1398 – Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud’s armies in Delhi are defeated by Timur.
1538 – Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England.
1718 – War of the Quadruple Alliance: Great Britain declares war on Spain.
1777 – American Revolution: France formally recognizes the United States.
1835 – Great Fire of New York: Fire levels lower Manhattan.
1837 – A fire in the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg kills 30 guards.
1862 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
1865 – First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert.
1892 – First issue of Vogue is published
1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1907 – Ugyen Wangchuck is crowned first King of Bhutan
1927 – Indian revolutionary Rajendra Lahiri is hanged in Gonda jail, Uttar Pradesh, India, two days before the scheduled date.
1928 – Indian revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru assassinate British police officer James Saunders in Lahore, Punjab, to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai at the hands of the police. The three were executed in 1931.
1935 – First flight of the Douglas DC-3.
1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis ofnuclear energy.
1941 – World War II: Japanese forces land in Northern Borneo.
1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: Malmedy massacre: American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWsare shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Joachim Peiper.
1947 – First flight of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet strategic bomber.
1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1967 – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and is presumed drowned.
2003 – Space Ship One, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered and first supersonic flight.
2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations after severing them 55 years ago.