• 781 BC - The first historic solar eclipse is recorded in China.
• 1039 - Henry III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1584 - Sir Walter Raleigh establishes first English colony on Roanoke Island, old Virginia (now North Carolina).
• 1615 - Forces under the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
• 1760 - Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia Canada taken from the Acadians.
• 1769 - A transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse, the shortest such interval in the historical past.
• 1783 - The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
• 1792 - Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for Great Britain.
• 1794 - British troops capture Port-au-Prince in Haiti.
• 1804 - Grieving over the death of his wife, Marie Clothilde, king Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.
• 1812 - Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory.
• 1859 - Italian Independence wars: in the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeats an Austrian army.
• 1862 - American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
• 1876 - An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
• 1878 - Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
• 1912 - Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
• 1913 - Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of the king's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby. She is trampled and dies a few days later, never having regained consciousness.
• 1917 - The very first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for a biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
• 1919 - Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
• 1920 - Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.
• 1928 - President of the Republic of China Zhang Zuolin assassinated by Japanese agents.
• 1939 - Holocaust: The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later died in Nazi concentration camps.
• 1940 - World War II: Dunkirk evacuation ends; British forces complete evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France.
• 1942 - World War II: Reinhard Heydrich dies in Prague due to the assassination by Czechoslovak paratroopers (Operation Anthropoid).
• 1942 - World War II: Battle of Midway begins. Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island with much of the Imperial Japanese navy.
• 1943 - Military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.
• 1944 - World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy capture the German submarine U-505, marking the first time a U.S. Navy vessel captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
• 1944 - World War II: Rome falls to the Allies, the first Axis capital to fall.
• 1967 - Stockport Air Disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.
• 1970 - Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
• 1973 - Patent for the ATM granted to Don Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
• 1979 - Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after military coup in which General Akuffo is overthrown.
• 1986 - Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
• 1989 - Ali Khamenei was elected as the new Supreme Leader of Islamic republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
• 1989 - Tiananmen Square protests were violently ended in Chinese capital city - Beijing with People's Liberation Army soldiers and tanks, many innocent people were killed.
• 1989 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe and leads to creation of the so-called Contract Sejm.
• 1989 - Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
• 1991 - The United Kingdom's Conservative government announces that some British regiments would disappear or be merged into others—the largest armed forces cuts in almost twenty years.
• 1998 - Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Births