* 1012 – Martyrdom of Alphege in Greenwich, London.
* 1529 – At the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant Reformation.
* 1587 – Francis Drake's expedition sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbor.
* 1660 – Two of the 18 members of Adam Dollard-des-Ormeaux's expedition had become the first prioneering casualties in the St.Lawrence river (near the island of St.Paul): Mathurin Soulard & Blaise Guillet of Avignon, France were chased by Iroquois.
* 1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).
* 1770 – Captain James Cook sites Australia.
* 1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI in a proxy wedding.
* 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
* 1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.
* 1809 – An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four day campaign which ended in a French victory.
* 1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed.
* 1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
* 1847 – New portico at British Museum opened
* 1855 – Visit of Napoleon III to Guildhall, London
* 1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861, a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
* 1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
* 1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.
* 1927 – Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
* 1928 – The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
* 1936 – First day of the Great Uprising in Palestine.
* 1942 – World War II: In Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.
* 1943 – World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
* 1943 – Bicycle Day – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.
* 1945 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Guatemala are established.
* 1948 – Burma (now Myanmar) joins the United Nations.
* 1950 – Argentina becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
* 1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.
* 1954 – Constituent Assembly of Pakistan decides Urdu and Bengali to be national languages of Pakistan.
* 1955 – The German automaker Volkswagen, after six years of selling cars in the United States, founds Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey to standardize its dealer and service network.
* 1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
* 1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
* 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in success for the defenders.
* 1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.
* 1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C..
* 1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.
* 1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death for the Sharon Tate murders.
* 1975 – India's first satellite Aryabhata is launched.
* 1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
* 1985 – U.S.S.R performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk.
* 1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show
* 1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
* 1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
* 1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.
* 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.
* 1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.
* 1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1945.
* 2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.
* 2007 – A suicide car bomber drove his explosive-laden vehicle into a fuel tanker in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 12 and wounding 34 people.
* 2008 – Bowie Seamount on the coast of British Columbia, Canada becomes a Marine Protected Area.
