for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the Church of England
- 1540 Venice and Turkey sign Treaty of Constantinople
- 1572 Dutch towns of Flushing and Veere side with Dutch rebels, the Sea Beggers (Geuzen) during the uprising against the Spanish
- 1626 Peter Minuit becomes director-general of New Netherlands
- 1634 Johannes van Walbeeck's fleet of four ships leaves Holland tasked with taking Curaçao from the Spanish
- 1652 Battle of Etampes: French army under Turenne beats Fronde rebels
- 1686 Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines
Declaration of Indulgence
1688 King James II orders his Declaration of Indulgence read in English churches
- 1747 William IV Prince of Orange appointed Stadtholder of Overijssel
- 1776 Rhode Island declares independence from Great Britain
- 1780 Charles Bunbury on Diomed wins 1st Epsom Derby
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1780 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is founded in Boston, with James Bowdoin, John Adams, and Samuel Adams as founding members
Herschel Observes a Red Glow
1783 William Herschel reports seeing a red glow near lunar crater Aristarchus
Siege of Seringapatam
1799 Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam ends the Siege of Seringapatam when the city is assaulted and the Sultan of Mysore Tipu Sultan is killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris
- 1805 Henry C. Overing buys 80 acres of Throggs Neck in the Bronx
- 1814 Bourbon reign restored in France
Decree of Valencia
1814 King Ferdinand VII of Spain signs the Decree of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism
- 1818 The Netherlands and Britain sign a treaty to combat the slave trade
- 1843 Great Britain annexes Natal
- 1846 US state of Michigan ends the death penalty
- 1847 NY State creates a Board of Commissioners of Emigration
- 1858 War of Reform (Mexico); Liberals establish capital at Vera Cruz
- 1859 Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge, linking the English counties of Devon and Cornwall
- 1861 At Gretna, Louisiana, one of the first guns for the Confederate Navy is cast
Union Troops at Yorktown
1862 George McClellan halts his troops before Yorktown, VA as the town is full of armed torpedoes left by CS Brigadier General Gabrial Rains
- 1863 U.S. Civil War: Battle of Chancellorsville, action at Salem Church; Union Army withdraws
- 1864 -16] actions at Drewry's Bluff, Virginia
- 1865 Battle of Citronelle, Alabama; Confederate General Richard Taylor surrenders to Union General Edward Canby
- 1866 Woodward's Gardens opens to the public in San Francisco
- 1868 World's largest book, the "Kuthodaw Inscription Shrines," recording the whole of Buddhist scriptures on 729 marble tablets, is completed and opened to the public in Mandalay, Burma
- 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings play their first official baseball game, defeating the Great Western Base Ball Club 45-9
- 1869 Japanese Imperial forces win the naval Battle of Hakodate over an Ezo Republic fleet
- 1871 First baseball league game in the National Association of Base Ball Players: Fort Wayne defeats Cleveland 2 to 0, and Deacon Jim White gets the first hit, a double
1878 Thomas Edison's phonograph is shown for the first time at the Grand Opera House in NYC
- 1883 John Gordon Cashman publishes the first edition of the "Vicksburg Evening Post" in Mississippi
- 1886 Haymarket riot in Chicago; bomb kills 7 policemen
- 1888 Italy and Spain sign a military agreement
- 1893 Cowboy Bill Pickett invents bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground
- 1895 Wilhelm Kienzl's opera "Der Evangelimann" (The Evangelist) is first performed at the Neues Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin, Germany
- 1896 First edition of the London Daily Mail, costs a halfpenny
- 1896 Grease fire ignites half ton of dynamite at Cripple Creek, Colorado
- 1897 Fire in Paris bazaar at Rue Jean Goujon kills 200
1904 Charles Rolls meets Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. Go on to form the car manufacturer Roll-Royce. [1]
- 1904 United States begins construction of the Panama Canal
- 1910 Canadian Currency Act, 1910, receives Royal Assent
Royal Canadian Navy Established
1910 Wilfrid Laurier passes the Naval Service Act, which creates the Royal Canadian Navy
- 1912 Italian mariners occupy Turkish Island of Rhodes
- 1915 Italy leaves the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany
- 1916 At request of US, Germany curtails its submarine warfare
- 1916 Ned Daly, Willie Pearse, Michael O'Hanrahan and Joseph Plunkett are executed by British authorities following the Easter Rising, at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin
- 1917 A flotilla of US destroyer ships arrive in Queenstown, Ireland, to aid in convoying ships to England
- 1919 Demonstrates organised by students erupt in China, after news from the Paris Peace Conference that the Allies intend to give Shangtung to Japan
- 1919 First legal Sunday baseball game in NYC, 35,000 watch the Phillies beat the NY Giants 4-3
- 1922 KNX-AM in Los Angeles CA begins radio transmissions
- 1923 Bloody street battles erupt in Vienna among Nazis, socialists, and police
- 1923 New York state revokes its Mullan-Gage Act Prohibition law; federal Volstead Act still in place
- 1924 German Republic election: fascists & communists win
- 1924 VIII Summer Olympic Games open at Olympic Stadium of Colombes, Paris, France
- 1925 League of Nations conference on arms control and poison gas usage
- 1927 First balloon flight over 40,000 feet takes place at Scott Field, Illinois
- 1927 Nicaragua agrees to a US supervised presidential election in 1928
Gehrig's Three Home Runs
1929 Lou Gehrig hits three consecutive HRs, Yankees 11, Tigers 9
- 1931 Mustafa Kemal Pasja becomes Turkish president
Al Capone Goes to Prison
1932 Al Capone enters Atlanta Penitentiary convicted of income tax evasion
- 1936 Pulitzer prize for the novel awarded to Harold L. Davis for "Honey in the Horn"
- 1938 Protestant Douglas Hyde is the only nominee for the position of the first President of Ireland
- 1940 21 "non-neutral" Nazis and Communists are arrested in the Netherlands
- 1942 Battle of Coral Sea begins (1st naval battle fought solely in air) between Japanese, US and Australian navies and air forces
- 1942 Food is first rationed in the US
- 1942 German occupiers imprison 450 prominent Dutch as hostages
- 1942 Pulitzer prize for a Novel awarded to Ellen Glasgow for "In this our Life"
Sports History
1943 NL Ford Frick demonstrates revised balata ball to reporters by bouncing it on his office carpet ball proves to be 50% livelier
- 1945 German forces in Bavaria surrender unconditionally to American commander Jacob L. Devers
German Forces Surrender
1945 German forces in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands surrender unconditionally to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath
- 1946 Five people die during a two-day riot at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay
- 1948 Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" is first performed, by the Boston Pops Orchestra, with Arthur Fiedler conducting
- 1948 The Hague Court of Justice convicts Nazi SS officer in the Netherlands Hans Rauter of Crimes against Humanity (executed 24 March 1949)
- 1949 Plane carrying the entire Torino Serie A soccer squad crashes on the outskirts of Turin, Italy; 31 killed; Torino awarded League title at the request of their rivals
Pulitzer to Hemingway
1953 Pulitzer Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway for "The Old Man and The Sea"
- 1954 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Bikini Island
- 1956 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll
- 1957 Alan Freed hosts "Rock n' Roll Show" 1st prime-time network rock show, cancelled after 4 episodes
- 1958 Alberto Lleras Camargo chosen as president of Colombia
- 1959 "The 400 Blows", French film directed by François Truffaut, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, is released
- 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Drama awarded to Archibald Macleish for his play "J.B."
- 1960 First Great Delta Dam closes in North-South Beveland, Netherlands
- 1961 CORE begins freedom rides from Washington, D.C.
- 1961 Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather reach a record height of 34,668 meters in a balloon
- 1961 NASA's first traveling Spacemobile lecture brings its educational efforts directly to schools and communities
- 1961 South Africa ANC leader John Nkadimeng arrested
- 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
- 1963 Pitcher Bob Shaw sets record of 5 balks in a game
- 1964 "Another World" premieres on TV in the US
- 1964 70 GATT-countries confer in Geneva
- 1964 KIII TV channel 3 in Corpus Christi, TX (ABC) begins broadcasting
- 1964 Pulitzer prize for General Non-Fiction awarded to Richard Hofstadter for "Anti-intellectualism"
- 1965 KTCI TV channel 17 in St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota (PBS) begins broadcasting
Baseball Record
1965 San Francisco Giants Willie Mays hit 512th career home run breaking Mel Ott's 29 year-old National League record, off of Los Angeles Dodgers Claude Osteen at Candlestick Park [1]
- 1966 The Soviet government signs an agreement with Fiat to build an automobile factory in the Soviet Union
- 1967 US Lunar Orbiter 4 is launched, begins orbiting the Moon on May 7
- 1968 Dancer Image disqualified due to drugs after winning 94th Kent Derby in 2:02½
- 1969 Charles Gordone's "No Place to be Somebody" premieres in NYC
- 1969 Stanley Cup Final, St. Louis Arena, St. Louis, MO: John Ferguson scores the winner as Montreal Canadiens edge St Louis Blues, 2-1 for a 4 game series sweep
- 1970 National Guard kills 4 student anti-war protesters at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio
- 1970 Pulitzer prize for General Non-Fiction awarded to Erik H. Erikson for "Gandhi's Truth"
Event of Interest
1970 Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin confirms the existence of Russian military advisors in Egypt
- 1972 "The Don't Make A Wave Committee," a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to the "Greenpeace Foundation"
- 1972 Vietcong forms revolutionary government in Quang Tri, South Vietnam
- 1973 BPAA US Women's Bowling Open won by Millie Martorella
- 1973 Longest baseball game in Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, Phillies beat Braves 5-4 in 20 innings
- 1973 Patriarch Shenuda II of Kopitisch church visits the pope
- 1973 PBS is the first TV network to show female nudity in "Steambath," featuring Valerie Perrine
- 1973 Wings release "Red Rose Speedway" in UK
- 1975 Ed Bullins's stage drama "The Taking of Miss Janie" opens in NYC
- 1975 Italian film "Seven Beauties" directed by Lina Wertmüller, starring Giancarlo Giannini, and Shirley Stoler released - first film directed by a women to be nominated for an Academy Award
- 1975 MLB Houston' Astros Bob Watson scores baseball's one-millionth run of all time
- 1976 Schiedam train accident kills 24 people and injures 11
- 1977 US Catholic bishops rescind automatic excommunications for divorced and remarried Catholics (receiving communion still outlawed if the previous marriages were not annulled by Church tribunals)
- 1978 Russian leader Brezhnev visits West-Germany
Election of Interest
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 1979 NASA launches Fltsatcom-2, a communications system for US Navy aircraft, ships, submarines, and ground stations
- 1980 Dodgers bat out of order against Phillies in 1st inning
- 1980 White Sox first baseman Mike Squires catches final inning of 11-1 loss to Brewers, becoming 1st lefty to catch since Cubs Dale Long in 1958
- 1981 Rockline premieres on KLOS FM in Los Angeles
- 1981 Silvana Cruciata runs 15k female world record (49:44.0)
- 1981 Yankee Ron Davis strikes out 8 consecutive Angels, ran record of 13 strikeouts of last 14 faced, also saved Gene Nelsons 1st win, 4-2
- 1982 British destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile off the Falkland Islands, killing 20 crew members
- 1982 Twins rookie outfielder Jim Eisenreich, who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, removes himself, due to taunts from Red Sox bleacher fans
- 1983 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
Sports History
1984 Dave Kingman's fly ball never comes down (stuck in Metrodome ceiling)
- 1984 Itaipu Dam begins generating electricity on the border between Paraguay and Brazil, - the world's second largest generator of electricity (considered one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world) [1]
- 1986 President Babrak Karmal resigns as party leader of Afghanistan
- 1987 Dufuna Canoe - the oldest known boat in Africa, 8,000-8,500 years old, is discovered in Dufuna, northeastern, Nigeria [1]
- 1988 PEPCON chemical plant in Henderson, Nevada explodes killing 2 and injuring 372 causing damage within 10-mile (16 km) radius
- 1988 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
- 1989 Junior Felix of Toronto Blue Jays becomes 53rd MLB player to hit HR on 1st at bat
- 1989 NASA launches Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-30) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the Magellan spacecraft to Venus aboard
- 1990 Latvia's parliament votes 138-0 (1 abstention) for Independence
- 1990 MLB Baltimore Orioles Gregg Olson sets relief pitcher record of 41 consecutive scoreless innings
- 1990 Pakistan beat Australia by 36 runs to win Austral-Asia Cup, Sharjah
- 1991 ABC Masters Bowling Tournament won by Doug Kent
- 1991 MLB Cleveland Indians' Chris James sets club record for most RBIs in a game (9)
- 1991 MLB New York Mets Mackey Sasser & Mark Carreon are 8th teammates to hit consecutive pinch-hit HRs
Doctorate of Music
1991 Phil Collins, Al Jarreau, Ikutaro Kakehashi and Joe Zawinul receive honorary doctorate degrees from the Berklee College of Music in Boston [1]
- 1991 US politician Mo Udall, Representative for Arizona (1961-91), resigns due to Parkinson disease
- 1992 "I Saw the Light" single released by Wynonna (Billboard Song of the Year, 1992)
1992 US Army and Marine Corps forces arrive in Los Angeles to end rioting following the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of Rodney King
- 1996 Greg Pavlik one-hits the Tigers, making the Rangers the first AL team to pitch back-to-back one-hitters since the Washington Senators in 1917
Agreement of Interest
1998 A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
- 1998 The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, designed by Renzo Piano to celebrate indigenous Kanak culture, is inaugurated near Nouméa, New Caledonia [1]
- 2000 Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London
- 2001 The Milwaukee Art Museum addition, the first Santiago Calatrava-designed structure in the United States, opens to the public
Baseball Record
2002 Barry Bonds hits his 400th home run as an SF Giant, in a 3-0 win over Cincinnati. Bonds is first player with 400 homers for one team and 100 with another (Pirates)
- 2007 Greensburg, Kansas is almost completely destroyed by a 1.7m wide EF-5 tornado
- 2007 The Scottish National Party wins the Scottish general election and becomes the largest party in the Scottish Parliament for the first time ever
Agreement of Interest
2008 Seth MacFarlane reaches an agreement worth $100 million with Fox to keep "Family Guy" and "American Dad" on television until 2012, making him the world's highest-paid television writer
Film & TV History
2010 Julia Louis-Dreyfus receives the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, although on the original star her name is spelled incorrectly
- 2012 14 decapitated bodies and 9 hung from a bridge are found in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
- 2013 39 people are killed at a funeral in Wukari, Nigeria
- 2013 5 US soldiers are killed by a bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan
- 2013 77 people are killed by the Syrian Army in Baniyas
Event of Interest
2013 Harper Lee files a lawsuit against a literary agent over the copyright of "To Kill a Mockingbird"
- 2013 Juventus F.C. win their 29th Serie A football title
- 2014 Juan Carlos Varela is elected President of Panama
Sports History
2015 Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry is named MVP for the 2014-15 NBA season
- 2015 World Snooker Championship, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: Stuart Bingham beats fellow Englishman Shaun Murphy, 18-15 for his lone world title
- 2016 Ohio Governor John Kasich bows out of the race for US Republican Presidential nominee
- 2018 California overtakes Great Britain to become the worlds fifth largest economy
Sports History
2018 LA Angels first baseman Albert Pujols collects his 3,000th MLB hit in a 5-0 win v Mariners in Seattle
Sports History
2019 Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez unifies a trio of middleweight world titles in a close, unanimous decision over Daniel Jacobs at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, NV
- 2020 Countries in Europe begin cautious reopening after COVID-19 lockdown, Italy restarts construction and takeaways, Germany reopens schools
- 2020 India begins lifting some restrictions in regions with fewer COVID-19 cases
- 2020 World leaders pledge $8 billion to research treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19, with the US and Russia not taking part
- 2021 Malian woman Halima Cisse gives birth to nonuplets (nine babies) in Morocco, in only the third known case worldwide
Event of Interest
2021 Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador makes an historic apology to the Mayan people for abuses against them in the five centuries since the Spanish conquest [1]
Event of Interest
2021 US President Joe Biden announces new goal of 160 million people, nearly of 70% of adults, vaccinated by July 4
- 2022 "'World's most dangerous trafficker" Colombian drug kingpin Dairo Antonio Úsuga (known as Otoniel) is extradited to the US for drug charges [1]
- 2022 First of its kind study of transgender children, by Princeton University, transitioning aged 3-12, found vast majority continue to identify with their new gender five years later [1]
- 2022 US Federal Reserve makes largest interest rate increase since 2000 (+0.5%), attempting to combat the fastest rate of inflation in four decades [1]
- 2023 "Primary" Trust" written by Eboni Booth and starring William Jackson Harper premieres at the Roundabout Theater in New York - 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama [1]
Walk of Fame Star for Carrie Fisher
2023 Actress and writer Carrie Fisher, best known as Princess Leia from the Star Wars films, is honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [1]
Ed Sheeran Cleared of Copyright Infringement
2023 Ed Sheeran found not guilty of copying Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On" for his 2014 single “Thinking Out Loud" by a Manhattan federal jury; copyright infringement suit was filed by the heirs of Gaye's co-writer Ed Townsend [1]
- 2023 In 2022 Covid-19 slipped from third to fourth leading cause of death in the US (behind heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries) according to National Center for Health Statistics [1]
- 2023 WHO declares Covid-19 over as a global health emergency, but remains a significant threat, with seven million known deaths (real total likely to be 20 million) [1]
Madonna's Largest Concert
2024 Largest concert of Madonna's career as she ends her "Celebration" world tour with a free concert in front of 1.6 million at Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [1]
- 2025 Nearly three weeks of uninterrupted 24-hour live streaming (478 hours) of Sweden's 'Great Moose Migration' end after moose cross the Ångerman River [1]
Trump Targets Foreign Films
2025 US President Donald Trump announces 100% tariffs on foreign films brought into the United States [1]
