539 BC – Cyrus the Great (founder of Persian Empire) entered capital of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their land.
312 – Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius’ body is fished out of the Tiber and beheaded.
437 – Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius.
969 – Byzantine troops occupy Antioch, Syria.
1467 – Charles the Bold defeats Liège.
1611 – Russian homage to the King of Poland, Sigismund III Vasa.
1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
1658 – Second Northern War: Naval forces of the Dutch Republic defeat the Swedes in the Battle of the Sound.
1901 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
1918 – The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny on the night of the 29th-30th, an action which would trigger the German Revolution of 1918–19.
1922 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.
1923 – Turkey becomes a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
1941 – The Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the “Great Action”.
1942 – The Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews.
1944 – The city of Breda in the Netherlands is liberated by 1st Polish Armoured Division.
1944 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
1948 – Safsaf massacre: Israeli soldiers capture Palestinian village of Safsaf in the Galilee and massacre villagers after they surrender.
1953 – BCPA Flight 304 DC-6 crashes near San Francisco. Pianist William Kapell is among the 19 killed.
1955 – The Soviet battleship Novorossiysk strikes a World War II mine in the harbor at Sevastopol.
1956 – Suez Crisis begins: Israeli forces invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
1956 – The Tangier International Zone is nationalized by Morocco.
1957 – Israel’s prime minister David Ben-Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when Moshe Dwek throws a grenade into Israel’s Knesset.
1960 – An airplane carrying the Cal Poly football team crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio.
1961 – Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.
1964 – The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar is renamed the United Republic of Tanzania.
1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
1972 – The three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre are released from prison in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.
1980 – Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base’s Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.
1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
1998 – In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.
1960 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
1998 – ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.
1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of six and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he is landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.
1998 – Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras.
1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year-old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.
1999 – A large cyclone devastates Odisha, India.
2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC fire, a fire destroys a luxurious department store where 1500 people are shopping. Over 60 people die and over 100 are unaccounted for. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.
2004 – The Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a 2004 Osama bin Laden video in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
2005 – Bombings in Delhi kill more than 60.
2008 – Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world’s largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to five.
2015 – China announces the end of One Child Policy after 35 years.
