637 – Antioch surrenders to the Muslim forces under Rashidun Caliphate after the Battle of the Iron Bridge.
758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
1137 – Battle of Rignano between Ranulf of Apulia and Roger II of Sicily.
1270 – The Eighth Crusade and siege of Tunis end by an agreement between Charles I of Sicily (brother to King Louis IX of France, who had died months earlier) and the sultan of Tunis.
1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned.
1657 – Spanish forces fail to retake Jamaica at the Battle of Ocho Rios during the Anglo-Spanish War.
1806 – Believing he is facing a much larger force, Prussian Lieutenant General Friedrich von Romberg, commanding 5,300 men, surrendered the city of Stettin to 800 French soldiers commanded by General Lassalle.
1817 – The independent government of Venezuela is established by Simón Bolívar.
1863 – Danish Prince Vilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes.
1864 – Second Schleswig War ends. Denmark renounces all claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which come under Prussian and Austrian administration.
1894 – Domenico Melegatti obtains a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially.
1905 – Czar Nicholas II of Russia issues the October Manifesto, granting the Russian peoples basic civil liberties and the right to form a duma.
1918 – The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.
1920 – The Communist Party of Australia is founded in Sydney.
1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain’s first television transmitter.
1929 – The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany.
1938 – Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.
1941 – World War II: Franklin D. Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
1941 – One thousand and five hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi (in western Ukraine) are sent by Nazis to Bełżec extermination camp.
1942 – Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.
1944 – Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die from disease the following year, shortly before the end of WWII.
1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
1950 – Pope Pius XII witnesses the “Miracle of the Sun” while at the Vatican.
1953 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 50 megatons of yield, it remains the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.
1961 – Because of “violations of Vladimir Lenin’s precepts”, it is decreed that Joseph Stalin’s body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin’s tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker instead.
1965 – Vietnam War: Near Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas.
1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus for the second time.
1975 – Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain’s acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.
1980 – El Salvador and Honduras sign a peace treaty to put the border dispute fought over in 1969’s Football War before the International Court of Justice.
1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule are held.
1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.
1995 – Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favour of remaining a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty.
2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.
2014 – Sweden is the first European Union member state to officially recognize the State of Palestine.
