1442 – Alfonso V of Aragon was crowned King of Naples.

1665 – England installed a municipal government in New York. It was the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.

1812 – Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began.

1898 – Philippine nationalists declared their independence from Spain.

1900 – The Reichstag approved a second law that would allow the expansion of the German navy.

1901 – Cuba agreed to become an American protectorate by accepting the Platt Amendment.

1918 – The first airplane bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I’s Western Front in France.

1921 – U.S. President Warren Harding urged every young man to attend military training camp.

1923 – Harry Houdini, while suspended upside down 40 feet above the ground, escaped from a strait jacket.

1926 – Brazil quit the League of Nations in protest over plans to admit Germany.

1935 – U.S. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana made the longest speech on Senate record. The speech took 15 1/2 hours and was filled by 150,000 words.

1935 – The Chaco War was ended with a truce. Bolivia and Paraguay had been fighting since 1932.

1937 – The Soviet Union executed eight army leaders under Joseph Stalin.

1941 – In London, the Inter-Allied Declaration was signed. It was the first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.

1944 – Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung announced that he would support Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the war against Japan.

1975 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of corrupt election practices in 1971.

1979 – Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Albatross, man powered, across the English Channel.

1986 – South Africa declared a national state of emergency. Virtually unlimited power was given to security forces and restrictions were put on news coverage of the unrest.

1987 – U.S. President Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

1990 – The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.

1991 – Russians went to the election polls and elected Boris N. Yeltsin as the president of their republic.

1992 – In a letter to the U.S. Senate, Russian Boris Yeltsin stated that in the early 1950’s the Soviet Union had shot down nine U.S. planes and held 12 American survivors.

1999 – NATO peacekeeping forces entered the province of Kosovo in Yugoslavia.