1212 – The Moslems were crushed in the Spanish crusade.
1453 – France defeated England at Castillon, France, which ended the 100 Years’ War.
1785 – France limited the importation of goods from Britain.
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British at Rochefort, France.
1821 – Spain ceded Florida to the U.S.
1862 – National cemeteries were authorized by the U.S. government.
1866 – Authorization was given to build a tunnel beneath the Chicago River. The three-year project cost $512,709.
1898 – U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1917 – The British royal family adopted the Windsor name.
1941 – Brigadier General Soervell directed Architect G. Edwin Bergstrom to have basic plans and architectural perspectives for an office building that could house 40,000 War Department employees on his desk by the following Monday morning. The building became known as the Pentagon.
1945 – U.S. President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II. During the meeting Stalin made the comment that “Hitler had escaped.”
1946 – Chinese communists opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
1960 – Francis Gary Powers pled guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.
1966 – Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam forces to defend against American air strikes.
1968 – A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba’ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
1973 – King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
1975 – An Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit. It was the first link up between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
1976 – East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.
1987 – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and rear Admiral John Poindexter begin testifying to Congress at the “Iran-Contra” hearings.
1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.
2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashes into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the São Paulo–Congonhas Airport runway, killing 199 people.
2009 – Two suicide bombers detonate themselves at two separate hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.
2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed.
