- 197 – Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
- 356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.
- 1408 – The revolt of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, against King Henry IV, ends with his defeat and death at Bramham Moor.
- 1473 – Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
- 1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
- 1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
- 1701 – Philip V of Spain makes his ceremonial entry into Madrid.
- 1807 – Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, is arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He is later found innocent.
- 1847 – The first rescuers from Sutter’s Fort reach the surviving remnants of the Donner emigrant party at their snowbound camp in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains. The events leading up to the Donner party tragedy began the summer before, when 89 emigrants from Springfield, Illinois, set out overland for California. Initially all went well, and they arrived on schedule at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, in early August. There the emigrants made the mistake of deciding to leave the usual route in favor of a supposed shortcut recently blazed by the California promoter Lansford Hastings. The so-called Hastings Cutoff proved to be anything but a shortcut, and the Donner party lost valuable time and supplies on the trip. When the emigrants finally began the difficult final push over the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains, it was early October and uncomfortably late in the season to be attempting a high mountain passage.
- 1861 – Russian Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom.
- 1878 – Thomas Alva Edison patent the phonograph. The technology that made the modern music business possible came into existence in the New Jersey laboratory where Thomas Alva Edison created the first device to both record sound and play it back. He was awarded U.S. Patent No. 200,521 for his invention–the phonograph–on this day in 1878.
- 1884 – an astonishing series of 37 tornadoes sweeps across the Southeast United States. The twisters, which came at a time in which there was no warning system in place to alert area residents, killed 167 people and injured another 1,000.
- 1902 – Smallpox vaccination becomes obligatory in France.
- 1903 – The Austria-Hungary government decrees a mandatory two year military service.
- 1915 – British and French battleships launch a massive attack on Turkish positions at Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey and the only waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.
- 1919 – The First Pan African Congress meets in Paris, France.
- 1942 – Port Darwin, on the northern coast of Australia, is bombed by the Japanese.
- 1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, Roosevelt came under increasing pressure by military and political advisors to address the nation’s fears of further Japanese attack or sabotage, particularly on the West Coast, where naval ports, commercial shipping and agriculture were most vulnerable. Included in the off-limits military areas referred to in the order were ill-defined areas around West Coast cities, ports and industrial and agricultural regions. While 9066 also affected Italian and German Americans, the largest numbers of detainees were by far Japanese.
- 1945 – Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima, is launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing raids against Japan, only 660 miles away.
- 1952 – Danilo Türk is born, Slovene academic and politician, 3rd President of Slovenia.
- 1959 – The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is then formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960.
- 1965 – Dissident officers move several battalions of troops into Saigon on this day with the intention of ousting Gen. Nguyen Khanh from leadership. General Khanh escaped to Dalat with the aid of Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the South Vietnamese Air Force, who then threatened to bomb Saigon and the Tan Son Nhut Airport unless the rebel troops were withdrawn. Ky was dissuaded from this by Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, who told Ky that more political instability might have a negative impact on continued U.S. aid. Khanh was able to get troops to take over from the insurgents without any resistance on February 20.
- 1967 – Benicio del Toro is born, Puerto Rican-American actor, director, and producer.
- 1970 – The Chicago Seven (formerly the Chicago Eight–one defendant, Bobby Seale, was being tried separately) are acquitted of riot conspiracy charges, but found guilty of inciting riot.The eight antiwar activists were charged with the responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.
- 1974 – Alexander Solzhenitsyn awaits reunion with his family after exile from Russia. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a detailed history of the Soviet prison system, prompted Russia to exile the 55 year-old author. One of Russia’s most visible and vocal dissidents, Solzhenitsyn once served an 11-year prison term. Solzhenitsyn had previously been prevented by the Soviets from receiving a Nobel Prize for literature, but finally in 1978, he received the award in Switzerland.
- 1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave hospital.
- 1996 – Colorado Avalanche goaltender Patrick Roy earns his 300th win in the National Hockey League. Roy retired from hockey in 2003 with 551 career wins, a record that still stands.
- 2003 – An Ilyushin Il-76 military aircraft crashes near Kerman, Iran, killing 275.
- 2006 – A methane explosion in a coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners
- 2010 – professional golfer Tiger Woods gives a televised news conference in which he apologizes for his marital infidelities and admits to “selfish” and “foolish” behavior. The 34-year-old Woods, one of the greatest players in the history of golf as well as one of the world’s highest-paid athletes, read a scripted statement at PGA headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, before a pre-selected audience that included his mother but not his Swedish-born wife, Elin Nordegren. Members of the media were present but were not allowed to ask questions.
- 2011 – The debut exhibition of the Belitung shipwreck, containing the largest collection of Tang dynasty artefacts found in one location, begins in Singapore.
- 2012 – Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.
HOLIDAYS
- Armed Forces Day (Mexico)
- Brâncuși Day (Romania)
- Commemoration of Vasil Levski (Bulgaria)
- Flag Day (Turkmenistan)
- Shivaji Jayanti (Maharashtra, India)
ALL HISTORY NOW 