Events Pre-1600 451 – Attila the Hun captures Metz in France, killing most of its inhabitants and burning the town.; 529 – First Corpus Juris Civilis, a fundamental work in jurisprudence, is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. 1141 – Empress Matilda becomes the first female ruler of England, adopting the title "Lady of the English". 1348 – Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV charters Prague University.; 1449 – Felix V abdicates his claim to the papacy, ending the reign of the final Antipope. 1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu. 1541 – Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.
1601–1900 1724 – Premiere performance of Bach's St John Passion, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig. 1767 – End of Burmese–Siamese War (1765–1767). 1788 – Settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by U.S. citizens in the recently organized Northwest Territory. 1790 – Russo-Turkish war (1787–1792): Greek privateer Lambros Katsonis loses three of his ships in the Battle of Andros. 1795 – The French First Republic adopts the kilogram and gram as its primary unit of mass. 1798 – The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and the Spanish Empire. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812. 1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River. 1805 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premieres his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. 1824 – The Mechanics' Institution is established in Manchester, England at the Bridgewater Arms hotel, as part of a national movement for the education of working men. The institute is the precursor to three Universities in the city: the University of Manchester, UMIST and the Metropolitan University of Manchester (MMU). 1831 – Pedro II becomes emperor of the Empire of Brazil. 1862 – American Civil War: The Union's Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, Tennessee. 1868 – Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, is assassinated by a Fenian activist.
1901–present 1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples. 1906 – The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco. 1922 – Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leases federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies on excessively generous terms. 1926 – Violet Gibson attempts to assassinate Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. 1933 – Prohibition in the United States is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution. (Now celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States.) 1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banning Jews and political dissidents from civil service posts. 1939 – Benito Mussolini declares an Italian protectorate over Albania and forces King Zog I into exile. 1939 – Italy invades Albania. 1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp. 1943 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Terebovlia, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches. 1943 – Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the Axis Occupation. 1943 – The National Football League makes helmets mandatory. 1944 – In the Fragheto massacre, soldiers belonging to the German 356th Infantry Division kill 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans near Casteldelci in central-northern Italy. 1945 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, one of the two largest ever constructed, is sunk by United States Navy aircraft during Operation Ten-Go. 1946 – The Soviet Union annexes East Prussia as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. 1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations. 1954 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference. 1956 – Francoist Spain agrees to surrender its protectorate in Morocco. 1964 – IBM announces the System/360. 1965 – Representatives of the National Congress of American Indians testify before members of the US Senate in Washington, D.C., against the termination of the Colville tribe. 1968 – Two-time Formula One British World Champion Jim Clark dies in an accident during a Formula Two race in Hockenheim. 1969 – The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1. 1971 – Vietnam War: President Richard Nixon announces his decision to quicken the pace of Vietnamization. 1972 – Vietnam War: Communist forces overrun the South Vietnamese town of Loc Ninh. 1976 – Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party after being arrested for faking his own death. 1977 – German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light. 1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter. 1980 – During the Iran hostage crisis, the United States severs relations with Iran. 1982 – Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh is arrested. 1983 – During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk. 1988 – Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov orders the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. 1989 – Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway, killing 42 sailors. 1990 – A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people. 1990 – John Poindexter is convicted for his role in the Iran–Contra affair. In 1991 the convictions are reversed on appeal. 1994 – Rwandan genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda, and soldiers kill the civilian Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. 1994 – Auburn Calloway attempts to destroy Federal Express Flight 705 in order to allow his family to benefit from his life insurance policy. 1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya. 1999 – Turkish Airlines Flight 5904 crashes near Ceyhan in southern Turkey, killing six people. 2001 – NASA launches the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. 2003 – Iraq War: U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime falls two days later. 2003 – Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide demands reparations of $21 billion from France for the Haitian independence debt. 2005 – First release of Git distributed version control system. 2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces. 2009 – Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent. 2011 – The Israel Defense Forces use their Iron Dome missile system to successfully intercept a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza, marking the first short-range missile intercept ever. 2011 – A gunman opens fire at an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing twelve children and injuring 22 others before committing suicide. 2017 – A man deliberately drives a hijacked truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and injuring fifteen others.15 were reported injured on the day of the attack. However, a woman died three weeks after the attack, bringing the number of injuries down to 14. 2017 – U.S. President Donald Trump orders the 2017 Shayrat missile strike against Syria in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. 2018 – Former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is arrested for corruption by determination of Judge Sérgio Moro, from the "Car-Wash Operation". Lula stayed imprisoned for 580 days, before being released by the Brazilian Supreme Court. 2018 – Syria launches the Douma chemical attack during the Eastern Ghouta offensive of the Syrian Civil War. 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: China ends its lockdown in Wuhan. 2020 – COVID-19 pandemic: Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigns for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on USS Theodore Roosevelt and the dismissal of Brett Crozier. 2021 – COVID-19 pandemic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States. 2022 – Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black female justice.
Births Pre-1600 1206 – Otto II Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria (died 1253) 1330 – John, 3rd Earl of Kent, English nobleman (died 1352) 1470 – Edward Stafford, 2nd Earl of Wiltshire (died 1498) 1506 – Francis Xavier, Spanish missionary and saint, co-founded the Society of Jesus (died 1552) 1539 – Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter and illustrator (died 1584)
1601–1900 1613 – Gerrit Dou, Dutch painter (died 1675) 1644 – François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy, French general (died 1730) 1648 – John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, English poet and politician, Lord President of the Council (died 1721) 1652 – Pope Clement XII (died 1740) 1713 – Nicola Sala, Italian composer and theorist (died 1801) 1718 – Hugh Blair, Scottish minister and author (died 1800) 1727 – Michel Adanson, French botanist, entomologist, and mycologist (died 1806) 1763 – Domenico Dragonetti, Italian bassist and composer (died 1846) 1770 – William Wordsworth, English poet (died 1850) 1772 – Charles Fourier, French philosopher (died 1837) 1780 – William Ellery Channing, American preacher and theologian (died 1842) 1786 – William R. King, American lawyer and politician, 13th Vice President of the United States (died 1853) 1803 – James Curtiss, American journalist and politician, 11th Mayor of Chicago (died 1859) 1803 – Flora Tristan, French author and activist (died 1844) 1811 – Hasan Tahsini, Albanian astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (died 1881) 1817 – Francesco Selmi, Italian chemist and patriot (died 1881) 1848 – Randall Davidson, Scottish archbishop (died 1930) 1859 – Walter Camp, American football player and coach (died 1925) 1860 – Will Keith Kellogg, American businessman, founded the Kellogg Company (died 1951) 1867 – Holger Pedersen, Danish linguist and academic (died 1953) 1870 – Gustav Landauer, German theorist and activist (died 1919) 1871 – Epifanio de los Santos, Filipino jurist, historian, and scholar (died 1927) 1873 – John McGraw, American baseball player and manager (died 1934) 1874 – Frederick Carl Frieseke, German-American painter (died 1939) 1876 – Fay Moulton, American sprinter, football player, coach, and lawyer (died 1945) 1882 – Bert Ironmonger, Australian cricketer (died 1971) 1882 – Kurt von Schleicher, German general and politician, 23rd Chancellor of Germany (died 1934) 1883 – Gino Severini, Italian-French painter and author (died 1966) 1884 – Clement Smoot, American golfer (died 1963) 1886 – Ed Lafitte, American baseball player and soldier (died 1971) 1889 – Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1957) 1890 – Paul Berth, Danish footballer (died 1969) 1890 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine writer (died 1979) 1890 – Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American journalist and activist (died 1998) 1891 – Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish businessman, founded the Lego Group (died 1958) 1892 – Julius Hirsch, German footballer (died 1945) 1893 – José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, Portuguese artist (died 1970) 1893 – Allen Dulles, American lawyer and diplomat, 5th Director of Central Intelligence (died 1969) 1895 – John Bernard Flannagan, American soldier and sculptor (died 1942) 1895 – Margarete Schön, German actress (died 1985)