1643 – Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, was granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king’s will.
1792 – Russian troops invaded Poland.
1802 – Great Britain declared war on Napoleon’s France.
1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor by the French Senate.
1828 – Battle of Las Piedras ended the conflict between Uruguay and Brazil.
1917 – The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which called up soldiers to fight in World War I.
1931 – Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashed his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He was picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.
1944 – Monte Cassino, Europe’s oldest Monastic house, was finally captured by the Allies in Italy.
1951 – The United Nations moved its headquarters to New York City.
1953 – The first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, Jacqueline Cochran, piloted an F-86 Sabrejet over California at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour.
1974 – India became the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.
1994 – Israel’s three decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ended as Israeli troops completed their withdrawal and Palestinian authorities took over.
2014 – Russian President Putin signed a bill to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation.
