1705 – Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.
1862 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved conscription act for white males between 18 and 35.
1862 – In the U.S. slavery was abolished by law in the District of Columbia.
1912 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
1917 – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution after years of exile.
1922 – The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo under which Germany recognized the Soviet Union and diplomatic and trade relations were restored.
1942 – The Island of Malta was awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack.
1944 – The destroyer USS Laffey survived immense damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.
1945 – American troops entered Nuremberg, Germany.
1947 – In Texas City, TX, the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting fires killed 576 people.
1948 – In Paris, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation was set up.
1951 – 75 people were killed when the British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel.
1953 – The British royal yacht Britannia was launched.
1968 – The Pentagon announced that troops would begin coming home from Vietnam.
1972 – Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon. It was the fifth manned moon landing.
1975 – The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.
1982 – Queen Elizabeth proclaimed Canada’s new constitution in effect. The act severed the last colonial links with Britain.
1983 – China shelled the Vietnam border in retaliation for raids.
1983 – Brazil detained four Libyan planes en route to Nicaragua after finding weapons, explosives and ammunition on the planes.
1987 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sternly warned U.S. radio stations to watch the use of indecent language on the airwaves.
1987 – The U.S. Patent Office began allowing the patenting of new animals created by genetic engineering.
