June 12: First day of Shavuot (Judaism, 2024); Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Loving Day in the United States ( 1967)

• 1798 – Following the successful French invasion of Malta, the Knights Hospitaller surrendered Malta to Napoleon, initiating two years of occupation.
• 1864 – Union general Ulysses S. Grant pulled his troops out of the Battle of Cold Harbor in Hanover County, Virginia, ending one of the bloodiest, most lopsided battles in the American Civil War.
• 1914 – As part of the Ottoman Empire's policies of ethnic cleansing, Turkish irregulars began a six-day massacre in the predominantly Greek town of Phocaea.
• 1954 – Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at his death in 1857, was canonized by Pope Pius XII, making him one of the youngest non- martyred saints in the Catholic Church.
• 1994 – The Boeing 777 (pictured), the world's largest twinjet, made its maiden flight.

January 1: Public Domain Day; Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God ( Roman Rite Catholicism)

• 417 – Galla Placidia was forced by her brother Honorius into marriage with his magister militum, Constantius III.
• 1808 – As a result of the lobbying efforts by the abolitionist movement (emblem pictured), the importation of slaves into the United States was officially banned, although slavery itself remained permitted.
• 1914 – The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line in the U.S. state of Florida became the first scheduled airline using a winged aircraft.
• 1957 – The revised Thai criminal code came into force, strengthening the law on lèse-majesté in Thailand to include insult and treating it as a crime against national security.
• 2019 – The NASA space probe New Horizons flew by the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, making it the farthest object visited by a spacecraft.

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January 2: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Basil of Caesarea ( Roman Rite Catholicism, Anglicanism)

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.
• 1959 – The Soviet Luna 1, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon, was launched by a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• 1967 – Ronald Reagan (pictured) began his career in government when he was sworn in as the 33rd governor of California.
• 1976 – An extratropical cyclone began affecting parts of western Europe, resulting in coastal flooding around the southern portions of the North Sea and leading to at least 82 deaths.
• 2009 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The Sri Lankan army captured the town of Kilinochchi from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, concluding the Battle of Kilinochchi.

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January 3

• 1749 – The first issue of Berlingske (front page pictured), Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, was published.
• 1911 – An earthquake registering 7.7  M_w destroyed Almaty in Russian Turkestan.
• 1938 – The American health charity March of Dimes was founded as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to help raise money for polio research.
• 1961 – All 25 people on board Aero Flight 311 died in Finland's worst civilian air accident when the aircraft crashed near Kvevlax.
• 2009 – The cryptocurrency network of bitcoin was created when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the chain.

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January 4: Colonial Repression Martyrs' Day in Angola ( 1961)

• 1698 – Most of London's Palace of Whitehall, the main residence of English monarchs since 1530, was destroyed by fire.
• 1798 – After his appointment as Prince of Wallachia, Constantine Hangerli arrived in Bucharest to assume the throne.
• 1936 – Billboard published its first music hit parade.
• 1989 – Two American F-14 Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23 Floggers that appeared to be attempting to engage them over the Gulf of Sidra.
• 2004 – Spirit (artist's impression depicted), the first of two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission, successfully landed on Mars.

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January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

• 1757 – King Louis XV survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, who later became the last person in France to be executed by drawing and quartering.
• 1869 – Te Kooti's War: After surviving a five-day siege in the pā at Ngātapa, Māori leader Te Kooti escaped from New Zealand's Armed Constabulary.
• 1919 – The German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party, was founded by Anton Drexler.
• 1949 – In his State of the Union speech, U.S. president Harry S. Truman (pictured) announced: "Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal."
• 2003 – The Metropolitan Police arrested six people in conjunction with an alleged terrorist plot to release ricin on the London Underground, although no toxin was found.

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January 6: Little Christmas

• 1449 – Four years before the fall of Constantinople, Constantine XI Palaiologos (pictured) assumed the throne as the last Byzantine emperor.
• 1724 – Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, a Bach cantata for Epiphany, was first performed in Leipzig.
• 1912 – German geophysicist Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift, the precursor of plate tectonics.
• 1953 – The inaugural Asian Socialist Conference, an organisation of socialist political parties, opened in Rangoon with 177 delegates, observers and fraternal guests.
• 2014 – The first episode of the documentary series Benefits Street aired on Channel 4, prompting discussion in the United Kingdom about welfare dependency.

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January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia ( 1979)

• 1797 – The Italian tricolour was first adopted as an official flag by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
• 1904 – The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD (audio featured) as the distress signal to be used by its operators.
• 1939 – French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element to be discovered in nature rather than by synthesis.
• 1979 – The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
• 2020 – After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.

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January 8: Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2024)

• 1697 – Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead became the last person in Great Britain to be executed for blasphemy.
• 1904 – Blackstone Library (pictured), the first branch of the Chicago Public Library system, was dedicated.
• 1977 – Three bombs attributed to Armenian nationalists exploded across Moscow, killing seven people and injuring 37 people.
• 1981 – In Trans-en-Provence, France, a local farmer reported a UFO sighting claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".
• 2011 – Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a public meeting held by U.S. representative Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and injuring twelve others.

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January 9

• 1797 – War of the First Coalition: The siege of Kehl by Habsburg and Württembergian forces ended when French troops withdrew from their fortifications.
• 1917 – First World War: Troops of the British Empire defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rafa on the Sinai– Palestine border in present-day Rafah.
• 1972 – The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a 33-game winning streak, the longest in major American professional team sports.
• 1975 – In Central and Southeastern United States, a Great Storm formed the first of forty-five tornadoes over a three-day period.
• 2011 – In poor weather conditions, Iran Air Flight 277 (plane pictured) crashed near Urmia Airport, Iran, killing 78 of the 105 people on board.

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January 10

• 236 – Pope Fabian, said to have been chosen by the Holy Spirit when a dove landed on his head, began his papacy.
• 1812 – New Orleans (pictured), the first steamship on the Mississippi River, arrived at New Orleans to complete its maiden voyage.
• 1929 – Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, began serialisation.
• 1993 – The Braer Storm, the strongest extratropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Atlantic, reached peak intensity.

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January 11: Prithvi Jayanti in Nepal

• 1654 – Arauco War: The Mapuche-Huilliche of southern Chile defeated a slave-hunting Spanish army at the Battle of Río Bueno.
• 1693 – The most powerful earthquake recorded in Italy, registering 7.4  M_w, struck the island of Sicily.
• 1914 – The Karluk, the flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, sank after being crushed by ice.
• 1964 – In a landmark report (cover pictured), U.S. surgeon general Luther Terry issued a warning that tobacco smoking may be hazardous to health, concluding that it has a causative role in lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and other illnesses.
• 2003 – After Chicago police detective Jon Burge was discovered to have forced confessions from more than 200 suspects, the governor of Illinois commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners and pardoned four others.

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January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania ( 1964)

• 1659 – The fort at Allahabad was surrendered to the forces of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
• 1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: Natal Native Contingent and British troops defeated Zulu forces in the Action at Sihayo's Kraal.
• 1899 – During a storm, the crew of Lynmouth Lifeboat Station transported their 10-ton lifeboat 15 mi (24 km) overland in order to rescue a damaged schooner.
• 1969 – British rock band Led Zeppelin released their first album, Led Zeppelin, in the United States.
• 2007 – Comet McNaught (pictured) reached perihelion, becoming the brightest comet in over 40 years, with an apparent magnitude of −5.5.

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January 13: Saint Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden

• 1884 – Welsh physician William Price (pictured) was arrested for attempting to cremate his deceased infant son; this eventually led to the United Kingdom cremation act becoming law.
• 1953 – Nine Moscow doctors were accused of a plot to poison members of the Soviet political and military leadership.
• 1968 – American singer Johnny Cash recorded his landmark album At Folsom Prison live at Folsom Prison in California.
• 1972 – Ghanaian military officer Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led a coup to overthrow Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo.
• 2000 – Steve Ballmer replaced Bill Gates as the chief executive officer of Microsoft.

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January 14: Ratification Day in the United States ( 1784)

• 1724 – Philip V (pictured), the first Bourbon king of Spain, abdicated in favour of his seventeen-year-old eldest son, who became Louis I.
• 1814 – Sweden and Denmark–Norway signed the Treaty of Kiel, whereby Frederick VI of Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden in return for the Swedish holdings in Pomerania.
• 1969 – A major fire and series of explosions aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise killed 28 sailors, injured 314 others, and destroyed 15 aircraft.
• 1970 – The self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria surrendered to the federal government less than three years after declaring independence, ending the Nigerian Civil War.
• 2018 – In the " Minneapolis Miracle", American football player Stefon Diggs caught a 61-yard touchdown pass that secured the Minnesota Vikings' victory in the National Football Conference divisional playoff game.

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January 15: John Chilembwe Day in Malawi

• 1857 – In British Hong Kong, hundreds of Europeans were non-lethally poisoned by arsenic in bread from a locally owned bakery, leading to geopolitical tension.
• 1934 – At least 10,700 people died when an earthquake registering 8.0  M_w struck Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar.
• 1974 – American serial killer Dennis Rader, also known as the "BTK killer", murdered his first four victims.
• 1991 – The Victoria Cross for Australia was instituted by letters patent; the first Commonwealth realm with a separate Victoria Cross award in its honours system.
• 2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese during its climb out from New York City and made an emergency landing in the Hudson River (featured).

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January 16

• 1275 – 750 years ago, Edward I permits his mother Eleanor of Provence to expel the Jews from the towns Worcester, Marlborough, Cambridge and Gloucester.
• 1809 – Peninsular War: French forces under Jean-de-Dieu Soult attacked the British's amphibious evacuation under Sir John Moore at Corunna in Galicia, Spain.
• 1862 – A pumping engine at a colliery in New Hartley, England, broke and fell down the shaft, trapping miners below and resulting in 204 deaths.
• 1942 – World War II: During the Battle of Bataan, U.S. Army sergeant Jose Calugas (pictured) organized a squad of volunteers to man an artillery position under heavy fire, which later earned him the Medal of Honor.
• 1964 – The musical Hello, Dolly! opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, and went on to win ten Tony Awards, a record that stood for 37 years.
• 2018 – In Mrauk U, Myanmar, police fired into a crowd protesting the ban of an event to mark the anniversary of the end of the Kingdom of Mrauk U, resulting in seven deaths and twelve injuries.

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January 17

• 1377 – Gregory XI, the last Avignon pope, entered Rome after a four-month journey from Avignon, returning the papacy to its original city.
• 1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston and the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani (pictured).
• 1945 – World War II: Australian troops advanced along the northern part of Bougainville Island (in present-day Papua New Guinea) and began fighting Japanese forces in the Battle of Tsimba Ridge.
• 1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Renville Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesian republicans was ratified, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to resolve disputes arising from the Linggadjati Agreement of 1946.
• 1999 – In Little Saigon, California, a series of protests began when the owner of a video rental store displayed an image of Ho Chi Minh.

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January 18: Laba Festival in China (2024)

• 1871 – A number of previously independent states united to form the German Empire, with Wilhelm I as emperor.
• 1951 – Construction began on the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured), the only United Nations cemetery in the world, in Busan, South Korea.
• 1956 – Navvab Safavi, an Iranian Shia cleric and the founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed with three of his followers for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.
• 1969 – Thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo after six months of nationwide leftist university student protests and occupation.
• 1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.

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January 19

• 1419 – Hundred Years' War: The siege of Rouen ended with English troops capturing the city from Norman French forces.
• 1909 – A deed was recorded for David Hanbury to sell Island No. 2 in northern California to his brother John for $10 ($339.00 in 2023).
• 1977 – Iva Toguri (pictured), convicted of treason for broadcasting Japanese propaganda, was granted a full pardon by U.S. president Gerald Ford.
• 1996 – A tank barge and a tug grounded on a beach in Rhode Island, causing a spill of an estimated 828,000 U.S. gallons (3,130,000 L) of home heating oil.
• 2006 – In the deadliest aviation accident in Slovak history, an Antonov An-24 operated by the Slovak Air Force crashed in northern Hungary, killing 42 of the 43 people on board.

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January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan ( 1990)

• 1156 – According to legend, Lalli slew Bishop Henry of Finland with an axe on the ice of Lake Köyliönjärvi in Köyliö.
• 1843 – Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, became the de facto first prime minister of the Empire of Brazil.
• 1968 – The Houston Cougars upset the UCLA Bruins in what became known as the " Game of the Century", ending the Bruins' 47-game winning streak, and establishing college basketball as a sports commodity on American television.
• 1969 – Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, an event that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
• 2009 – During a national financial crisis, thousands of people protested (pictured) at the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavík.

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January 21: World Religion Day (2024)

• 1757 – French and Indian War: French regulars, Canadien militia and Indigenous forces ambushed Rogers' Rangers forces in the Battle on Snowshoes.
• 1919 – The First Dáil convened at the Mansion House in Dublin and adopted a declaration of independence calling for the establishment of the Irish Republic.
• 1968 – A B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons crashed onto sea ice near Thule Air Base, Greenland, causing localized radioactive contamination.
• 1997 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted 395–28 to reprimand Newt Gingrich (pictured) for ethics violations, making him the first Speaker of the House to be so disciplined.
• 2011 – Demonstrations in Tirana against alleged corruption in the Albanian government led to the killings of four protesters by the Republican Guard.

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January 22: Day of Unity of Ukraine ( 1919)

• 1273 – Muhammad II became Sultan of Granada after his father's death in a riding accident.
• 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald took office as the first prime minister of the United Kingdom from the Labour Party.
• 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Buna–Gona on New Guinea ended with an Allied victory after two months of difficult fighting against well-prepared Japanese defence.
• 1968 – Apollo 5 (pictured), the first flight of NASA's Lunar Module, lifted off from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.
• 1979 – Uganda–Tanzania War: After surrounding Mutukula the previous day, Tanzanian forces attacked the town in the Battle of Mutukula and caused Ugandan forces to flee.

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January 23

• 1264 – King Louis IX of France issued the Mise of Amiens, a settlement between King Henry III of England and barons led by Simon de Montfort heavily favouring the former, which later led to the Second Barons' War.
• 1789 – Bishop John Carroll purchased a plot of land that would become the home of the future Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic university in the United States.
• 1902 – In the most fatal recorded mountaineering accident, 199 of the 210 members of an Imperial Japanese Army unit perished in a blizzard on the Hakkōda Mountains.
• 1957 – American inventor Fred Morrison sold the rights to his "flying disc" to the Wham-O toy company, who later renamed it the " Frisbee" (example pictured).
• 2001 – Five people attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, an act that many later claimed to have been staged by the Chinese Communist Party to frame Falun Gong and thus escalate their persecution.

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January 24: Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities ( 1859)

• 914 – The Fatimid Caliphate began their first invasion of Egypt, against the Abbasids, which eventually ended in failure.
• 1536 – King Henry VIII of England (pictured) suffered a serious accident while jousting, receiving injuries which may have caused his later obesity and erratic personality.
• 1848 – James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, leading to the California gold rush.
• 1972 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam, where he had been hiding since the end of World War II.
• 1977 – During the Spanish transition to democracy, neo-fascists attacked an office in Madrid, killing five people and injuring four others.

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January 25: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus ( Eastern Christianity) and Dwynwen

• 1792 – Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society to seek a " radical reform of parliament", later influencing the reform movements of early-19th-century England.
• 1944 – Representatives of the Chetnik movement began a four-day congress to organise political opposition to the Allied support of the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans in Yugoslavia.
• 1971 – Idi Amin seized power from Ugandan president Milton Obote in a coup d'état, beginning eight years of military rule.
• 1993 – Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kansi shot five people outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, killing two.
• 2011 – The Egyptian revolution began with protests (protester pictured) on the "Day of Anger", eventually leading to the removal of President Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years of rule.

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January 26: Australia Day ( 1788); Republic Day in India ( 1950)

• 1564 – Livonian War: A Lithuanian surprise attack resulted in a decisive defeat of numerically superior Russian forces.
• 1808 – William Bligh, the governor of New South Wales, was deposed in the only military coup in Australian history.
• 1949 – The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory (pictured) in California, the largest aperture optical telescope in the world for 28 years, saw first light.
• 1974 – Turkish Airlines Flight 301 crashed while taking off from İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport, killing 67 people.
• 2009 – Rioting broke out in Antananarivo, Madagascar, sparking a political crisis that led to the deposal of President Marc Ravalomanana.

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January 27

• 1799 – French Revolutionary Wars: In the Macau Incident, French and Spanish warships encountered a British Royal Navy escort squadron in the Wanshan Archipelago; subsequent events, including which side retreated, were disputed by the commanders present.
• 1996 – Mahamane Ousmane (pictured), the first democratically elected president of Niger, was deposed by Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara in a military coup d'état.
• 2003 – The first selections for the United States National Recording Registry were announced by the Library of Congress.
• 2011 – Astronomers documented H1504+65, a white dwarf in Ursa Minor with the hottest surface temperature known at the time, at 200,000 kelvins (360,000 °F).

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January 28

• 1069 – Robert de Comines, Earl of Northumbria, was killed in Durham, causing William the Conqueror to embark on a campaign to subjugate northern England.
• 1754 – The word serendipity, derived from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, was coined by Horace Walpole (pictured) in a letter to a friend.
• 1933 – Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in north-western India that he termed "Pakstan".
• 1964 – Three U.S. Air Force pilots aboard an unarmed T-39 Sabreliner were killed when the aircraft was shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19.

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January 29

• 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: At the Battle of Brienne, both sides' commanders, Napoleon and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, were nearly captured.
• 1967 – The Mantra-Rock Dance (poster pictured), called the "ultimate high" of the hippie era, took place in San Francisco, featuring Swami Bhaktivedanta, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.
• 1991 – The first major ground engagement of the Gulf War began with the Iraqi invasion of Khafji, Saudi Arabia, recaptured three days later by Coalition forces.
• 2013 – Twenty-one people died when SCAT Airlines Flight 760 crashed near Almaty, Kazakhstan.

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January 30: Martyrs' Day in India ( 1948)

• 1287 – Wareru created the Hanthawaddy Kingdom in today's Lower Burma and declared himself king following the collapse of the Pagan Empire.
• 1661 – Two years after his death, Oliver Cromwell's remains were exhumed for a posthumous execution and his head was placed on a spike above Westminster Hall in London, where it remained until 1685.
• 1945 – World War II: Allied forces liberated more than 500 prisoners of war (pictured) from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
• 2020 – The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic to be a public health emergency of international concern.

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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru ( 1968)

• 314 – Sylvester I (bust depicted), during whose pontificate many churches in Rome were constructed by Constantine the Great, began his reign as pope.
• 1919 – Intense rioting over labour conditions broke out in Glasgow, Scotland.
• 1997 – Final Fantasy VII, the first video game in the Final Fantasy franchise to use 3-D computer graphics, was released.
• 2007 – Emergency officials in Boston mistakenly identified LED placards depicting characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force as IEDs, causing a panic.

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February 1: Imbolc / Saint Brigid's Day in Ireland; the Fajr decade begins in Iran; Black History Month begins in Canada and the United States

• 1329 – The Teutonic Knights successfully besieged the hillfort of Medvėgalis in Samogitia, Lithuania, and baptised the defenders in the Catholic rite.
• 1814 – More than 1,200 people died in the most destructive recorded eruption of Mayon in the Philippines.
• 1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile and soon led the Iranian Revolution to overthrow the Pahlavi dynasty.
• 2009 – Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (pictured) became the first female prime minister of Iceland.

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February 2: Candlemas (Western Christianity); Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States

• 1709 – Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was rescued by English captain Woodes Rogers and his crew after spending four years as a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, providing the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
• 1934 – The Export–Import Bank of the United States, the country's official export credit agency, was established.
• 1974 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon (pictured), the most numerous fixed-wing aircraft currently in military service, made its first flight.
• 2004 – Swiss tennis player Roger Federer became the top-ranked men's singles player, a position he held for a record 237 consecutive weeks.

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February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States ( 1943)

• 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
• 1941 – Second World War: Free French and British forces (aircraft pictured) began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
• 1953 – Hundreds of native creoles known as Forros were massacred on São Tomé Island by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
• 2023 – A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing hazardous materials into the surrounding area.

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February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2024)

• 1169 – A strong earthquake struck the eastern coast of Sicily, causing at least 15,000 deaths.
• 1969 – Yasser Arafat (pictured) was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
• 1974 – American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome.
• 1999 – Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers, prompting outrage both within and outside the city.

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February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico ( 1917)

• 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced his invention of Bakelite (production device pictured), the world's first synthetic plastic.
• 1913 – Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, was performed theatrically for the first time in more than 250 years.
• 1958 – After a mid-air collision with a fighter plane during a practice exercise off Tybee Island, Georgia, a U.S. Air Force bomber jettisoned a Mark 15 nuclear bomb, which was presumed lost.
• 1985 – The mayors of Carthage and Rome signed a symbolic peace treaty to officially end the Third Punic War, 2,134 years after it began.
• 2019 – Pope Francis became the first pope to celebrate a papal Mass in the Arabian Peninsula.

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February 6: Sámi National Day ( 1917); Waitangi Day in New Zealand ( 1840)

• 1788 – Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the constitution of the United States.
• 1819 – British official Stamford Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a trading post for the East India Company.
• 1919 – More than 65,000 workers in Seattle began a five-day general strike to gain higher wages after two years of U.S. World War I wage controls.
• 1958 – The aircraft carrying the Manchester United football team crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in West Germany, killing 8 players and 23 people in total (news reel featured).

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February 7

• 1497 – Supporters of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of vanity items such as cosmetics, art and books in Florence, Italy.
• 1914 – Kid Auto Races at Venice, featuring the first appearance of comedy actor Charlie Chaplin's character the Tramp, was released.
• 1984 – During the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-B, astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart performed the first untethered spacewalk (pictured).
• 2005 – President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree on the redenomination of Azerbaijan's currency, with 1 new manat equal to 5000 old manats.
• 2014 – An inquiry report of the United Nations Human Rights Council found systematic and wide-ranging violations of human rights in North Korea.

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February 8

• 1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots (pictured), was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for her involvement in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I of England.
• 1879 – Angered by a controversial umpiring decision, cricket spectators rioted and attacked the England team during a match in Sydney, Australia.
• 1924 – Gee Jon became the first person in the United States to be executed by lethal gas.
• 1948 – The closing ceremony of the first Olympics held after World War II was held in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
• 1968 – Local police in Orangeburg, South Carolina, fired into a crowd of people who were protesting segregation, killing three and injuring twenty-seven others.
• 1983 – The Irish-bred race horse Shergar was stolen by gunmen, who demanded a £2 million ransom.

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February 9: Chinese New Year's Eve (2024)

• 1799 – Quasi-War: USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente in a single-ship action in the Caribbean Sea.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
• 1907 – More than 3,000 women in London participated in the Mud March (pictured), the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
• 1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
• 2016 – Two commuter trains collided head-on at Bad Aibling in southeastern Germany, killing 12 people and injuring 85.

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February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); Chinese New Year (2024); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

• 1355 – A tavern dispute between University of Oxford students and townspeople became a riot that left about 90 people dead.
• 1919 – The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.
• 1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
• 2009 – The first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit took place when Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 destroyed each other.

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February 11: National Foundation Day (Japan) ( 660 BC)

• 1826 – London University, later University College London (pictured), was founded as the first secular university in England.
• 1851 – As part of celebrations marking the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia began at the Launceston Racecourse in Tasmania.
• 1976 – The Frente de Liberación Homosexual made their final public appearance, shortly before the group's dissolution due to political repression after the 1976 Argentine coup d'état.
• 2001 – The computer worm Anna Kournikova, which would affect millions of users worldwide, was released by a 20-year-old Dutch student.

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February 12: Red Hand Day; Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2024)

• 1691 – A papal conclave convened to select a new pope after the death of Pope Alexander VIII.
• 1924 – George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York.
• 1994 – Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (pictured) was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway.
• 2003 – Protesters in La Paz and the Bolivian government brokered a deal to end two days of rioting against a proposed salary tax.

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February 13: Shrove Tuesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

• 1891 – Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London.
• 1961 – Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured).
• 2017 – Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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February 14: Valentine's Day; Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2024)

• 1655 – Arauco War: A series of coordinated Mapuche attacks took place against Spanish settlements and forts in colonial Chile, beginning a ten-year period of warfare.
• 1779 – Native Hawaiians killed the English explorer Captain James Cook after he attempted to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of the island of Hawaii.
• 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was renamed as International Business Machines (IBM), later growing into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
• 1990 – NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth (cropped version pictured) from a record distance of 40.5  au (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
• 2007 – The first of several bombings in Zahedan, Iran, killed 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards.

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February 15: National Flag of Canada Day ( 1965); Statehood Day in Serbia ( 1804)

• 438 – The Codex Theodosianus, a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire, was published.
• 1763 – Prussia, Saxony and the Habsburg monarchy signed the Treaty of Hubertusburg, ending the Third Silesian War.
• 1949 – Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux began excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves in the West Bank, the location of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls.
• 1979 – Don Dunstan (pictured) resigned as Premier of South Australia, ending a decade of sweeping social liberalisation.
• 1999 – Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founding members of the militant organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was arrested by Turkish security forces in Nairobi, Kenya.

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February 16: Day of the Shining Star in North Korea; Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska

• 1249 – King Louis IX dispatched André de Longjumeau as the French ambassador to the Mongol Empire.
• 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence (pictured), proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania.
• 1922 – A landslide in Byblos revealed a sarcophagus in an underground tomb, later discovered to be part of a large Bronze Age necropolis.
• 1996 – Eleven people died in a train collision in Silver Spring, Maryland, leading to the creation of comprehensive U.S. federal rules for the design of passenger cars.

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February 17

• 1859 – Cochinchina campaign: French Navy forces captured the Citadel of Saigon, defended by 1,000 Vietnamese soldiers of the Nguyễn dynasty.
• 1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in Milan to poor reviews, forcing him to revise the opera.
• 1964 – Gabonese military officers overthrew President Léon M'ba, but French forces, honouring a 1960 treaty, forcibly reinstated him two days later.
• 1974 – A U.S. Army soldier stole a Bell UH-1 helicopter (pictured) and landed it on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C.
• 2011 – Arab Spring: Bahraini security forces killed four protesters in a pre-dawn raid at the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, while the " Day of Rage" took place in Libya with nationwide protests against Muammar Gaddafi's government.

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February 18

• 3102 BCE – According to Hindu scriptures, Kali Yuga, the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas, began.
• 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: French troops led by Napoleon forced the Army of Bohemia to retreat after it advanced dangerously close to Paris.
• 1977 – The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire started during Chinese New Year when a firecracker ignited the wreaths of late Mao Zedong, killing 694 personnel.
• 2014 – A series of violent events (pictured) involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters began in Kyiv that culminated in the ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych five days later.

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February 19: Family Day in Canada (2024)

• 1811 – Peninsular War: Outnumbered French forces under Édouard Mortier routed and nearly destroyed Spanish troops at the Battle of the Gebora near Badajoz, Spain.
• 1903 – A blockade against Venezuela (depicted), caused by President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts, was lifted.
• 1942 – World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible relocation of over 112,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps.
• 1948 – The Southeast Asian Youth Conference, which is believed to have inspired armed communist rebellions in different Asian countries, opened in Calcutta, India.

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February 20: Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Ukraine ( 2014)

• 1685 – The French colonization of Texas began with the landing of colonists led by Robert de La Salle near Matagorda Bay.
• 1959 – Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow (pictured) interceptor-aircraft program amid much political debate.
• 1970 – The Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani province, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Thailand, was founded.
• 1998 – At the age of 15, American figure skater Tara Lipinski became the youngest gold-medal winner in the history of the Winter Olympic Games at the time.

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February 21

• 1746 – Jacobite rising of 1745: The siege of Inverness ended with British forces surrendering to the Jacobite army.
• 1862 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army began an attempt to gain control of the Southwest with a major victory in the Battle of Valverde.
• 1952 – A number of student protesters demanding the establishment of Bengali as an official language were killed by police in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
• 1965 – American Black nationalist Malcolm X (pictured) was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
• 1973 – After accidentally straying into Israeli-occupied airspace, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by two fighter aircraft, killing 108 of the 113 people on board.

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February 22

• 1371 – Robert II became King of Scots as the first monarch of the House of Stewart.
• 1959 – Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500 NASCAR auto race at the Daytona International Speedway (pictured) in Daytona Beach, Florida.
• 1974 – Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate Richard Nixon, but he was stopped by police.
• 2019 – A group broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid and stole several mobile telephones and digital storage devices.

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February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan ( 1960)

• 1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
• 1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium (sample pictured).
• 1944 – In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of the native Chechen and Ingush of North Caucasus.
• 1987 – SN 1987A, a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, was observed from Earth.
• 2021 – Caused by gang rivalries, riots in four Ecuadorian prisons resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.

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February 24: Lantern Festival in China (2024); Independence Day in Estonia

• 1711 – Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel (pictured), the first Italian-language opera written specifically for the London stage, premiered.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: French admiral Villaret de Joyeuse unconditionally surrendered to the British, which ended the British invasion of Martinique and began a five-year occupation of the island.
• 1979 – Uganda–Tanzania War: Ugandan government forces fled Masaka, Uganda, as the Tanzania People's Defence Force bombarded and captured the town.
• 1989 – United Airlines Flight 811 experienced uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii, blowing seats out of the aircraft and killing nine passengers.

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February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia ( 1921); National Day in Kuwait ( 1961)

• 1843 – Royal Navy captain Lord George Paulet began a five-month occupation of the Hawaiian Islands.
• 1933 – USS Ranger (pictured), the United States Navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, was launched.
• 1951 – After being postponed due to World War II, the inaugural Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1994 – Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Palestinian Muslims praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others.
• 2009 – At their headquarters in Pilkhana, members of the Bangladesh Rifles began a mutiny that resulted in 82 deaths.

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February 26

• 747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
• 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
• 1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
• 2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.

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February 27: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Narek ( Catholicism)

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the arrests of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
• 1814 – Peninsular War: In the south of France, Spanish, British and Portuguese soldiers under the command of Arthur Wellesley defeated French soldiers in the Battle of Orthez, causing the French to retreat east.
• 1988 – The Armenian community of Sumgait in Azerbaijan was the target of a violent pogrom (memorial pictured).
• 1996 – The multimedia franchise Pokémon was launched with the release of the video games Pocket Monsters Red and Green.

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February 28: Kalevala Day / Finnish Culture Day

• 1874 – In one of the longest cases ever heard in an English court, the claimant in the Tichborne case was convicted of perjury for attempting to assume the identity of the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.
• 1904 – The most successful football club in Portugal, S.L. Benfica (first team pictured), was founded in Lisbon as Sport Lisboa.
• 1914 – In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern Albania proclaimed the short-lived Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.
• 1939 – In one of the most famous errors in lexicography, the erroneous word " dord" was discovered in Webster's New International Dictionary by an editor.
• 1974 – The British election ended in a hung parliament after the Liberal Party, under Jeremy Thorpe, achieved their highest ever number of votes.

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February 29: Beginning of the Nineteen-Day Fast ( Baháʼí Faith, 2024)

• 1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
• 1944 – World War II: The Admiralty Islands campaign began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.
• 1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history (damaged building pictured) struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
• 2004 – Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown following popular rebel uprising.
• 2012 – Construction of Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest tower and third-tallest structure, was completed.

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March 1: Disability Day of Mourning; Saint David's Day; Independence Day in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina ( 1992); Yap Day in Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia

• 1562 – An attempt by Francis, Duke of Guise, to disperse a church service by Huguenots in Wassy, France, turned into a massacre, resulting in 50 dead, and starting the French Wars of Religion.
• 1869 – The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (pictured) finished his design of the first periodic table.
• 1921 – The Australian cricket team, led by Warwick Armstrong, became the first team to complete a whitewash in the Ashes, an achievement that would not be repeated for 86 years.
• 1936 – Hoover Dam, straddling the Arizona– Nevada border on the Colorado River, was completed.
• 1992 – A Bosnian-Serb wedding procession was attacked in Sarajevo, resulting in what is widely considered the first casualty of the Bosnian War.

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March 2

• 1484 – The College of Arms, one of the few remaining official heraldic authorities in Europe, was incorporated by royal charter in the City of London.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot militiamen from Georgia and South Carolina attempted to resist the British action to seize and remove supply ships anchored at Savannah, Georgia.
• 1949 – The B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II landed in Fort Worth, Texas, to complete the first non-stop circumnavigation of the world by airplane.
• 1962 – Playing for the Philadelphia Warriors, American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain (pictured) scored 100 points in a game against the New York Knicks, which remains an NBA record.
• 2022 – Russian forces captured the city of Kherson, the only regional capital to be taken during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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March 3: Liberation Day in Bulgaria ( 1878); Hinamatsuri in Japan

• 1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted, introducing English common law to the Principality of Wales.
• 1891 – Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming was established as the first national forest in the United States.
• 1913 – Thousands of women marched in Washington, D.C. (program cover pictured) "in a spirit of protest" against the exclusion of women from American society.
• 1924 – The Ottoman Caliphate, the world's last widely recognized caliphate, was abolished.
• 1991 – Motorist Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers during an arrest, causing public outrage that increased tensions between the African-American community and the police department over police brutality and social inequality.

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March 4: Feast day of Saint Casimir ( Catholicism)

• 1386 – Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania, was crowned King of Poland as Władysław II Jagiełło (pictured), beginning the Jagiellonian dynasty.
• 1773 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart departed Italy after the last of his three journeys there.
• 1899 – Cyclone Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Queensland, killing over 300 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Australian history.
• 1918 – A case of influenza was recorded at Camp Funston, Kansas, conventionally marking the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic.
• 2017 – Construction began on a 69-metre (226 ft) statue of the Buddha at Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen in Bangkok.

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March 5: Learn from Lei Feng Day in China; St Piran's Day in Cornwall, England

• 1811 – Peninsular War: At the Battle of Barrosa, Anglo-Iberian forces trying to lift the Siege of Cádiz defeated a French attack but could not break the siege itself.
• 1825 – Roberto Cofresí, one of the last Caribbean pirates, was apprehended after his flagship sloop Anne was captured by authorities.
• 1936 – The prototype (pictured) of the Supermarine Spitfire flew for the first time.
• 1960 – Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph Guerrillero Heroico of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
• 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, was launched by Sinclair Research, and went on to sell more than 1.5 million units around the world.

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March 6

• 845 – The Abbasid Caliphate executed 42 Byzantine officials who had been captured in the sack of Amorium of 838 for refusing to convert to Islam.
• 1447 – Tommaso Parentucelli was elected as Pope Nicholas V in Rome.
• 1904 – Scottish National Antarctic Expedition: Led by William Speirs Bruce (pictured), the Antarctic region of Coats Land was discovered by the Scotia.
• 1988 – The Troubles: In Operation Flavius, the Special Air Service killed three volunteers of the Provisional Irish Republican Army conspiring to bomb a parade of British military bands in Gibraltar.
• 2000 – The Marine Parade Community Building, the mural cladding of which is the largest installation art in Singapore, was opened.

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March 7: Feast day of Saints Perpetua and Felicity ( Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism)

• 1573 – A peace treaty brought the Ottoman–Venetian War to an end, ceding Cyprus from the Republic of Venice to the Ottoman Empire.
• 1871 – José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco, began a four-year premiership as Prime Minister of the Empire of Brazil, the longest in the state's history.
• 1941 – The German submarine U-47, one of the most successful U-boats of World War II, disappeared with 45 men on board.
• 1965 – Unarmed civil rights activists marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, were attacked by police (pictured) on " Bloody Sunday".
• 2021 – A series of four explosions at a military barracks in Bata, Equatorial Guinea caused at least 107 deaths.

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March 8: International Women's Day; Aurat March in Pakistan

• 1576 – A Spanish colonial officer wrote a letter to King Philip II containing the first mention of the Maya ruins of Copán in present-day Honduras.
• 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
• 1963 – The Ba'ath Party came to power in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council for the Revolutionary Command.
• 1966 – Nelson's Pillar, a large granite pillar topped by a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin, Ireland, was severely damaged by a bomb.
• 1979 – Images taken by Voyager 1 proved the existence of volcanoes on Io (pictured), a moon of Jupiter.

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March 9

• 1776 – Scottish political economist Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations, the first modern work in economics, was published.
• 1891 – Kaʻiulani (pictured) was appointed heir apparent to the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
• 1925 – The Royal Air Force began a bombardment and strafing campaign against the mountain strongholds of Mahsud tribesmen in South Waziristan, in what is now Pakistan.
• 1956 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, Soviet troops suppressed mass demonstrations against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy.
• 1957 – The M_w 8.6 Andreanof Islands earthquake struck Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands, causing over $5 million in damage from ground movement and a destructive tsunami.

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March 10: Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2024)

• 1695 – Nine Years' War: At the Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas, Catalan miquelets attacked a column of French regular infantry and caused them to surrender.
• 1959 – An anti-Chinese uprising began as thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace in Lhasa to prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese army.
• 1968 – Vietnam War/ Laotian Civil War: North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces overwhelmed the American, Laotian, Thai, and Hmong defenders of Lima Site 85.
• 1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered a faint ring system around Uranus.
• 2008 – The New York Times revealed that Eliot Spitzer (pictured), Governor of New York, had patronized a prostitution ring.

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March 11: Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2024); National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2024); Longtaitou Festival in China (2024)

• 1864 – The Great Sheffield Flood killed at least 240 people and damaged more than 600 homes, after a crack in the Dale Dike Reservoir (pictured) caused it to fail.
• 1993 – The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Janet Reno as the country's first female attorney general.
• 2007 – Georgian authorities accused Russia of orchestrating a helicopter attack in the Kodori Valley of the breakaway territory of Abkhazia.
• 2009 – A teenage gunman engaged in a shooting spree at a secondary school in Winnenden, Germany, killing 16, including himself.

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March 12

• 1537 – Croatian–Ottoman wars: After the execution of feudal lord Petar Kružić, Croatian forces at Klis surrendered to the Ottoman forces in exchange for their safe passage to northern locations.
• 1881 – Andrew Watson (pictured) captained the Scotland national football team against England, becoming the world's first black international footballer.
• 1947 – Cold War: U.S. president Harry S. Truman proclaimed the Truman Doctrine to help stem the spread of communism.
• 1952 – British diplomat Lord Ismay was appointed the first secretary general of NATO.
• 1971 – The Turkish Armed Forces executed a " coup by memorandum", forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel.
• 2006 – U.S. Army soldiers gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered her along with her family members.

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March 13

• 1567 – A Spanish mercenary army surprised a band of rebels at the Battle of Oosterweel in the Habsburg Netherlands, beginning the Eighty Years' War.
• 1741 – War of Jenkins' Ear: The British began an assault against Spanish forts in the Caribbean in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias (depicted).
• 1964 – Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City, prompting research into the bystander effect due to the false story that neighbors witnessed the killing and did nothing to help her.
• 1996 – A mass shooting at a school occurred in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 17 people and prompting tighter gun control in the UK.

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March 14: New Year's Day ( Sikhism); White Day in parts of East Asia; Pi Day

• 1309 – On Eid al-Fitr, the citizens of Granada stormed palaces in the city, deposing Sultan Muhammad III and placing his half-brother Nasr on the throne.
• 1864 – The Petite messe solennelle was first performed in Paris, 34 years after Gioachino Rossini (pictured) retired as a composer.
• 1931 – Alam Ara, the first Indian sound film, premiered at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay.
• 1988 – China defeated Vietnam in a naval altercation while attempting to establish oceanographic observation posts on the Spratly Islands.
• 2021 – The Burmese military and police forces killed at least 65 civilians during the Hlaingthaya massacre in Yangon, including those protesting a recent coup d'état.

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March 15: Ides of March

• 44 BC – Julius Caesar (bust pictured), the dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus.
• 1823 – Sailor Benjamin Morrell erroneously reported the existence of the island of New South Greenland near Antarctica.
• 1916 – Six days after Pancho Villa and his cross-border raiders attacked Columbus, New Mexico, U.S. General John J. Pershing led a punitive expedition into Mexico to pursue Villa.
• 1917 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
• 1943 – The deportation of 50,000 Jews from the Greek city of Thessaloniki began.
• 1951 – The Iranian oil industry was nationalized in a movement led by Mohammad Mosaddegh.

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March 16: Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires

• 934 – Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period: Chinese general Meng Zhixiang proclaimed himself emperor and established Later Shu as a new state independent of Later Tang.
• 1689 – The Royal Welch Fusiliers (cap badge pictured), one of the oldest line-infantry regiments of the British Army, was founded.
• 1819 – The Bank for Savings in the City of New-York, the first savings bank in New York City, was incorporated.
• 1984 – William Buckley, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists.
• 1988 – Michael Stone, an Ulster loyalist, attacked the funeral of three Provisional IRA members, killing three attendees and injuring at least sixty others.

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March 17: Saint Patrick's Day ( Christianity); Anniversary of the Unification of Italy ( 1861)

• 1864 – Second Schleswig War: In an attempt to end a Danish blockade, Eduard von Jachmann led a Prussian squadron in an attack against a Danish fleet led by Edvard van Dockum.
• 1902 – The Dorchester Heights Monument (pictured), memorializing the siege of Boston during the American Revolutionary War, was dedicated.
• 1957 – A plane crash on the slopes of Mount Manunggal killed Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others.
• 1979 – The Penmanshiel Tunnel in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland collapsed during refurbishing construction, killing two workers, and leading to the abandonment of the tunnel.
• 2004 – Unrest in Kosovo broke out, resulting in the deaths of 28, the wounding of more than 600 others, and the destruction of several Serb Orthodox churches and shrines.

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March 18: Feast day of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (Christianity)

• 363 – A fire began in Rome that resulted in the destruction of the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.
• 1277 – Charles I of Anjou acquired a claim on the Kingdom of Jerusalem in exchange for a significant sum of money.
• 1906 – Romanian inventor Traian Vuia became the first person to fly a heavier-than-air monoplane (pictured) with an unassisted takeoff.
• 1959 – Tibetan uprising: After the 14th Dalai Lama sought refuge at Sera Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, Chinese forces bombarded the monastery, inflicting severe destruction and killing hundreds of Buddhist monks.
• 1977 – The punk group the Clash released their first single, " White Riot", described as their "most controversial song" due to its lyrics about class economics and race.
• 2019 – Syrian civil war: The U.S. Air Force carried out an airstrike in al-Baghuz Fawqani, killing 64 civilians.

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March 19: Saint Joseph's Day (Western Christianity); Nowruz (2024)

• 1279 – Mongol conquest of Song China: Zhao Bing (pictured), the last emperor of the Song dynasty, drowned at the end of the Battle of Yamen, bringing the dynasty to an end after three centuries.
• 1824 – American explorer Benjamin Morrell departed Antarctica after a voyage later plagued by claims of fraud.
• 1944 – The secular oratorio A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett premiered at the Adelphi Theatre in London.
• 1998 – An unscheduled Ariana Afghan Airlines flight crashed into a mountain on approach into Kabul, killing all 45 people aboard.
• 2011 – First Libyan Civil War: The French Air Force launched Opération Harmattan, beginning foreign military intervention in Libya.

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March 20

• 1724 – Following the death of Pope Innocent XIII, a papal conclave convened in Rome to elect a new pope.
• 1861 – An earthquake occurred in the Argentine province of Mendoza, causing at least 6,000 deaths and destroying most of the buildings in the province's capital city.
• 1922 – The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley.
• 1944 – World War II: U.S. Marines made a landing on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago to develop an airbase as part of Operation Cartwheel.
• 1987 – The antiretroviral drug zidovudine (chemical structure pictured) became the first treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for HIV/AIDS.
• 2014 – Taliban militants killed nine civilians in a mass shooting at the Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan.

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March 21: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2024); Oltenia Day in Romania

• 1874 – Queen's Park defeated Clydesdale 2–0 in the final of the inaugural Scottish Cup (trophy pictured).
• 1913 – More than 360 were killed and 20,000 homes were destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.
• 1968 – War of Attrition: The Battle of Karameh took place between the Israel Defense Forces and allied troops of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Jordanian Armed Forces.
• 1980 – The American soap opera Dallas aired the episode " A House Divided", which led to eight months of international speculation on " Who shot J.R.?"
• 2019 – A major explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China, killed 78 people and injured 640 others.

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March 22: World Water Day

• 106 – The Bostran era, the official era of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, began.
• 1638 – Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her participation in the Antinomian Controversy.
• 1896 – Charilaos Vasilakos (pictured) won the first modern marathon in preparation for the inaugural Summer Olympics.
• 1913 – Phan Xích Long, the self-proclaimed emperor of Vietnam, was arrested for organising a revolt against the colonial rule of French Indochina, which was nevertheless carried out by his supporters the following day.
• 1984 – Teachers at a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were falsely charged with the sexual abuse of schoolchildren, leading to the longest and costliest criminal trial in United States history.
• 1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returned from the space station Mir aboard Soyuz TM-20 after 437 days in space, setting a record for the longest spaceflight.

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March 23: Earth Hour (20:30 local time, 2024)

• 1888 – Chaired by William McGregor, a meeting of ten English football clubs was held in London, which would eventually result in the establishment of the Football League.
• 1931 – Bhagat Singh (pictured), one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement, and two others were executed by the British authorities.
• 1989 – Two researchers announced the discovery of cold fusion, a claim which was later discredited.
• 1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed into a hillside in Russia's Kemerovo Oblast, killing all 75 people on board, after the pilot's 15-year-old son had unknowingly disabled the autopilot while seated at the controls.
• 2005 – A fire and explosion at the third-largest oil refinery in the United States killed 15 workers and kicked off process safety programs throughout the world.

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March 24: Purim (Judaism 2024), World Tuberculosis Day

• 1387 – Hundred Years' War: An English fleet led by Richard Fitzalan attacked 250–360 French, Flemish and Castilian vessels in the Battle of Margate.
• 1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act came into effect, which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years.
• 1939 – Members of the German National Movement in Liechtenstein attempted to overthrow the government and provoke Liechtenstein's annexation into Nazi Germany.
• 1964 – Royal assent was given to Prince Edward Island's Provincial Flag Act, which outlined the design of its provincial flag (pictured).
• 2006 – Hannah Montana, starring Miley Cyrus as an actress whose alter ego is the titular character, premiered.

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March 25: Bangladesh Genocide Remembrance Day

• 1458 – Wars of the Roses: A formal reconciliation ceremony between the Lancastrians and Yorkists led to a brief period of peace.
• 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: In their second battle in seven days, the French Army of the Danube and Habsburg forces battled for control of the Hegau region.
• 1934 – Enrico Fermi (pictured) published his discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• 1949 – The Soviet Union began mass deportations of more than 90,000 "undesirable" people from the Baltic states to Siberia.

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March 26

• 1344 – Reconquista: The Muslim city of Algeciras surrendered after a 21-month siege and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile.
• 1651 – The Spanish ship San José ran aground onto coasts controlled by the indigenous Cunco people, who subsequently killed the crew.
• 1697 – The Safavid Empire began a four-year occupation of the Ottoman city of Basra on the Persian Gulf.
• 1812 – The Boston Gazette printed a cartoon coining the term " gerrymander", named after Governor Elbridge Gerry (pictured), who approved the legislation that created oddly shaped electoral districts.
• 1939 – Spanish Civil War: Nationalists began their final offensive of the war, at the end of which they controlled almost the entire country.
• 1999 – A jury began deliberations in the trial of Jack Kevorkian, an American practitioner of physician-assisted suicide who was charged with murder in the death of a terminally ill patient.

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March 27: Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania ( 1918)

• 1884 – Outraged by a jury's decision to convict a man of manslaughter instead of murder, a mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, began three days of rioting.
• 1899 – Philippine–American War: American forces defeated troops commanded by Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo at the Battle of Marilao River.
• 1998 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil (chemical structure pictured), better known by the trade name Viagra, for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
• 1999 – During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an Army of Yugoslavia unit shot down a U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft.
• 2020 – North Macedonia became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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March 28

• 1802 – German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered Pallas, the second asteroid to be identified, but at the time considered to be a planet.
• 1935 – The Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, premiered in Berlin.
• 1942 – Second World War: The port of Saint-Nazaire in German-occupied France was disabled by British naval forces (ship pictured).
• 1946 – The US Department of State released the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, a proposal for the international control of nuclear weapons.
• 1979 – British prime minister James Callaghan was defeated by one vote in a vote of no confidence after his government struggled to cope with widespread strikes during the Winter of Discontent.
• 1999 – Kosovo War: Serbian police and special forces killed around 93 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Izbica.

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March 29: Boganda Day in the Central African Republic ( 1959); Martyrs' Day in Madagascar ( 1947)

• 1461 – Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists defeated the Lancastrian army at the Battle of Towton, allowing Edward IV to secure the English throne.
• 1882 – The Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, was founded by Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
• 1974 – NASA's Mariner 10 (pictured) became the first space probe to make a flyby of Mercury.
• 1999 – The Chamoli earthquake, one of the strongest to hit the foothills of the Himalayas in more than 90 years, killed at least 100 people.
• 2014 – The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales took place following the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.

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March 30: Land Day in Palestinian communities ( 1976)

• 1822 – The United States merged East Florida and West Florida to create the Florida Territory.
• 1912 – Sultan Abd al-Hafid signed the Treaty of Fes (depicted), making Morocco a French protectorate.
• 1977 – Annie Hall had its first screening at the LA Film Festival; it would later be voted the funniest screenplay ever by members of the Writers Guild of America.
• 2009 – The Manawan Police Academy in Lahore, Pakistan, was attacked and held for several hours by 12 gunmen, resulting in 16 deaths and 95 injuries.

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March 31: Easter (Western Christianity, 2024); Cesar Chavez Day in various U.S. states ( 1927); International Transgender Day of Visibility

• 1854 – U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry (Japanese depiction pictured) and the Tokugawa shogunate signed the Convention of Kanagawa, forcing the opening of Japanese ports to American trade.
• 1959 – After a two-week escape journey from Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama reached the Tawang Monastery in Arunachal Pradesh in India.
• 1964 – The Brazilian Armed Forces overthrew President João Goulart, establishing a military dictatorship that lasted 21 years.
• 2004 – The Old National Library Building in Singapore was closed to make way for a tunnel, despite widespread protests.

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April 1: April Fools' Day; Iranian Islamic Republic Day ( 1979)

• 1871 – The Duke of Buckingham (pictured) opened the first section of the Brill Tramway, a short railway line to transport goods between his lands and the national rail network.
• 1952 – Israel enacted a citizenship law, prior to which the country technically had no citizens.
• 1969 – The Hawker Siddeley Harrier, the first operational fighter aircraft with V/STOL capabilities, entered service with the Royal Air Force.
• 2001 – Same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was legalised, with the country becoming the first to do so.

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April 2: World Autism Awareness Day; feast day of Saint Francis of Paola ( Catholicism); Malvinas Day in Argentina ( 1982)

• 1863 – About 5,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, mostly poor women, rioted in protest of the high price of bread (depicted).
• 1979 – Spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a military research facility near the city of Sverdlovsk, causing at least 68 deaths.
• 1982 – Argentine special forces invaded the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War against the United Kingdom.
• 1992 – Bosnian War: At least 48 civilians were massacred in the town of Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 2012 – A gunman shot at people inside Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, California, leaving seven people dead and three injured.

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April 3

• 1043 – Edward the Confessor, usually considered to be the last king of the House of Wessex, was crowned King of England.
• 1984 – Aboard Soyuz T-11, Rakesh Sharma (pictured) became the first Indian to be launched into space.
• 1996 – A U.S. Air Force CT-43 crashed into a mountainside while attempting an instrument approach to Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia, killing all 35 people on board, including Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.
• 2009 – A gunman opened fire at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, U.S., killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.
• 2013 – The northeastern section of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, experienced several flash floods that killed at least 100 people.

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April 4: Hansik in Korea (2024); Qingming Festival ( traditional Chinese, 2024)

• 503 BC – Roman consul Agrippa Menenius Lanatus celebrated a triumph for a military victory over the Sabines.
• 1081 – The Komnenos dynasty came to full power with the coronation of Alexios I Komnenos (pictured) as Byzantine emperor.
• 1859 – Bryant's Minstrels premiered the minstrel song " Dixie" in New York City as part of their blackface show.
• 1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, establishing NATO, an international military alliance whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

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April 5: Feast day of Saint Vincent Ferrer (Catholicism)

• 919 – The Fatimid Caliphate began a second unsuccessful invasion of Egypt, then under Abbasid rule.
• 1614 – Pocahontas (pictured), a Native American woman, married English colonist John Rolfe, leading to a period of peace between the Powhatan people and the inhabitants of Jamestown, Virginia.
• 1944 – Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from Auschwitz with the aid of an SS officer who opposed the Holocaust.
• 1986 – The Libyan secret service bombed a discotheque in West Berlin, resulting in three deaths and 229 others injured.
• 2009 – The North Korean satellite Kwangmyŏngsŏng-2 was launched from the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground and passed over Japan, sparking concerns it may have been a trial run of technology that could be used to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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April 6: Tartan Day

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Ships of the Continental Navy unsuccessfully attempted to capture HMS Glasgow near Block Island.
• 1808 – John Jacob Astor founded the American Fur Company, the profits from which made him the first multi- millionaire in the United States.
• 1974 – ABBA (pictured) won the Eurovision Song Contest representing Sweden with the song " Waterloo".
• 1994 – The aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down in Kigali; the event became the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide.
• 2008 – Egyptian workers staged an illegal general strike, two days before key municipal elections.
• 2009 – Mass protests began across Moldova against the results of the parliamentary election.

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April 7: National Beer Day in the United States

• 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces defeated Confederate troops at the Battle of Shiloh, the bloodiest battle in U.S. history at the time, in Hardin County, Tennessee.
• 1949 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, opened on Broadway.
• 1964 – Reverend Bruce W. Klunder was killed by a bulldozer while he was protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
• 1994 – Rwandan Civil War: The Rwandan genocide began a few hours after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, with hundreds of thousands killed in the following 100 days.
• 2001 – NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey (artist's conception pictured), the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, launched from Cape Canaveral.

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April 8

• 1271 – Crusades: The Knights Hospitaller surrendered the Krak des Chevaliers, a castle in present-day Syria, to the army of the Mamluk sultan Baybars.
• 1904 – France and the United Kingdom signed the Entente Cordiale, agreeing to a peaceful coexistence after centuries of intermittent conflict.
• 1911 – American cartoonist Winsor McCay released the silent short film Little Nemo (featured), one of the earliest animated films.
• 1933 – The Australian state of Western Australia voted to secede from the federation, but efforts to implement the result proved to be unsuccessful.
• 1973 – The Progress Party was founded in a movie theater in Oslo, Norway.

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April 9: Vimy Ridge Day in Canada ( 1917); Day of Valor in the Philippines ( 1942)

• 193 – Year of the Five Emperors: Septimius Severus was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops at Carnuntum in modern-day Austria.
• 1388 – Despite being vastly outnumbered, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Näfels.
• 1838 – The National Gallery (pictured) opened in its current building in Trafalgar Square, London.
• 1939 – After being denied permission to perform at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, African-American singer Marian Anderson gave an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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April 10: Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2024)

• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The War of the Fifth Coalition began with the Austrian invasion of Bavaria, then a client state of France.
• 1925 – The novel The Great Gatsby by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published by Scribner's.
• 1970 – In the midst of business disagreements with his bandmates, Paul McCartney announced his departure from the Beatles.
• 1973 – In the deadliest aviation accident in Swiss history, Invicta International Airlines Flight 435 crashed into a hillside near Hochwald, killing 108 people of 145 on board.
• 2019 – Scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project released the first image of a black hole (depicted), located at the center of the galaxy M87.

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April 11

• 1689 – William III and Mary II (both pictured) were crowned joint sovereigns of England in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: A hastily assembled Royal Navy fleet launched an assault against the main strength of the French Atlantic Fleet; an incomplete victory led to political turmoil in Britain.
• 1951 – U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands for making public statements about the Korean War that contradicted the administration's policies.
• 2001 – In a FIFA World Cup qualifying match, Australia defeated American Samoa 31–0, the largest margin of victory recorded in international football.

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April 12: Cosmonautics Day in Russia ( 1961); Yuri's Night

• 1807 – The Froberg mutiny of Greek and Albanian troops in British service ended with the explosion of the gunpowder magazine at Fort Ricasoli, Malta.
• 1831 – The Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England, collapsed reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step across it.
• 1993 – Bosnian War: NATO forces began Operation Deny Flight (aircraft pictured) to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered by the United Nations Security Council.
• 2012 – The Guinea-Bissau military seized control in a coup amid a presidential election, later handing power to a transitional administration under Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo.
• 2013 – Four Chadian soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing by jihadist rebels in Kidal, Mali.

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April 13: Vaisakhi (Sikhism, 2024)

• 1742 – The first performance of George Frideric Handel's celebrated oratorio Messiah took place in Dublin.
• 1943 – The Neoclassical Jefferson Memorial (pictured) in Washington, D.C., was formally dedicated on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth.
• 1946 – Nakam, a Jewish organization seeking revenge for the Holocaust, attempted to poison thousands of SS prisoners at Langwasser internment camp, but did not kill anyone.
• 2009 – Andrew Hussie's webcomic Homestuck debuted, and concluded on the same day in 2016.
• 2017 – War in Afghanistan: In an airstrike in Nangarhar Province, the U.S. military dropped the most powerful conventional bomb used in combat.

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April 14: Tamil New Year and other New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asia (2024); Day of the Georgian Language ( 1978)

• 43 BC – War of Mutina: Despite initial success, troops loyal to Mark Antony were defeated near the Via Aemilia in northern Italy by legions loyal to the Roman Senate.
• 1944 – The freighter Fort Stikine, carrying cotton bales, gold and ammunition, exploded in the harbour of Bombay, India, sinking surrounding ships and causing about 800 deaths.
• 1970 – After an oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, disabling the spacecraft's electrical and life-support systems, astronaut Jack Swigert reported: " Houston, we've had a problem here" (audio featured).
• 1983 – Let's Dance, English musician David Bowie's best-selling album, was released.
• 1994 – Iraqi no-fly zones conflict: In a friendly-fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort, two U.S. Air Force aircraft mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26 people.

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April 15: Day of the Sun in North Korea; Jackie Robinson Day in the United States

• 1632 – Thirty Years' War: A Swedish–German army defeated the forces of the Catholic League at the Battle of Rain, mortally wounding their commander Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly.
• 1923 – Ten Japanese-American children were killed in a racially motivated arson attack on a school in Sacramento, California.
• 1936 – Two Jews were killed near Tulkarm in Mandatory Palestine, an act widely viewed as the beginning of violence within the Arab revolt.
• 1989 – The Hillsborough disaster (memorial pictured), a human crush that caused 97 deaths in the worst disaster in British sporting history, occurred during an FA Cup match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in Sheffield.
• 2019 – A fire severely damaged Notre-Dame de Paris, destroying the cathedral's timber spire and much of the roof.

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April 16

• 1520 – A revolt of citizens in Toledo, Castile, opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles I began when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
• 1862 – Slavery in Washington, D.C., ended when the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law.
• 1945 – Second World War: British and Canadian forces concluded the Liberation of Arnhem in the Netherlands from German occupation.
• 1948 – The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, headquartered in Paris, was founded.
• 2014 – The ferry MV Sewol (pictured) capsized and sank off Donggeochado, South Korea, killing 306 people, mainly students from Danwon High School.

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April 17: Evacuation Day in Syria ( 1946)

• 1362 – Lithuanian Crusade: After a month-long siege, forces of the Teutonic Order captured and destroyed Kaunas Castle (reconstruction pictured), which was defended by troops of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
• 1783 – The Mechanical Turk, a fraudulent chess-playing "machine" by Wolfgang von Kempelen that was secretly controlled by a hidden human, began a tour of Europe.
• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: After a three-day chase, the French ship D'Hautpoul was captured off Puerto Rico by a British squadron under Alexander Cochrane.
• 1973 – George Lucas began writing a 13-page film treatment that later formed the basis of Star Wars.
• 1984 – Metropolitan Police officer Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London, resulting in an 11-day police siege of the building and a breakdown of Libya–United Kingdom relations.

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April 18

• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists Paul Revere and William Dawes, later joined by Samuel Prescott, began a midnight ride to warn residents of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, about the impending arrival of British troops.
• 1938 – Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster of DC Comics, made his debut in Action Comics #1, the first true superhero comic book.
• 1946 – The final session of the League of Nations concluded in Geneva, with delegates agreeing to transfer much of its assets to the United Nations.
• 1980 – Robert Mugabe (pictured) became the first prime minister of Zimbabwe, beginning a 37-year period in power.
• 2007 – A ladle spilled 30 tonnes (33 tons) of molten steel in a factory in Liaoning, China, killing 32 workers.

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April 19: Feast day of Saint Alphege of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism), Education and Sharing Day in the United States (2024), Primrose Day in London

• 1773 – The Polish Partition Sejm met to discuss the First Partition of Poland, carried out the previous year by Russia, Prussia and Austria.
• 1809 – War of the Fifth Coalition: French general Louis-Nicolas Davout defeated an Austrian force in Lower Bavaria, allowing him to rejoin the main French army.
• 1927 – American actress Mae West (pictured) was sentenced to ten days in jail for "corrupting the morals of youth" with her play Sex.
• 1989 – A gun turret exploded on board the United States Navy battleship Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

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April 20: First day of Ridván ( Baháʼí Faith, 2024); 420 ( cannabis culture)

• 1535 – Sun dogs were observed over Stockholm, Sweden, inspiring the painting Vädersolstavlan (depicted), the oldest coloured depiction of the city.
• 1818 – Four days after the Court of King's Bench upheld an English murder suspect's right to a trial by battle in Ashford v Thornton, the plaintiff declined to fight, allowing the defendant to go free.
• 1942 – World War II: German and Italian forces began a large-scale counter-insurgency operation in occupied Yugoslavia.
• 1968 – South African Airways Flight 228 crashed shortly after take-off from Windhoek in South West Africa, resulting in 123 deaths.
• 2010 – An explosion on Deepwater Horizon, an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico, resulted in the largest marine oil spill in history.

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April 21

• 900 – A debt was pardoned by the chief of Tondo on the island of Luzon and recorded on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known calendar-dated document found in the Philippines.
• 1615 – The Wignacourt Aqueduct (pictured) in Malta was inaugurated and was used to carry water to Valletta for about 300 years.
• 1836 – Forces of the Republic of Texas led by Sam Houston defeated the Mexican troops of General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive and final battle of the Texas Revolution.
• 1975 – South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned on hearing of the fall of Xuân Lộc, the last battle of the Vietnam War.
• 2021 – The Indonesian Navy submarine Nanggala sank, resulting in the deaths of all 53 people on board.

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April 22

• 1500 – A fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral (pictured) anchored off present-day Brazil; he later claimed the land for the Portuguese Empire.
• 1885 – The first meeting of the Colonial Defence Committee, a standing committee of the British Colonial Office, was held to discuss the defence of Barbados.
• 1918 – The short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was established on territory formerly part of the Russian Empire.
• 1951 – Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army attacked positions occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting the Battle of Kapyong.
• 2016 – The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, opened for signature and was signed by 175 parties.

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April 23: First day of Passover (Judaism); National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey; the Third Month Fair begins in Dali City, China (2024)

• 1467 – Ottoman wars in Europe: Albanian leader Skanderbeg defeated an Ottoman army under Ballaban Badera to raise the siege of Krujë.
• 1945 – World War II: The US Army's 90th Infantry Division liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp (pictured) in Germany, freeing 1,500 prisoners.
• 1976 – The American band the Ramones released their debut album, which became highly influential on the emerging punk rock movement.
• 1979 – Blair Peach, a New Zealand teacher, was fatally injured after being knocked unconscious during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration against a National Front election meeting in Southall, London.
• 2018 – A man intentionally struck pedestrians with a van on Yonge Street in Toronto, Canada, leading to 11 deaths.

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April 24: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day ( 1915); Administrative Professionals Day in various countries (2024)

• 1837 – A fire broke out in Surat, India, which went on to destroy about 75% of the city.
• 1914 – The Franck–Hertz experiment, the first electrical measurement to clearly demonstrate quantum mechanics, was presented to the German Physical Society.
• 1916 – Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
• 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope (pictured) was launched aboard STS-31 by Space Shuttle Discovery.
• 1993 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a truck bomb in London's financial district in Bishopsgate, killing one person, injuring forty-four others, and causing damage that cost £350 million to repair.

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April 25: Liberation Day in Italy ( 1945)

• 1643 – First English Civil War: Despite being vastly outnumbered, a Parliamentarian force under James Chudleigh defeated a Royalist army near Okehampton, Devon, at the Battle of Sourton Down.
• 1915 – First World War: The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Anzac Cove while British and French troops landed at Cape Helles to begin the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.
• 1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine Triton (pictured) completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the world.
• 1983 – The first issue of The Jakarta Post was published in Indonesia.
• 2015 – Nepal was struck by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake, killing more than 8,000 people.

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April 26

• 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Republic of Florence, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici (pictured) and killed his brother Giuliano at Florence Cathedral.
• 1915 – First World War: Britain, France and Russia signed a secret treaty promising territory to Italy if it joined the war on their side.
• 1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.
• 1989 – A tornado struck the Manikganj District of Bangladesh and killed an estimated 1,300 people, making it the deadliest tornado in history.
• 1994 – Just before landing at Nagoya Airport, Japan, the copilot of China Airlines Flight 140 inadvertently triggered the takeoff/go-around switch, causing the aircraft to crash and killing 264 of the 271 people on board.

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April 27: Koningsdag in the Netherlands

• 630 – Shahrbaraz usurped the throne of the Sasanian Empire from Ardashir III, but was himself killed six weeks later.
• 1650 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Covenanter forces defeated the Royalists at the Battle of Carbisdale near the village of Culrain, Scotland.
• 1945 – World War II: The photograph Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn (pictured) was taken after German troops withdrew to Norway at the end of the Lapland War.
• 1965 – Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation: British forces repelled a surprise Indonesian attack on a base at Plaman Mapu in Sarawak.
• 2005 – The Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger airliner, made its maiden flight from Toulouse, France.

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April 28: Workers' Memorial Day

• 1253 – The Japanese monk Nichiren declared the mantra Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō, now a central part of Nichiren Buddhism.
• 1789 – Fletcher Christian, the acting lieutenant on board the Royal Navy ship Bounty, led a mutiny against the commander William Bligh in the South Pacific.
• 1923 – The FA Cup final (crowd and police pictured) between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United was held on the opening day of the Empire Stadium in London.
• 1945 – World War II: Benito Mussolini, the deposed fascist dictator of Italy, was executed by partisans in Giulino.
• 1983 – The West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from the purported diaries of Adolf Hitler, later revealed to be forgeries.

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April 29

• 1770 – On his first voyage, British explorer James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour (pictured) landed at Botany Bay, making the first recorded European landfall on the eastern coast of Australia.
• 1903 – A rockslide buried part of the Canadian mining town of Frank under 110 million tonnes of rock, killing around 70 people.
• 1944 – Second World War: British agent Nancy Wake parachuted into Auvergne, France, becoming a liaison between the Special Operations Executive and the local Maquis group.
• 1968 – The controversial Broadway musical Hair, a product of the counterculture of the 1960s, opened, with its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
• 2006 – Cyclone Mala made landfall near Thandwe, Myanmar, causing 37 deaths.

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April 30

• 311 – The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians officially ended in the eastern Roman Empire.
• 1943 – Second World War: The Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph began Operation Mincemeat to deceive Germany about the upcoming invasion of Sicily.
• 1963 – A refusal by the Bristol Omnibus Company and the Transport and General Workers' Union to permit the employment of black bus crews led to a bus boycott in Bristol, England.
• 1975 – American forces completed a helicopter evacuation (aircraft and evacuees pictured) of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese civilians and others from Saigon, just before North Vietnamese troops captured the city and ended the Vietnam War.
• 2021 – A crowd crush killed 45 people during the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Israel.

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May 1: Beltane and Samhain in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India ( 1960); Loyalty Day in the United States

• 305 – Diocletian and Maximian retired as co-rulers of the Roman Empire, being succeeded by Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.
• 1794 – War of the Pyrenees: France regained nearly all the land it lost to Spain the previous year with its victory in the Second Battle of Boulou.
• 1931 – New York City's Empire State Building (pictured), at the time the tallest building in the world, opened.
• 1974 – Argentine president Juan Perón expelled Montoneros from a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, forcing the group to become a clandestine organization.

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May 2: National Day of Prayer in the United States (2024); Flag Day in Poland

• 1559 – Presbyterian clergyman John Knox returned from exile to lead the Scottish Reformation.
• 1889 – The Treaty of Wuchale was signed, ending the Italo-Ethiopian War, but differences in translation later led to another war.
• 1964 – Vietnam War: An explosion attributed to Viet Cong commandos caused the escort carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.
• 1999 – Mireya Moscoso (pictured) became the first woman to be elected President of Panama.
• 2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, killed at least 350 people.

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May 3: World Press Freedom Day; Constitution Memorial Day in Japan ( 1947); Constitution Day in Poland ( 1791)

• 1481 – The largest of a series of earthquakes struck the island of Rhodes, causing an estimated 30,000 casualties.
• 1848 – The Benty Grange helmet (pictured), a boar-crested Anglo-Saxon helmet similar to those mentioned in the contemporary epic poem Beowulf, was discovered in Derbyshire, England.
• 1939 – Subhas Chandra Bose formed the All India Forward Bloc, a faction within the Indian National Congress, in opposition to Gandhi's tactics of nonviolence.
• 1999 – A Doppler on Wheels team measured the fastest winds recorded on Earth, at 135 m/s (302 mph; 486 km/h), in a tornado near Bridge Creek, Oklahoma.

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May 4: Youth Day in China; Literary Day in Taiwan; Star Wars Day

• 1493 – Pope Alexander VI (pictured) issued the papal bull Inter caetera, establishing a line of demarcation dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal.
• 1776 – American Revolution: The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown.
• 1942 – World War II: Aircraft from Imperial Japanese Navy vessels attacked Allied naval forces, beginning the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval action in which the participating ships never sighted or fired directly at each other.
• 1974 – An all-female Japanese team reached the summit of Manaslu in the Himalayas, becoming the first women to climb a peak higher than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) above sea level.
• 1979 – Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom.

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May 5: Easter (Eastern Christianity, 2024); Lixia begins in China (2024); Children's Day in Japan; Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the United States

• 1646 – First English Civil War: Charles I surrendered himself to Scottish Covenanter leader David Leslie near Newark, England.
• 1864 – American Civil War: Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign in Virginia began with the inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness in Spotsylvania County.
• 1891 – Carnegie Hall (interior pictured) in New York City, built by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, officially opened with a concert conducted by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
• 1980 – The British Special Air Service recaptured the Iranian embassy in London following a six-day siege after Iranian Arab separatists had seized it.
• 2007 – Kenya Airways Flight 507 crashed immediately after takeoff from Douala International Airport in Cameroon, resulting in the deaths of all 114 people aboard.

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May 6

• 1536 – Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Sapa Inca emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui's army began a ten-month siege of Cusco against a garrison of Spanish conquistadors and Indian auxiliaries led by Hernando Pizarro.
• 1782 – Construction began on the Grand Palace (pictured) in Bangkok, the official residence of the king of Thailand.
• 1915 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: SY Aurora, anchored in McMurdo Sound, broke loose during a gale, beginning a 312-day ordeal in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean for her 18-man crew.
• 2004 – The final episode of the television sitcom Friends was aired.
• 2013 – Amanda Berry escaped from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of her captor, Ariel Castro, having been held there with two other women for ten years.

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May 7

• 1487 – Granada War: Forces of Aragon and Castile began a siege of Málaga, a Muslim city in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
• 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre (pictured) established the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
• 1798 – War of the First Coalition: A British garrison repelled a French attack on the Îles Saint-Marcouf off the Normandy coast, inflicting heavy losses.
• 1937 – Employees at Fleischer Studios in New York City went on strike in the animation industry's first major labor strike.
• 1946 – Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded the telecommunications corporation Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, later renamed Sony.

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May 8: Anniversary of the birth of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico (1753); Victory in Europe Day (1945)

• 1643 – First English Civil War: The first siege of Wardour Castle ended after six days with the surrender of the Royalist garrison under Lady Blanche Arundell (pictured).
• 1842 – A train derailed and caught fire near Versailles, France, killing at least 52 people.
• 1927 – French aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli aboard the biplane L'Oiseau Blanc took off from Paris, attempting to make the first non-stop flight to New York, only to disappear before arrival.
• 1963 – In Huế, South Vietnam, soldiers opened fire into a crowd of Buddhists protesting against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Phật Đản, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
• 1972 – Four members of Black September hijacked Sabena Flight 571 to demand the release of 315 Palestinians convicted on terrorism charges.

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May 9: Europe Day in the European Union; Liberation Day in the Channel Islands ( 1945)

• 1877 – An earthquake struck northern Chile, leading to the deaths of 2,385 people, mostly victims of the ensuing tsunami, as far away as Hawaii and Fiji.
• 1944 – World War II: The Japanese Take Ichi convoy arrived at Halmahera in the Dutch East Indies after losing many ships and thousands of troops to Allied attacks while attempting to carry two divisions of troops from China to New Guinea.
• 1977 – The Hotel Polen in Amsterdam was destroyed by fire (pictured), leaving 33 people dead.
• 1980 – Part of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida collapsed after a pier was struck by the MV Summit Venture, killing 35 people.
• 2001 – Police at the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra, Ghana, fired tear gas to quell unrest at a football match, leading to a stampede that killed 126 people.

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May 10

• 28 BC – Chinese astronomers during the Han dynasty made the first precisely dated observation of a sunspot.
• 1833 – Siamese–Vietnamese wars: Lê Văn Khôi escaped from prison to begin a revolt against Emperor Minh Mạng, primarily to avenge his adoptive father, Vietnamese general Lê Văn Duyệt.
• 1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five companions arrived at South Georgia, completing a 1,300 km (800 mi) lifeboat voyage over 16 days to obtain rescue for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
• 1940 – World War II: German forces commenced their invasion of Belgium.
• 2013 – One World Trade Center (pictured) in New York City, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, was topped out at a height of 1,776 feet (541 m).

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May 11

• 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra was printed in Tang-dynasty China, making it the world's oldest dated printed book (frontispiece pictured).
• 1889 – Bandits attacked a U.S. Army paymaster's escort in the Arizona Territory, stealing more than $28,000.
• 1970 – Lubbock, Texas, was struck by a tornado that left 26 people dead.
• 2010 – Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party after failing to strike a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats.
• 2022 – Myanmar civil war: Government troops killed 37 unarmed civilians in Mondaingbin.

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May 12

• 1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Bohemia after Austrian forces drove French troops from the territory.
• 1938 – During an exercise to demonstrate air power, United States Army Air Corps bomber aircraft intercepted the Italian ocean liner SS Rex (pictured) 620 nautical miles (1,100 km) off the US Atlantic coast.
• 1948 – The United Kingdom publicly announced that it was independently developing nuclear weapons, after the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended cooperation on the matter.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force began the defence of Fire Support Base Coral in the largest unit-level action of the war for the Australian Army.
• 1998 – Four students were shot and killed by Indonesian soldiers at Trisakti University in Jakarta, which led to widespread riots and the resignation of President Suharto nine days later.

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May 13: Yom HaZikaron in Israel (2024)

• 1909 – The inaugural edition of the Giro d'Italia, a long-distance multiple- stage bicycle race, began in Milan; the Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the eventual winner.
• 1958 – US vice president Richard Nixon's motorcade was attacked by a mob in Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2000 – An explosion (aftermath pictured) at a fireworks factory in Enschede, Netherlands, resulted in 23 deaths and approximately €450 million in damage.
• 2008 – Nine bombs placed by the Indian Mujahideen, then an unknown terrorist group, exploded in a 15-minute period in Jaipur, India, killing 80 people and injuring more than 200 others.

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May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias ( Catholicism); Independence Day in Israel (2024)

• 1264 – Second Barons' War: King Henry III was defeated at the Battle of Lewes (monument pictured) and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
• 1857 – Mindon Min was crowned as King of Burma.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Union troops captured Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.
• 1931 – Five people were killed in Ådalen, Sweden, as soldiers opened fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.
• 1948 – David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Israeli Declaration of Independence at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv.

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May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage ( Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities

• 392 – Roman emperor Valentinian II (pictured) was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, in present-day France.
• 1855 – Thieves stole 224 pounds (102 kg) of gold from a train travelling from London to Folkestone, England.
• 1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union Army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
• 1904 – Russo-Japanese War: The Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank after striking several mines off Port Arthur, China.
• 1916 – Jesse Washington, a teenage African-American farmhand, was lynched in Waco, Texas.

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May 16: Global Accessibility Awareness Day (2024)

• 1426 – Mohnyin Thado captured Sagaing to become the king of Ava, in present-day Myanmar.
• 1605 – After a scuffle in which one cardinal received broken bones, a papal conclave convened in Rome elected Camillo Borghese as Pope Paul V.
• 1929 – The first Academy Awards ceremony was held at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
• 1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei (pictured) became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

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May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

• 1590 – Anne of Denmark (pictured) was crowned the queen consort of Scotland in a ceremony at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.
• 1863 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Big Black River Bridge in Mississippi, Union forces under John A. McClernand defeated a Confederate rearguard and captured around 1,700 men.
• 1900 – The first copies of the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum were printed.
• 1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional.
• 1987 – An Iraqi jet fired two Exocet missiles at the American frigate USS Stark, killing 37 personnel and injuring 21 others.

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May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti ( 1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine

• 1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
• 1695 – An earthquake measuring M_s7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
• 1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
• 2009 – The Sri Lanka Army killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to bring an end to the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War.

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May 19: Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey ( 1919)

• 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: England invaded Spanish Jamaica, capturing it a week later.
• 1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer using the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the melting point of water and 100 its boiling point.
• 1828 – The United States Congress passed the largest tariff in the nation's history, which resulted in severe economic hardship in the American South.
• 1915 – First World War: Australian and New Zealand troops repelled the third attack on Anzac Cove, inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking Ottoman forces.
• 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (both pictured) took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, England.

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May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia ( 1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia ( 1908); Victoria Day in Canada (2024)

• 794 – According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the orders of Offa of Mercia.
• 1714 – Johann Sebastian Bach directed the first performance of his Pentecost cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder at the chapel of Schloss Weimar (pictured).
• 1927 – With the signing of the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become Saudi Arabia.
• 1941 – World War II: German paratroopers began the Battle of Heraklion on the island of Crete, capturing the airfield and port in Heraklion ten days later.

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May 21: World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

• 1138 – The Crusades: The siege of Shaizar ended, and the Emir of Shaizar became a vassal of the Byzantine Empire.
• 1864 – American Civil War: The inconclusive Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia ended with combined Union and Confederate casualties totaling around 31,000.
• 1894 – The Manchester Ship Canal, linking Manchester in North West England to the Irish Sea, officially opened, becoming the world's largest navigation canal at the time.
• 1924 – University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (both pictured) murdered a 14-year-old boy in a thrill killing out of a desire to commit a " perfect crime".
• 2014 – A Taiwanese man carried out a stabbing spree on a Taipei Metro train, killing four people and injuring 24 others.

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May 22

• 1766 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Constantinople and was followed by a tsunami that caused significant damage.
• 1874 – Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem was first performed in the San Marco church in Milan to commemorate the first anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni's death.
• 1998 – In Public Prosecutor v Taw Cheng Kong, the Court of Appeal of Singapore overruled a High Court decision in the only time a statute in Singapore had been ruled unconstitutional.
• 2014 – Prayut Chan-o-cha (pictured), the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government following six months of political crisis.

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May 23: Aromanian National Day

• 1568 – The Dutch Revolt broke out when rebels led by Louis of Nassau (pictured) invaded Friesland at the Battle of Heiligerlee.
• 1873 – The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
• 1934 – During a strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company in Toledo, a fight began between nearly 10,000 American strikers and sheriff's deputies, later involving the Ohio National Guard.
• 1999 – Professional wrestler Owen Hart died immediately before a World Wrestling Federation match after dropping 70 feet (21 m) onto the ring during a botched entrance.

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May 24: Aldersgate Day ( Methodism)

• 1567 – The mentally ill King Eric XIV of Sweden (pictured) and his guards murdered five incarcerated nobles, including some members of the influential Sture family.
• 1689 – The Act of Toleration became law, granting freedom of worship to English nonconformists under certain circumstances, but deliberately excluding Catholics.
• 1798 – The Irish Rebellion of 1798 began, with battles beginning in County Kildare and fighting later spreading across the country.
• 1963 – United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an unsuccessful attempt to improve race relations.
• 2014 – A gunman involved in Islamic extremism opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people.

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May 25: Africa Day ( 1963); Independence Day in Jordan ( 1946)

• 1816 – The poems Kubla Khan and Christabel by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (pictured) were published.
• 1944 – The Wehrmacht and their collaborationist allies launched Operation Rösselsprung, a failed attempt to assassinate the Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito.
• 1961 – A fire broke out at a squatter settlement in Bukit Ho Swee, Singapore, rendering approximately 16,000 people homeless.
• 1979 – During takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, an engine detached from American Airlines Flight 191, causing a crash that killed 273 people in the deadliest aviation accident in United States history.
• 2009 – North Korea conducted a nuclear test and several other missile tests that were widely condemned internationally and led to sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

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May 26: National Sorry Day in Australia; Independence Day in Georgia ( 1918), Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2024)

• 1644 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese and Spanish forces both claimed victory at the Battle of Montijo.
• 1894 – Germany's Emanuel Lasker defeated Wilhelm Steinitz to become the world chess champion, beginning a record 27-year reign.
• 1999 – Manchester United won the UEFA Champions League final to become the first English football club to win three major championships in the same season.
• 2002 – Barges being towed destroyed part of a bridge (aftermath pictured) near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, causing vehicles to fall into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.

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May 27: Memorial Day in the United States

• 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon (depicted) defeated rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.
• 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French Army of the Danube, capturing the strategically important Swiss town of Winterthur.
• 1954 – The security clearance of American nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of Project Y, was revoked.
• 1967 – Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous Australians in population counts for constitutional purposes and to allow the federal government to make special laws affecting them in states.

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May 28: Republic Day in Armenia ( 1918); Independence Day in Azerbaijan ( 1918)

• 585 BC – According to the Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse, accurately predicted by Thales of Miletus, abruptly ended the Battle of Halys between the Lydians and the Medes.
• 1644 – English Civil War: Royalist troops stormed and captured the Parliamentarian stronghold of Bolton, leading to a massacre of defenders and local residents.
• 1754 – French and Indian War: Led by 22-year-old George Washington, a company of Virginia colonial militiamen ambushed a force of 35 Canadiens at the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
• 1901 – Mozaffar ad-Din (pictured), Shah of Persia, granted exclusive rights to prospect for oil in the country to William Knox D'Arcy.
• 1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated with his accession as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, being summoned to Buckingham Palace to " kiss hands".
• 2002 – An independent commission appointed by the Football Association voted two-to-one to allow Wimbledon F.C. to relocate from London to Milton Keynes.

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May 29: Feast day of Saint Paul VI ( Catholicism)

• 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols entered and began looting Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty of China, after a 13-month siege.
• 1416 – A squadron of the Venetian navy captured many Ottoman ships at the Battle of Gallipoli, confirming Venetian naval superiority in the Aegean Sea for the next few decades.
• 1913 – During the premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience.
• 1999 – Charlotte Perrelli, representing Sweden, won the Eurovision Song Contest, the first edition not to feature an orchestra or live accompaniment.
• 2011 – Residents of Portland, Oregon, held a rally called Hands Across Hawthorne in response to an attack against a gay couple holding hands while crossing the Hawthorne Bridge (pictured).

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May 30: Statehood Day in Croatia ( 1990)

• 1431 – Hundred Years' War: After being convicted of heresy, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.
• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) assumed the office of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, presenting the cantata Die Elenden sollen essen in St. Nicholas Church.
• 1922 – The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring a sculpture of the sixteenth U.S. president Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, opened.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination was held outside the National Assembly of South Vietnam in Saigon, the first open demonstration against President Ngô Đình Diệm.
• 2008 – The Convention on Cluster Munitions, prohibiting the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster bombs, was adopted.

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May 31: World No Tobacco Day

• 455 – Petronius Maximus, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city.
• 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
• 1468 – Cardinal Bessarion (pictured) announced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana.
• 1935 – An earthquake registering 7.7 M_w struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
• 2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing 8 people and injuring more than 150.

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June 1

• 1676 – Scanian War: The Swedish warship Kronan, one of the largest ships in the world at the time, sank at the Battle of Öland with the loss of around 800 men.
• 1857 – The Revolution of the Ganhadores, the first general strike in Brazil, began in Salvador, Bahia.
• 1974 – In an informal article in a medical journal, Henry Heimlich introduced the concept of abdominal thrusts, commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver, to treat victims of choking.
• 1988 – Group representation constituencies were introduced to the parliament of Singapore.
• 1999 – On landing at Little Rock National Airport in the U.S. state of Arkansas, American Airlines Flight 1420 overran the runway and crashed (wreckage pictured), resulting in 11 deaths.

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June 2: Festa della Repubblica in Italy ( 1946)

• 1802 – Henry Hacking killed the Aboriginal Australian resistance fighter Pemulwuy after Philip Gidley King ordered that he be brought in dead or alive.
• 1919 – First Red Scare: The anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani (pictured) set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States.
• 1953 – Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
• 1994 – The Royal Air Force suffered a significant peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, killing all 29 people on board.
• 2023 – A collision between two passenger trains and a parked freight train near the city of Balasore, Odisha, in eastern India resulted in 296 deaths and more than 1,200 people injured.

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June 3: Martyrs Day in Uganda; King's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2024); Western Australia Day (2024)

• 1781 – American Revolutionary War: Jack Jouett (pictured) rode 40 miles (64 km) to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of British cavalry who had been sent to capture them.
• 1892 – Liverpool F.C., one of England's most successful football clubs, was founded.
• 1937 – Half a year after abdicating the British throne, Edward, Duke of Windsor, married American socialite Wallis Simpson in a private ceremony in France.
• 1969 – During a SEATO exercise in the South China Sea, a collision between HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E. Evans resulted in the latter vessel being cut in two and the deaths of 74 personnel.
• 1982 – A failed assassination attempt was made on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, which event was later used as justification for the First Lebanon War.

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June 4: Trianon Treaty Day in Romania (1920)

• 1784 – Élisabeth Thible became the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon, covering a distance of 4 km (2.5 mi) and reaching an estimated altitude of 1,500 m (4,900 ft).
• 1944 – World War II: A United States Navy task group captured German submarine U-505 (pictured).
• 1974 – Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians hosted Ten Cent Beer Night, but had to forfeit the game to the Texas Rangers due to rioting by drunken fans.

• 1989 – Following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, the Assembly of Experts elected Ali Khamenei to be Supreme Leader of Iran.

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June 5: World Environment Day; Jerusalem Day in Israel (2024)

• 1897 – The Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law was passed, instituting the protection of structures and artifacts in Japan designated National Treasures.
• 1899 – Antonio Luna (pictured), Commanding General of the Philippine Army, was assassinated in the midst of the Philippine–American War.
• 1997 – Anticipating a coup attempt, President Pascal Lissouba of the Republic of the Congo ordered the detention of his rival Denis Sassou Nguesso, initiating a second civil war.
• 2004 – Noël Mamère, the mayor of Bègles, conducted a marriage ceremony for two men, even though same-sex marriage in France had not yet been legalised.
• 2009 – After almost two months of civil disobedience, at least 31 people were killed in clashes between the National Police and indigenous people in Bagua Province, Peru.

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June 6: National Day of Sweden

• 1674 – Shivaji (pictured), who led a resistance to free the Maratha from the Bijapur Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, was crowned the first chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire.
• 1749 – A plot by Muslim slaves in Malta to assassinate Manuel Pinto da Fonseca of the Knights Hospitaller was uncovered.
• 1813 – War of 1812: The British ambushed an American encampment near present-day Stoney Creek, Ontario, capturing two senior officers.
• 1912 – The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century began, forming the volcano Novarupta in the Alaska Peninsula.
• 1944 – World War II: Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious military operation in history, began with Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy in France.

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June 7

• 879 – Pope John VIII officially recognised Croatia as an independent state, and Branimir (monument pictured) as its duke.
• 1628 – The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document that set out specific liberties of individuals, received royal assent from King Charles I.
• 1917 – First World War: The British Army detonated 19 ammonal mines under German lines, killing perhaps 10,000 in the deadliest non-nuclear man-made explosion in history during the Battle of Messines.
• 1948 – Anti-Jewish riots broke out in the French protectorate in Morocco, during which 44 people were killed and 150 injured.
• 1969 – In their only UK concert, the rock supergroup Blind Faith, featuring Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and Ginger Baker, debuted in London's Hyde Park in front of 100,000 fans.

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June 8

• 1826 – In York, Upper Canada, members of the Family Compact destroyed William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press in the Types Riot after Mackenzie accused them of corruption.
• 1929 – Margaret Bondfield (pictured) became the first female member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom when she was named Minister of Labour by Ramsay MacDonald.
• 1941 – World War II: The Allies commenced the Syria–Lebanon campaign against Vichy French possessions in the Levant.
• 1953 – An F5 tornado struck Flint and Beecher, Michigan, causing 116 fatalities, 844 injuries and $19 million in damage during a larger tornado outbreak sequence.

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June 9

• 1549 – The first Book of Common Prayer was legally mandated by Parliament, introducing a fully vernacular Protestant liturgy to the Church of England.
• 1772 – In an act of defiance against the Navigation Acts, American colonists led by Abraham Whipple (pictured) attacked and burned the British schooner Gaspee.
• 1944 – World War II: In reprisal for successful French Resistance attacks, German SS and SD troops hanged 99 men in the town of Tulle.
• 1954 – During hearings investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy, Army lawyer Joseph N. Welch asked McCarthy: " At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
• 1999 – Yugoslav Wars: The Kumanovo Agreement was signed, bringing an end to the Kosovo War the next day.

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June 10: Dragon Boat Festival in China and Taiwan (2024)

• 1624 – Thirty Years' War: France and the Dutch Republic concluded the Treaty of Compiègne, a mutual defence alliance.
• 1786 – Ten days after being formed by an earthquake, a landslide dam on the Dadu River in China was destroyed by an aftershock, causing a flood that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
• 1861 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army only suffered eight casualties in its victory at the Battle of Big Bethel in York County, Virginia.
• 1957 – Led by John Diefenbaker (pictured), the Progressive Conservative Party won a plurality of House of Commons seats in the Canadian federal election.
• 1987 – Mass protests demanding direct presidential elections broke out across South Korea.

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June 11

• 1594 – Philip II of Spain recognized the sovereign rights of the principalía, local Philippine nobles and chieftains who had converted to Catholicism.
• 1724 – Johann Sebastian Bach directed his cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20 in Leipzig on the first Sunday after Trinity, beginning his chorale cantata cycle.
• 1914 – Around 2,000 members of European society attended a ball at Kenwood House, England, in one of the last major social events before the outbreak of the First World War.
• 1963 – The University of Alabama was desegregated as Governor George Wallace stepped aside after defiantly blocking the entrance to an auditorium (pictured).

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June 12: First day of Shavuot (Judaism, 2024); Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Loving Day in the United States ( 1967)

• 1798 – Following the successful French invasion of Malta, the Knights Hospitaller surrendered Malta to Napoleon, initiating two years of occupation.
• 1864 – Union general Ulysses S. Grant pulled his troops out of the Battle of Cold Harbor in Hanover County, Virginia, ending one of the bloodiest, most lopsided battles in the American Civil War.
• 1914 – As part of the Ottoman Empire's policies of ethnic cleansing, Turkish irregulars began a six-day massacre in the predominantly Greek town of Phocaea.
• 1954 – Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at his death in 1857, was canonized by Pope Pius XII, making him one of the youngest non- martyred saints in the Catholic Church.
• 1994 – The Boeing 777 (pictured), the world's largest twinjet, made its maiden flight.

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June 13

• 1881 – The Jeannette expedition to reach the North Pole from the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait came to an end when the USS Jeannette (pictured) was finally crushed and sank after having been trapped in ice for almost two years.
• 1952 – Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed three days later by the shootdown of a second plane searching for the first one.
• 1969 – Preston Smith, Governor of Texas, signed a law converting a research arm of Texas Instruments into the University of Texas at Dallas.
• 1996 – After an 81-day standoff sparked by their refusal to be evicted from their foreclosed property in Jordan, Montana, the Christian Patriot group Montana Freemen surrendered to the FBI.
• 2013 – Some of the closest advisors and collaborators of Czech prime minister Petr Nečas were arrested for corruption.

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June 14

• 1381 – During the Peasants' Revolt in England, rebels stormed the Tower of London, killing Simon Sudbury, Lord Chancellor, and Robert Hales, Lord High Treasurer (both pictured).
• 1644 – First English Civil War: Prince Maurice abandoned his siege of Lyme Regis in Dorset after learning of the approach of a Parliamentarian relief force.
• 1934 – The landmark Australian Eastern Mission concluded after a three-month diplomatic tour of East and South-East Asia.
• 1944 – Second World War: The British Army abandoned its attempt to capture the German-occupied city of Caen.
• 2014 – War in Donbas: An Ilyushin Il-76 transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force was shot down by forces of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, killing all 49 people on board.

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June 15: Day of Arafah (Islam, 2024); King's Official Birthday in the United Kingdom (2024)

• 1215 – King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed on the text of Magna Carta, an influential charter of rights.
• 1520 – Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, censuring 41 propositions from Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and subsequent writings, and threatening him with excommunication unless he recanted.
• 1921 – Bessie Coleman (pictured) became the first Black person to earn an international pilot's license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
• 1995 – Western Greece was struck by an earthquake registering 6.4–6.5  M_w that killed 26 people.
• 2006 – US president George W. Bush designated 140,000 square miles (360,000 km²) around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, now one of the world's largest protected areas.

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June 16: First day of Eid al-Adha (Islam, 2024)

• 1407 – Ming forces conquered Đại Ngu in modern-day northern Vietnam, capturing Hồ dynasty emperor Hồ Quý Ly and bringing the country under Chinese rule.
• 1632 – The Plymouth Company granted a land patent to Thomas Purchase, who became the first permanent European settler of Pejepscot, Maine.
• 1936 – A Junkers Ju 52 aircraft of Norwegian Air Lines crashed into a mountainside near Hyllestad, Norway, killing all seven people on board.
• 1963 – Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (pictured) became the first woman in space.
• 2016 – Jo Cox, a British Member of Parliament, was murdered in her constituency.

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June 17:

• 653 – Pope Martin I was arrested in the Lateran Palace, Rome, and taken to Constantinople.
• 1631 – Mumtaz Mahal (pictured), wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, died in childbirth; Jahan spent the next seventeen years constructing her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.
• 1913 – In Detroit, autoworkers for car manufacturer Studebaker went on strike in the American auto industry's first major strike action.
• 1963 – Riots broke out in Saigon one day after the signing of the Joint Communiqué, an attempt to resolve the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam.
• 2017 – Wildfires erupted across central Portugal, eventually causing the deaths of 66 people.

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June 18: Autistic Pride Day

• 618 – Sui–Tang transition: Chinese governor Li Yuan (pictured) declared himself emperor, establishing the Tang dynasty.
• 860 – Rus' forces sailed into the Bosporus in a fleet of about 200 vessels and started pillaging the suburbs of Constantinople.
• 1858 – Charles Darwin received a manuscript by fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection, which encouraged him to publish his own theory of evolution.
• 1953 – A Douglas C-124 Globemaster II aircraft crashed just after takeoff from Tachikawa, Japan, killing all 129 people on board.
• 1983 – Iranian teenager Mona Mahmudnizhad and nine other women were hanged in Shiraz because of their membership in the Baháʼí Faith.

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June 19: Juneteenth in the United States ( 1865)

• 1718 – An earthquake on the Tibetan Plateau led to the deaths of more than 73,000 people.
• 1838 – The Jesuits' Maryland province contracted to sell 272 slaves to buyers in Louisiana in one of the largest slave sales in American history.
• 1953 – Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (pictured) were executed as spies for passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.
• 1965 – Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, the commander of the South Vietnam Air Force, was appointed prime minister at the head of a military regime.
• 1987 – Basque separatist group ETA detonated a car bomb at the Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona, killing 21 people and injuring 45 others.

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June 20: World Refugee Day

• 1782 – The Congress of the Confederation adopted the Great Seal of the United States (obverse pictured), used to authenticate documents issued by the U.S. federal government.
• 1900 – Boxer Rebellion: The Imperial Chinese Army began a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking.
• 1943 – World War II: The Royal Air Force began Operation Bellicose, a four-day shuttle-bombing mission that included raids on Germany and Italy and a refuelling and rearming stop in Algeria.
• 1975 – Steven Spielberg's film Jaws was released; it became a summer blockbuster and the first film to earn $100 million in U.S. theatrical rentals.
• 2019 – Iranian aircraft shot down an American drone over the Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions between the two countries.

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June 21: Fête de la Musique; International Day of Yoga; National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada; Xiazhi in China (2024)

• 1575 – French Wars of Religion: Catholic forces defeated an armed group of Huguenots attempting to capture Besançon, from which they had previously been expelled.
• 1854 – Crimean War: During the Battle of Bomarsund, Irish sailor Charles Davis Lucas (pictured) threw an artillery shell off his ship before it exploded, earning him the first Victoria Cross.
• 1890 – Rudyard Kipling's poem Mandalay was published.
• 1921 – Irish War of Independence: Most of the village of Knockcroghery in County Roscommon was burned by British forces.
• 1957 – Ellen Fairclough became the first woman to be appointed to the cabinet of Canada.

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June 22

• 1593 – Habsburg troops defeated a larger Ottoman force at the Battle of Sisak in the Kingdom of Croatia, triggering the Long Turkish War.
• 1807 – The British warship HMS Leopard pursued and attacked the American frigate USS Chesapeake (pictured) in the belief that the crew of the latter included deserters from the Royal Navy.
• 1941 – World War II: German minister of foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop presented a declaration of war to the Soviet ambassador Vladimir Dekanozov in Berlin.
• 1979 – Former British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was acquitted of conspiracy to murder Norman Scott, who had accused Thorpe of having a relationship with him.
• 2022 – An earthquake registering 6.2  M_w caused the deaths of at least 1,000 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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June 23: Grand Duke's Official Birthday in Luxembourg

• 1266 – War of Saint Sabas: In an action off Trapani, Sicily, a Venetian fleet captured all 27 opposing Genoese vessels.
• 1956 – In a nationwide referendum, Gamal Abdel Nasser (pictured) was elected President of Egypt, a post he held until his death in 1970.
• 1991 – The first installment of the video-game series Sonic the Hedgehog was released.
• 1992 – Croatian War of Independence: The Battle of the Miljevci Plateau ended after a failed counterattack by forces of the Republic of Serbian Krajina against the Croatian Army who had captured the plateau.
• 2016 – Citizens of the United Kingdom voted in favour of leaving the European Union.

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June 24

• 1374 – An outbreak of dancing mania, in which crowds of people danced themselves to exhaustion, began in Aachen (in present-day Germany) before spreading to other parts of Europe.
• 1939 – The first of the Thai cultural mandates was issued, officially changing the country's name from Siam to Thailand.
• 1943 – Amid racial tensions, U.S. Army military police shot and killed a black serviceman after a confrontation at a pub in Bamber Bridge, England.
• 1989 – Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre the 13th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party appointed Jiang Zemin (pictured) as general secretary in place of Zhao Ziyang.
• 2010 – John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut at the Wimbledon Championships, concluding the longest match in tennis history, which lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days.

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June 25

• 1658 – Anglo-Spanish War: The largest battle ever fought on Jamaica, the three-day Battle of Rio Nuevo, began.
• 1910 – The United States Congress passed the Mann Act, which prohibited the interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes".
• 1944 – World War II: U.S. Navy and Royal Navy ships bombarded Cherbourg, France, to support U.S. Army units engaged in the Battle of Cherbourg.
• 1950 – The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 82 condemning the North Korean invasion of South Korea.
• 2009 – Singer Michael Jackson (pictured) died as a result of the combination of drugs in his body.

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June 26

• 1409 – The Council of Pisa elected Peter of Candia as Pope Alexander V (pictured), becoming the third simultaneous claimant of the title of leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1889 – Bangui, the capital and largest city of the present-day Central African Republic, was founded in French Congo.
• 1906 – The 1906 French Grand Prix, the first Grand Prix motor racing competition, began near Le Mans.
• 1945 – At a conference in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations signed a charter establishing the United Nations.
• 2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the right of same-sex couples to marry is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

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June 27

• 1571 – Queen Elizabeth I issued a royal charter establishing Jesus College, the first Protestant college at the University of Oxford.
• 1800 – War of the Second Coalition: French forces won a victory at the Battle of Neuburg, ending Austrian control over the River Danube.
• 1869 – The military phase of the Meiji Restoration in Japan was completed with an imperial victory in the Boshin War.
• 1954 – Jacobo Árbenz (pictured) resigned as President of Guatemala following a CIA-led coup against his administration.
• 2008 – Robert Mugabe was re-elected as President of Zimbabwe with an overwhelming majority after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew, citing violence against his party's supporters.

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June 28: Vidovdan in Serbia

• 1461 – Edward IV was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The militia of the Province of South Carolina repelled a British attack on Charleston.
• 1911 – The Nakhla meteorite (fragments pictured), the first meteorite to suggest signs of aqueous processes on Mars, fell to Earth in Abu Hummus, Egypt.
• 1950 – Korean War: South Korean forces began the Bodo League massacre, summarily executing tens of thousands of suspected North Korean sympathizers.
• 2016 – Gunmen attacked Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, killing 45 people and injuring more than 230 others.

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June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Western Christianity)

• 1613 – The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of Henry VIII and ignited the roof.
• 1764 – One of the strongest tornadoes in history (pictured) struck Woldegk (in present-day northeastern Germany), killing one person.
• 1864 – A passenger train fell through an open swing bridge into the Richelieu River near present-day Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, killing as many as 99 people and injuring 100 others in Canada's worst railway accident.
• 1913 – More than 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans gathered at the Gettysburg Battlefield, the largest combined reunion of American Civil War veterans ever held.
• 2003 – An overloaded balcony collapsed in Chicago, United States, killing 13 people and injuring 57 others.

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June 30

• 1559 – During a jousting match, King Henry II of France was mortally wounded when fragments of Gabriel Montgomery's lance pierced his eye.
• 1598 – Anglo-Spanish War: After a 15-day siege Spanish troops in San Juan, modern-day Puerto-Rico, surrendered to an English force under Sir George Clifford.
• 1859 – French acrobat Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge, making him one of the world's most famous tightrope walkers.
• 1963 – The coronation of Pope Paul VI (pictured) took place, the last such ceremony before its abandonment by later popes.
• 2009 – Yemenia Flight 626 crashed into the Indian Ocean near the Comoros, killing 152 people, with French schoolgirl Bahia Bakari the sole survivor.

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July 1: Eid al-Mubahalah (Shia Islam, 2024); Canada Day ( 1867); Republic Day in Ghana ( 1960); Independence Day in Rwanda ( 1962)

• 1523 – Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos were burnt at the stake in Brussels, becoming the first Lutherans executed by the Council of Brabant.
• 1643 – The Westminster Assembly of Divines first assembled to restructure the Church of England.
• 1874 – The Remington No. 1, the first commercially successful typewriter, went on sale.
• 1935 – The first Grant Park Music Festival was held in Chicago's Grant Park.
• 1983 – A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet crashed into the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea, killing all 23 people on board.

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July 2

• 706 – The bodies of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Empress Wu Zetian were interred in the Qianling Mausoleum.
• 1644 – First English Civil War: The combined forces of Scottish Covenanters and English Parliamentarians defeated Royalist troops at the Battle of Marston Moor.
• 1941 – A German SS unit arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, and began the systematic execution of up to 100,000 people over the next three years.
• 2008 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An Arab man rammed a loader into traffic in Jerusalem, killing three people and injuring 40 others (damage pictured).
• 2013 – The International Astronomical Union announced that the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto to be discovered would be named Kerberos and Styx, respectively.

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July 3

• 324 – Civil wars of the Tetrarchy: Roman emperor Constantine the Great defeated his former colleague Licinius at the Battle of Adrianople.
• 1863 – Confederate forces were defeated by the Union Army on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg (pictured), a turning point in the American Civil War.
• 1940 – Second World War: The Royal Navy attacked the French fleet at Mers El Kébir, fearing that the ships would fall into Axis hands after the French–German armistice.
• 1973 – British singer David Bowie retired his stage persona Ziggy Stardust in a surprise announcement on the last day of a 17-month tour.
• 2013 – General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a coalition to depose President Mohamed Morsi in a coup d'état in Cairo, suspending the Egyptian Constitution of 2012.

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July 4: Republic Day in the Philippines ( 1946); Independence Day in the United States ( 1776)

• 1054 – Chinese astronomers recorded the sudden appearance of a " guest star", later identified as the supernova that created the Crab Nebula.
• 1643 – First English Civil War: Royalist forces defeated the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Burton Bridge, securing a crossing of the River Trent for a convoy of supplies travelling with Queen Henrietta Maria.
• 1943 – The aircraft carrying Władysław Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, crashed off Gibraltar, killing him and fifteen others and leading to several conspiracy theories.
• 1945 – The Brazilian cruiser Bahia (pictured) was accidentally sunk by one of its own crewmen, killing more than 300 people.
• 1988 – Kylie Minogue's first album, Kylie, was released, and went on to top the charts in the UK and New Zealand.

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July 5: Fifth of July in New York

• 1841 – Thomas Cook, the founder of the British travel company Thomas Cook & Son, organised his first excursion, escorting about 500 people from Leicester to Loughborough.
• 1922 – Brazilian Army rebels took over Fort Copacabana and launched a rebellion in Rio de Janeiro against the president of Brazil.
• 1944 – Second World War: Canadian troops defeated the last German counterattacks against Carpiquet, Normandy, France.
• 1946 – Named after Bikini Atoll, the site of the nuclear-weapons test Operation Crossroads in the Marshall Islands, the modern bikini was introduced at a fashion show in Paris.
• 1973 – Juvénal Habyarimana (pictured) orchestrated a bloodless coup d'état of the Rwandan government and began a totalitarian dictatorship.
• 2009 – A series of violent riots broke out in Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang in China.

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July 6: Independence Day in Malawi ( 1964)

• 1483 – The last monarch of the House of York and the Plantagenet dynasty, Richard III (pictured), was crowned King of England.
• 1916 – First World War: Russian troops won a victory in the Battle of Kostiuchnówka, with the Polish Legions playing a key role on the Austro-Hungarian side.
• 1941 – Second World War: After a three-month siege, the Italian garrison of Saïo (in modern-day Ethiopia) surrendered to Belgian, British and Ethiopian troops.
• 1971 – After visiting several Asian communist countries, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu gave a speech on a number of neo-Stalinist and socialist-realist ideals, which became known as the July Theses.
• 2013 – Gunmen attacked a secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe State, Nigeria, killing 42 people, mostly students.

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July 7

• 1575 – A dispute between Sir John Forster and Sir John Carmichael led to a Scottish raid on Northumberland, England, in which 27 men were killed.
• 1911 – Four countries signed the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention, which banned the hunting of seals in the pelagic zone.
• 1963 – The secret police of Ngô Đình Nhu, brother and chief political adviser of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm, attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest during the Buddhist crisis.
• 1983 – After writing a letter to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov, American schoolgirl Samantha Smith (pictured) visited the Soviet Union as Andropov's personal guest, becoming known as "America's Youngest Ambassador".
• 1991 – Yugoslav Wars: The signing of the Brioni Agreement ended the Ten-Day War between SFR Yugoslavia and Slovenia.

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July 8: Islamic New Year (2024, 1446  AH)

• 1709 – Great Northern War: Swedish forces under Charles XII were defeated by Russian troops led by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava.
• 1776 – The United States Declaration of Independence received its first formal public reading, in Philadelphia.
• 1950 – Korean War: American troops withdrew from Cheonan, in modern-day South Korea, after suffering heavy casualties from a North Korean attack.
• 2014 – German citizen Lars Mittank disappeared from Varna Airport, Bulgaria; his last known movements have been widely watched on YouTube.
• 2021 – Head of a Bear (pictured) sold at auction in London for a total of £8.8 million, a record for a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

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July 9

• 551 – An estimated 30,000 people died when a massive earthquake struck the Roman province of Phoenice.
• 1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: French victory at the Battle of Melle enabled their subsequent capture of Ghent from the Austrian Netherlands.
• 1868 – The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, including the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, was ratified by the minimum required twenty-eight states.
• 1981 – Nintendo released the arcade game Donkey Kong (cabinet pictured), which featured the debut of Mario, one of the most famous characters in video-game history.
• 2008 – Under the belief that Israel and the United States were planning to attack its nuclear program, Iran conducted the Great Prophet III missile test and war games exercise.

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July 10: Independence Day in the Bahamas ( 1973)

• 1553 – Lady Jane Grey (pictured) was proclaimed the successor to King Edward VI of England, beginning her disputed reign as the "Nine Days' Queen".
• 1806 – Indian sepoys mutinied against the East India Company at Vellore Fort.
• 1913 – The air temperature in Furnace Creek, California, reached 134 °F (56.7 °C), recognized by the World Meteorological Organization as the highest recorded on Earth.
• 1973 – John Paul Getty III, a grandson of the American oil magnate J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome.
• 2018 – The last members of a junior association football team and their coach were rescued from Tham Luang Nang Non, a flooded cave in northern Thailand.

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July 11: Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide in Poland ( 1943)

• 1302 – Franco-Flemish War: Flemish infantry defeated a large French army near Kortrijk at the Battle of the Golden Spurs.
• 1405 – Marking the start of Ming China's treasure voyages, an expeditionary fleet led by Zheng He (depicted) set sail for foreign regions of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
• 1792 – The Belfast Harp Festival, an early event in the Gaelic revival, began at the Assembly Rooms.
• 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee featuring themes of racial injustice and the loss of innocence in the Deep South of America, was published.
• 1991 – Shortly after taking off from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 caught fire and crashed, killing all 261 people on board.

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July 12

• 1561 – Saint Basil's Cathedral (pictured), located in Red Square, Moscow, was consecrated.
• 1918 – An explosion in the ammunition magazine of the Japanese battleship Kawachi resulted in the deaths of more than 600 officers and crewmen.
• 1963 – Sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade, the first victim of serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, disappeared in Gorton, England.
• 1979 – Rowdy fans at Comiskey Park in Chicago stormed the field during a Major League Baseball promotional event at which a crate of disco records was blown up.
• 2006 – Hezbollah forces crossed the Israel–Lebanon border and attacked Israeli military positions while firing rockets and mortars at Israeli towns, sparking a five-week war.

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July 13

• 1260 – Livonian Crusade: Samogitian forces defeated Teutonic knights and the Livonian Order at the Battle of Durbe.
• 1643 – English Civil War: Royalist forces defeated the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Roundway Down near Devizes, Wiltshire.
• 1913 – While on a campaign in Bulgaria, the Romanian Army suffered a cholera outbreak that led to around 1,600 deaths.
• 1973 – Watergate scandal: Under questioning by Senate investigators, White House deputy chief of staff Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret taping system (tape recorder pictured) in the Oval Office.
• 2003 – French Directorate-General for External Security personnel aborted an operation to rescue Colombian politician Íngrid Betancourt from FARC guerrillas, resulting in a political scandal.

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July 14: Bastille Day in France ( 1789); Festino di Santa Rosalia begins in Palermo, Italy

• 1791 – The Priestley Riots (depicted), targeting religious dissenters such as Joseph Priestley, began in Birmingham, England.
• 1902 – The medieval St Mark's Campanile in Venice collapsed, also demolishing the Loggetta del Sansovino.
• 1950 – Early in the Korean War, North Korean troops began attacking the headquarters of the American 24th Infantry Division in Taejon, South Korea.
• 1987 – More than 100 mm (3.9 in) of rain fell in a two-and-a-half-hour period in parts of Montreal, causing severe flooding.
• 2016 – A man deliberately drove a truck into crowds in Nice, France, resulting in 86 deaths.

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July 15: Marine Day in Japan (2024)

• 1815 – Aboard HMS Bellerophon, French emperor Napoleon (pictured) surrendered to Royal Navy captain Frederick Lewis Maitland, concluding the Napoleonic Wars.
• 1870 – Manitoba was established as a province of Canada following the transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company.
• 1943 – The all-female Emilia Plater Independent Women's Battalion was formed in the Soviet Union's First Polish Army.
• 1983 – Sega's first home video game console, the SG-1000, was released in Japan.
• 2009 – Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 crashed in northwestern Iran, killing all 168 people aboard.

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July 16

• 1232 – Muhammad ibn Yusuf (pictured), who later established the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim state in Spain, was elected the ruler of Arjona.
• 1790 – President George Washington signed the Residence Act, selecting a new permanent site along the Potomac River for the capital of the United States, which later became Washington, D.C.
• 1931 – Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie promulgated the nation's first modern constitution.
• 1983 – A Sikorsky S-61 helicopter operated by British Airways crashed in thick fog in the Celtic Sea, killing 20 of the 26 people on board.
• 2013 – At least 23 students died and dozens more fell ill at a primary school in the Indian state of Bihar after consuming a Midday Meal that was contaminated with pesticide.

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July 17: Constitution Day in South Korea ( 1948); World Emoji Day

• 1771 – Dene men, acting as guides to Samuel Hearne on his exploration of the Coppermine River in present-day Nunavut, Canada, massacred a group of about twenty Copper Inuit.
• 1863 – The New Zealand Wars resumed as British forces led by General Duncan Cameron began the invasion of the Waikato.
• 1918 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II and his family (pictured) were murdered by Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg.
• 1968 – Led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party overthrew Iraqi president Abdul Rahman Arif in a bloodless coup.
• 2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overran the runway at Congonhas Airport in São Paulo, Brazil, killing 199 people.

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July 18

• 1290 – King Edward I issued an edict to expel all Jews from England.
• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach directed the first performance of his cantata Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz in Leipzig.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first African-American military units in the Union Army, spearheaded an assault (pictured) on Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
• 1949 – Francisco Javier Arana, the chief of the Guatemalan armed forces, was killed in a shootout with supporters of President Juan José Arévalo.
• 2019 – An arson attack at the studio of Kyoto Animation in Japan led to the deaths of 36 people.

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July 19

• 998 – Arab–Byzantine wars: After initial Byzantine gains at the Battle of Apamea, a lone Kurdish rider killed Byzantine commander Damian Dalassenos, allowing Fatimid troops to turn the tide of the battle.
• 1843 – SS Great Britain, the first ocean-going ship with both an iron hull and a screw propeller, was launched (pictured) in Bristol, England.
• 1845 – A fire in Manhattan, New York, destroyed 345 buildings, killed 30 people, and caused at least $5 million in damage.
• 1903 – French cyclist Maurice Garin won the first edition of the Tour de France.
• 2014 – Gunmen perpetrated an assault against an Egyptian military checkpoint in the Libyan Desert, killing 22 soldiers.

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July 20

• 1333 – Second War of Scottish Inde­pen­dence: The Scottish-held town of Berwick-upon-Tweed surrendered to English forces, ending a siege led by King Edward III.
• 1867 – The United States Congress established the Indian Peace Commission to seek peace treaties with a number of Native American tribes.
• 1917 – The prime minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, and the president of the Yugoslav Committee, Ante Trumbić, signed the Corfu Declaration, agreeing to seek the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
• 1968 – The first games of the Special Olympics (athletes pictured), for athletes with intellectual disabilities, were held at Soldier Field in Chicago.
• 2001 – The animated film Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japanese history until 2020.

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July 21: Belgian National Day ( 1831)

• 365 – A large earthquake occurred near Crete, triggering a tsunami, and causing widespread destruction around the eastern Mediterranean region.
• 905 – Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured and blinded during his attempt to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I.
• 1918 – World War I: An Imperial German Navy U-boat opened fire on a small convoy of barges and defending aircraft near the American town of Orleans, Massachusetts.
• 2013 – Nour Ahmad Nikbakht, an Iranian diplomat in Yemen, was kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants and held hostage for the next two years.
• 2019 – People returning from anti-extradition bill protests were attacked (pictured) by suspected triad members in Yuen Long, Hong Kong, leaving 45 people injured.

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July 22: Feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene (Christianity)

• 1298 – First War of Scottish Independence: English forces led by Edward I defeated William Wallace's Scottish troops at the Battle of Falkirk.
• 1864 – American Civil War: Confederate forces unsuccessfully attacked Union troops at the Battle of Atlanta.
• 1894 – Jules-Albert de Dion (pictured) finished first in the world's first motor race, but did not win as his steam-powered car was against the rules.
• 1963 – The United Kingdom granted self-government to Sarawak.
• 1975 – Stanley Forman took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photo Fire Escape Collapse, which spurred action to improve the safety of fire escapes across the United States.

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July 23: Birthday of Haile Selassie ( Rastafari)

• 1319 – A fleet led by the Knights Hospitaller sank 22 of 28 ships of the Turkish Aydinid emirate.
• 1891 – During a visit of the French Navy to Kronstadt in Russia, the two nations reached a secret agreement on a joint response to any future war in Europe.
• 1921 – The first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in a house in Shanghai.
• 1968 – A shootout between police and a Black power group began in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking three days of rioting.
• 1999 – 47 people, mostly African American, were arrested in Tulia, Texas U.S., for dealing cocaine. Years later, 35 of the 47 were pardoned by the Governor.
• 2001 – Megawati Sukarnoputri (pictured) became the first female president of Indonesia after her predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office.

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July 24: Pioneer Day in Utah, United States ( 1847)

• 1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James VI.
• 1920 – Franco-Syrian War: At the Battle of Maysalun forces of the Arab Kingdom of Syria were defeated by a French army moving to occupy the territory allocated to them by the San Remo conference.
• 1923 – The Treaty of Lausanne was signed to settle part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire, establishing the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
• 1967 – During a speech in Montreal, French president Charles de Gaulle (pictured) declared " Long live free Quebec!", a statement that was interpreted as support for Quebec independence from Canada.
• 1998 – A gunman entered the United States Capitol and opened fire, killing two police officers.

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July 25: National Day of Galicia

• 1547 – Henry II was crowned King of France at Reims Cathedral.
• 1591 – Eighty Years' War: Dutch and English forces relieved the siege of Knodsenburg in the Spanish Netherlands, having defeated the Duke of Parma's army in the field.
• 1893 – The Corinth Canal was formally opened, bisecting the narrow Isthmus of Corinth in Greece to connect the Ionian Sea's Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea's Saronic Gulf.
• 1950 – Korean War: After American troops withdrew, North Korean forces captured the village of Yongdong in South Korea.
• 2007 – Pratibha Patil (pictured) was sworn in as the first female president of India.

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July 26: Independence Day in Liberia ( 1847)

• 1778 – On the orders of Catherine the Great the first of tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian Christians were removed from Crimea and resettled in Pryazovia.
• 1882 – Boer mercenaries established the Republic of Stellaland (later flag pictured) in land claimed by the United Kingdom as part of British Bechuanaland.
• 1953 – In Short Creek, Arizona, police conducted a mass arrest of approximately 400 Mormon fundamentalists for polygamy.
• 1993 – Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashed into a mountain during a failed attempt to land at Mokpo Airport, South Korea, leading to the deaths of 68 of the people on board.
• 2012 – The New Irish Republican Army was formed from a merger of a number of dissident republican militant groups.

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July 27

• 678 – Unable to penetrate the city's defences, the Sclaveni gave up their siege of the Byzantine city of Thessalonica.
• 1225 – Saint Mary's Church on Gotland, later to become Visby Cathedral, was consecrated.
• 1943 – As the Surprise Hurricane struck Texas, a United States Army Air Forces pilot made the first reconnaissance flight into a hurricane.
• 1953 – An armistice was signed (pictured) to end hostilities in the Korean War, officially making the division of Korea indefinite by creating a 4 km wide (2.5 mi) demilitarized zone across the Korean Peninsula.
• 2010 – Police in Tokyo found the mummified remains of Sogen Kato, thought to have died in 1978, leading to widespread inquiries into the status of isolated elderly people in Japan.

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July 28: Statehood Day in Ukraine ( 2022)

• 1148 – Crusades: The siege of Damascus ended in a decisive victory for the Muslims, leading to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.
• 1821 – Peruvian War of Independence: Argentine general José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from the Spanish Empire.
• 1917 – In New York City, the NAACP and church and community leaders organized a silent march (newsreel footage featured) of at least 8,000 people to protest violence directed towards African Americans.
• 1976 – An earthquake registering 7.6  M_w, one of the deadliest in history, devastated Tangshan, China, and killed at least 240,000 people.
• 2001 – At the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single FINA world championship.

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July 29: Torch Festival in China (2024)

• 1014 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: Byzantine forces defeated troops of the Bulgarian Empire at the Battle of Kleidion (pictured) in the mountains of Belasica near present-day Klyuch.
• 1900 – Italian-American anarchist Gaetano Bresci assassinated King Umberto I of Italy in Monza.
• 1914 – The Cape Cod Canal, connecting Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, opened on a limited basis.
• 1954 – The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of J. R. R. Tolkien's high-fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, was published by Allen & Unwin.
• 1981 – An estimated worldwide television audience of 750 million watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

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July 30

• 1811 – Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican War of Independence, was executed by Spanish forces in Chihuahua City, Mexico.
• 1865 – Off the coast of Crescent City, California, the steamer Brother Jonathan (depicted) struck an uncharted rock and sank, killing 225 people; its cargo of gold coins was not retrieved until 1996.
• 1930 – In Montevideo, the Uruguay national football team won the first FIFA World Cup.
• 1950 – At the height of a political crisis known as the royal question, four workers were shot dead by the Belgian Gendarmerie at a strike in Grâce-Berleur.
• 2006 – Lebanon War: The Israeli Air Force attacked a three-story building near the Lebanese village of Qana, killing at least 28 civilians, including 16 children.

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July 31: Lā Hae Hawaiʻi (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii ( 1843)

• 1966 – The pleasure cruiser MV Darlwyne disappeared off the coast of Cornwall with the loss of all 31 people aboard.
• 1972 – The Troubles: Hours after the British Army's Operation Motorman brought an end to the self-declared autonomous area of Free Derry ( Free Derry Corner pictured) in Northern Ireland, three car bombs exploded in the village of Claudy.
• 2000 – Three years after being hit by a mudslide, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong fully reopened.
• 2006 – Following intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro provisionally transferred the duties of the Cuban presidency to his brother Raúl.
• 2014 – Gas explosions in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, killed 32 people and injured 321 others.

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August 1: Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China ( 1927)

• 30 BC – War of Actium: Octavian defeated the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Alexandria, establishing Roman Egypt.
• 902 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Led by Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Aghlabid forces captured the Byzantine stronghold of Taormina, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
• 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley (pictured) liberated oxygen gas, corroborating the discovery of the element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
• 1892 – Belgian carillonneur Jef Denyn hosted the world's first carillon concert at St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.
• 1911 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator certificate.

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August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

• 461 – Unpopular among the Senate aristocracy for his reforming efforts, Roman emperor Majorian was deposed by Ricimer and executed five days later.
• 1100 – While on a hunting trip in the New Forest, King William II of England was killed by an arrow through the lung loosed by one of his own men.
• 1790 – The first United States census was officially completed, with the nation's residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.
• 1920 – Nepalese author Krishna Lal Adhikari (pictured) was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a book about the cultivation of corn.
• 1973 – A flash fire killed 50 people at a leisure centre in Douglas, Isle of Man.

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August 3

• 1057 – Pope Stephen IX was crowned as pope.
• 1929 – Jiddu Krishnamurti (pictured), believed by some Theosophists to be a likely candidate for the messianic " World Teacher", dissolved the Order of the Star, the organisation established to support him.
• 1940 – World War II: Italian forces began a conquest of British Somaliland, capturing the region in 16 days.
• 1977 – Tandy Corporation announced the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers.
• 2005 – Mauritanian president Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while he attended the funeral of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

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August 4

• 1356 – Hundred Years' War: A large-scale mounted raid by Anglo-Gascon forces began under the command of Edward the Black Prince.
• 1783 – Mount Asama (pictured) in Japan began a climactic eruption, which exacerbated the Great Tenmei famine and led to thousands of deaths.
• 1892 – Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were found murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts; Borden was later tried and acquitted for the murders.
• 1972 – President Idi Amin announced the expulsion of Asians from Uganda.
• 1983 – Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, the president of Upper Volta, was ousted in a coup d'état led by Thomas Sankara.

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August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia ( 1995)

• AD 25 – Liu Xiu proclaimed himself the monarch of the Han dynasty as Emperor Guangwu.
• 1100 – Henry I (pictured) was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
• 1689 – Beaver Wars: Aggravated by increased French incursions into their territory, a large force of Mohawk warriors substantially destroyed the settlement of Lachine in present-day Quebec.
• 1969 – Police raided a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys in Atlanta, Georgia, leading to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front.
• 1993 – Wizards of the Coast released Magic: The Gathering, the first trading card game.

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August 6

• 686 – Second Fitna: Pro- Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
• 1892 – The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded in Antwerp to exploit natural rubber in the Congo Free State.
• 1930 – New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared in Manhattan, in a case that was never solved.
• 1996 – Researchers announced that the meteorite ALH84001 (pictured), discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars, but further tests were inconclusive.
• 2013 – A gas leak caused an explosion that collapsed a building and led to the deaths of 22 people in Rosario, Argentina.

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August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day ( 1933)

• 1461 – Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
• 1782 – The Badge of Military Merit (pictured), the precursor to the U.S. Purple Heart, was established as a military decoration of the Continental Army.
• 1897 – Mahdist War: Anglo-Egyptian soldiers clashed with Mahdist Sudanese rebels in the Battle of Abu Hamed.
• 1955 – Hurricane Diane, the first Atlantic hurricane to cause more than $1 billion in damages, formed between the Lesser Antilles and Cape Verde.
• 1987 – Lynne Cox became the first person to swim between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede to Big Diomede in the Bering Strait in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

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August 8

• 685 BC – Spring and Autumn period: Amid a succession dispute, the forces of Duke Zhuang of Lu, who was attempting to install a claimant to the Qi throne, were defeated at the Battle of Qianshi.
• 1576 – The cornerstone of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory Uraniborg was laid on the island of Hven.
• 1914 – The Endurance departed Plymouth, England, on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
• 1969 – At a zebra crossing (pictured) on Abbey Road in London, Iain Macmillan took the photograph that was used for the cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road.
• 1988 – Tropical Storm Beryl formed over southeastern Louisiana, making it one of the few tropical cyclones to form over land.

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August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa ( 1956)

• 1897 – The first meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Zürich, Switzerland.
• 1942 – Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 was premiered in Leningrad while the city was under siege by Nazi forces.
• 1956 – About 20,000 women marched on Pretoria, South Africa, to protest the introduction of pass laws for black women under apartheid.
• 1960 – Led by Albert Kalonji, South Kasai declared its unilateral secession from the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).
• 1969 – Members of the Manson Family invaded a house and murdered American actress Sharon Tate (pictured) and four guests in Los Angeles, before killing two more people the following night.

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August 10: Qixi Festival in China (2024)

• 1270 – Yekuno Amlak deposed the last Zagwe king and seized the imperial throne of Ethiopia, beginning the reign of the Solomonic dynasty, which would last for more than 700 years.
• 1793 – The Louvre (pyramid pictured) in Paris, today the world's most-visited museum, opened with an exhibition of 537 paintings and 184 objets d'art.
• 1953 – First Indochina War: The French Union withdrew its forces from Operation Camargue against the Việt Minh in central modern-day Vietnam.
• 1988 – The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 became law, authorizing reparations to surviving Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
• 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.

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August 11: Independence Day in Chad ( 1960)

• 1492 – The first papal conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Innocent VIII.
• 1929 – The first Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, the oldest and largest African-American parade in the United States, was held in Chicago.
• 1945 – Amid rumors of kidnappings of children by Jews in Kraków, a crowd of Poles took part in a pogrom, resulting in at least one death.
• 1973 – At a party in New York City, Jamaican musician DJ Kool Herc (pictured) began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip hop music.

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August 12

• 1099 – Crusades: Fatimid forces under al-Afdal Shahanshah began retreating to Egypt after the Battle of Ascalon, concluding the First Crusade.
• 1952 – Thirteen Jewish poets were executed in Moscow for espionage based on false confessions.
• 1969 – The Troubles: Riots erupted in the neighbourhood of Bogside in Derry, and spread across much of Northern Ireland.
• 1985 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashed into Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, killing 520 of 524 people on board in the world's worst single-aircraft aviation disaster.
• 1990 – Near Faith, South Dakota, American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons, nicknamed Sue (pictured).

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August 13

• 1650 – General George Monck founded the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards (soldier pictured), the oldest regular regiment of the British Army in continuous active service.
• 1868 – A major earthquake near Arica, Peru (now in Chile), caused an estimated 25,000 casualties; the subsequent tsunami caused considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand.
• 1876 – The first Bayreuth Festival, created by Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima to showcase his stage works, was opened with Das Rheingold.
• 1906 – Members of the U.S. Army's all-black 25th Infantry Regiment were accused of killing a white bartender and wounding a white police officer in Brownsville, Texas, despite exculpatory evidence.
• 2010 – After being boarded by Canadian authorities, MV Sun Sea docked in British Columbia and the 492 Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants on board were placed into detention.

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August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan ( 1947)

• 1720 – The Spanish Villasur expedition, intended to slow the progress of French influence on the Great Plains of North America, ended in failure when it was ambushed by Pawnee and Otoe forces.
• 1941 – After a secret meeting in Newfoundland, British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (both pictured) issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post–World War II world.
• 1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in London, the first in its record-breaking run in cinemas, which continues in limited release.
• 2013 – Security forces raided two camps of supporters of the ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, leading to the deaths of at least 595 civilians.

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August 15: Independence Day in India ( 1947); National Liberation Day of Korea ( 1945)

• 1261 – Michael VIII Palaiologos was crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
• 1812 – War of 1812: Potawatomi warriors ambushed a United States Army convoy after it had evacuated Fort Dearborn, in present-day Chicago, and razed the fort.
• 1941 – Josef Jakobs, a German spy, became the last person executed at the Tower of London.
• 1948 – The Republic of Korea was established with Syngman Rhee (pictured) as its first president.
• 1977 – Big Ear, a radio telescope at Ohio State University received a strong, apparently extraterrestrial radio signal that became known as the Wow! signal.

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August 16

• 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: English and Imperial forces defeated French cavalry, forcing them to retreat.
• 1896 – A group including George Carmack and Skookum Jim Mason (pictured) discovered gold near Dawson City, Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
• 1906 – An earthquake registering approximately 8.2  M_w struck Valparaíso, Chile, killing 3,882 people.
• 1946 – Widespread riots between Hindus and Muslims took place in Calcutta following the All-India Muslim League's call for an independent Pakistan.
• 2009 – At the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, Usain Bolt ran the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds, breaking his own record set a year earlier.

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August 17

• 1676 – Scanian War: Swedish forces defeated Danish troops at the Battle of Halmstad.
• 1915 – A category 4 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, leaving at least 275 people dead and causing $50 million in damage.
• 1943 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in a highly secret military conference (pictured) held in Quebec City.
• 1945 – Animal Farm, George Orwell's satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, was first published.
• 1959 – American musician Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, which became one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed jazz recordings of all time.

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August 18: Ghost Festival in China (2024)

• 1590 – John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in North America (located in present-day North Carolina), returned after a three-year absence to find it deserted (depicted).
• 1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, six days after discovering Deimos, the smaller one.
• 1919 – Russian Civil War: British motor torpedo boats raided the Bolshevik Baltic Fleet's home base of Kronstadt, sinking a depot ship and damaging a battleship.
• 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the country.
• 1964 – East German Communist Party member Hildegard Trabant was killed while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.

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August 19

• 1759 – Seven Years' War: Having damaged several French vessels, British ships pursued the remainder of the fleet to Lagos, Portugal, and continued the battle there (depicted) in violation of Portuguese neutrality.
• 1897 – The Bersey Electric Cab entered service as the first electric taxi in London.
• 1950 – The 766th Independent Infantry Regiment of North Korea was disbanded after fighting for less than two months in the Korean War.
• 2003 – A Hamas suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded more than 130 others, including many Orthodox Jewish children, on a crowded public bus in Shmuel HaNavi, Jerusalem.

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August 20

• 1707 – The first Siege of Pensacola came to an end with the British and Creek abandoning their attempt to capture Pensacola in Spanish Florida.
• 1910 – Hurricane-force winds combined hundreds of small fires in the U.S. states of Washington and Idaho into the Devil's Broom fire, which burned about 4,700 square miles (12,100 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history.
• 1920 – The American Professional Football Association, a predecessor of the National Football League, was founded.
• 1998 – The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory (pictured) in Sudan was destroyed by a missile attack launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 U.S. embassy bombings.
• 2008 – Spanair Flight 5022 crashed just after take-off from Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 154 people.

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August 21

• 1716 – Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War: Ottoman forces suddenly abandoned their siege of Corfu, allowing the Republic of Venice to preserve its rule over the Ionian Islands.
• 1945 – American physicist Harry Daghlian accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a plutonium bomb core, exposing himself to neutron radiation and later becoming the first Manhattan Project fatality due to a criticality accident.
• 1971 – Six people were killed during an escape attempt and riot at San Quentin State Prison in California; the subsequent trial of six inmates was the longest in state history at the time.
• 1986 – A limnic eruption of Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a cloud of carbon dioxide, suffocating 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
• 2013 – Syrian civil war: Areas controlled by the Syrian opposition in Ghouta, Damascus, were attacked by rockets (launcher pictured) containing sarin, killing at least 281 people.

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August 22: Madras Day in Chennai, India ( 1639)

• 1639 – The Vijayanagara Empire leased a small strip of land in present-day Chennai, the capital of the present-day Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to the East India Company.
• 1642 – King Charles I raised the royal standard at Nottingham, marking the beginning of the First English Civil War.
• 1914 – First World War: A squadron of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards attacked a German scout party, the first engagement of British forces on the Western Front.
• 1943 – Ian Stephens, editor of The Statesman, defied British censorship to publish pictures of death and misery (example pictured) on Calcutta's streets, informing the world of the Bengal famine of 1943.
• 1984 – The constitution of Singapore was amended to apportion seats to defeated opposition candidates in Parliament, which had hitherto entirely comprised members of the People's Action Party.

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August 23: Black Ribbon Day

• 1775 – King George III issued a proclamation (copy pictured) that declared elements of the American colonies of Great Britain to be in a state of "open and avowed rebellion".
• 1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened to traffic.
• 1933 – The Chesapeake–Potomac hurricane made landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and went on to cause at least 47 deaths in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region.
• 1943 – Second World War: A decisive Soviet victory against German forces at the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.
• 1954 – The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departs from Marseille, France.

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August 24: Feast day of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle ( Western Christianity); Independence Day in Ukraine ( 1991)

• 49 BC – Caesar's Civil War: Forces loyal to Julius Caesar led by Gaius Scribonius Curio were defeated by Pompeian Republicans under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba I of Numidia.
• 1643 – A Dutch expedition arrived at the mouth of the Valdivia River, in present-day Chile, to establish a new colony in the ruins of the abandoned Spanish settlement of Valdivia.
• 1662 – The 1662 Book of Common Prayer was legally enforced as the liturgy of the Church of England, precipitating the Great Ejection of Dissenter ministers from their benefices.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: The U.S. State Department ordered Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (pictured) to encourage South Vietnamese Army officers to oust Ngo Dinh Diem if he did not willingly remove Ngo Dinh Nhu from his unofficial position of power.
• 2006 – The International Astronomical Union passed a resolution redefining the term planet and classifying Pluto as a dwarf planet.

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August 25:

• 1270 – Philip III became King of France following the death of his father Louis IX during the Eighth Crusade.
• 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, now the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, was granted a royal charter by Henry VIII.
• 1875 – Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, doing so in approximately 21 hours 40 minutes.
• 2001 – American singer Aaliyah (pictured) and several members of her record company were killed when their overloaded aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas.
• 2012 – The NASA space probe Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space.

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August 26: Heroes' Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States

• 1071 – Byzantine–Seljuk wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert.
• 1789 – French Revolution: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (pictured), defining a set of individual and collective rights of the people, was approved by the National Constituent Assembly.
• 1940 – The 1940 New England hurricane formed over the Atlantic Ocean; it would go on to cause widespread damage despite never making landfall in the United States.
• 1968 – The Beatles released " Hey Jude", which became the then-longest single to top the UK charts.
• 1980 – A bomb was planted at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, which the FBI later described as the most complex improvised explosive device ever created.

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August 27: Independence Day in Moldova ( 1991)

• 410 – The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ended after three days.
• 1896 – In the shortest recorded war in history (pictured), the Sultanate of Zanzibar surrendered to the United Kingdom after less than an hour of conflict.
• 1955 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records was published.
• 1964 – South Vietnamese junta leader Nguyễn Khánh entered into a triumvirate power-sharing arrangement with rival generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Dương Văn Minh, both of whom had been involved in plots to unseat Khánh.
• 2003 – The planet Mars made its closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years.

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August 28

• 1619 – Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1789 – William Herschel discovered Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, during the first use of his new telescope which was then the largest in the world.
• 1909 – The 1909 Monterrey hurricane dissipated; one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, it killed an estimated 4,000 people throughout Mexico.
• 1963 – American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech " I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, calling for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
• 1987 – Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel (pictured) in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea.

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August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist ( Catholicism, Anglicanism)

• 1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, a fleet of 50 English ships captured at least 14 Castilian vessels and sank several more at the Battle of Winchelsea.
• 1786 – Farmers in western Massachusetts angered by high tax burdens and disfranchisement began an armed uprising led by Daniel Shays against the U.S. federal government.
• 1831 – Michael Faraday (pictured) first experimentally demonstrated electromagnetic induction, leading to the formulation of the law of induction named after him.
• 1960 – Air France Flight 343 crashed while attempting to land at Yoff Airport, Dakar, killing all 63 occupants.
• 2016 – Chen Quanguo became the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, later overseeing the creation of the Xinjiang internment camps.

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August 30: Victory Day in Turkey ( 1922)

• AD 70 – First Jewish–Roman War: Roman forces led by Titus set fire to the Second Temple during the Siege of Jerusalem.
• 1574 – Guru Ram Das (pictured) became the fourth of the Sikh gurus, the spiritual masters of Sikhism.
• 1594 – James VI of Scotland held a masque at the baptism of Prince Henry, his first child.
• 1959 – South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Đán was elected to the National Assembly, despite soldiers being bussed in to vote multiple times for President Ngô Đình Diệm's candidate.
• 2007 – A heavy bomber plane that had been unintentionally loaded with nuclear missiles transported them from North Dakota to Louisiana before they were recognized.

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August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia ( 1957); Romanian Language Day in Moldova and Romania

• 1218 – Al-Kamil became the fourth sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt.
• 1888 – The body of Mary Ann Nichols, the alleged first victim of an unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper (depicted), was found in Buck's Row, London.
• 1942 – The Matagorda hurricane, the most intense and costliest tropical cyclone of the 1942 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing $26.5 million in damages and eight deaths.
• 1969 – On the final day of the Isle of Wight Festival 1969, an event attended by approximately 150,000 people over three days, Bob Dylan appeared in his first gig in three years.
• 2019 – A sightseeing helicopter crashed in the mountains of Skoddevarre in Alta, Norway, killing all six people on board.

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September 1

• 1145 – The main altar of Lund Cathedral, then the Catholic cathedral of all the Nordic countries, was dedicated to Saint Lawrence and the Virgin Mary.
• 1604 – The Guru Granth Sahib (folio depicted), the religious text of Sikhism, was installed in the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
• 1859 – A powerful solar flare caused a coronal mass ejection that struck Earth a few hours later, generating the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded and causing bright aurorae visible in the middle latitudes.
• 1911 – Construction began on the Saline Valley salt tram, which during its operation was the steepest tram in the United States.
• 1972 – In a match widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation, American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer became the 11th World Chess Champion with his victory over Soviet Boris Spassky.

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September 2: National Day in Vietnam ( 1945)

• 1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury was founded following financial concerns in the new nation.
• 1792 – French Revolution: Due to an overwhelming fear that foreign armies would attack Paris and prisoners would revolt, revolutionaries began the summary execution of more than a thousand prisoners.
• 1946 – The interim government of India, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, was formed to assist the transition of India from British rule to independence.
• 1957 – South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm began an official visit to Australia, the first by a foreign incumbent head of state to the country.
• 1967 – Paddy Roy Bates proclaimed HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk, England, as an independent sovereign state: the Principality of Sealand (pictured).

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September 3

• 36 BC – The Sicilian revolt against the Second Triumvirate of the Roman Republic ended when the fleet of Sextus Pompey, the rebel leader, was defeated at the Battle of Naulochus.
• 1411 – The Treaty of Selymbria was concluded between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman prince Musa Çelebi.
• 1901 – The flag of Australia flew for the first time, from the Royal Exhibition Building (pictured) in Melbourne.
• 1987 – In a military coup d'état in Burundi, Pierre Buyoya deposed the incumbent president Jean-Baptiste Bagaza while he was abroad in Canada.
• 2017 – North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test at Punggye-ri, causing a magnitude-6.3 earthquake.

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September 4

• 476 – Germanic leader Odoacer captured Ravenna and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustus, marking the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
• 1800 – French Revolutionary Wars: Facing starvation and a death rate of 100 soldiers per day, the French garrison in Malta surrendered to British forces, ending a two-year siege.
• 1843 – The state wedding of Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil took place at the Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro.
• 1977 – The Golden Dragon massacre took place in Chinatown, San Francisco, leaving five dead and spurring police to end Chinese gang violence in the city.
• 2010 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake (damage pictured) struck the Canterbury Region of New Zealand, causing two deaths and up to NZ$40 billion in damages.

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September 5

• 1367 – Swa Saw Ke was crowned the ruler of the Kingdom of Ava in Upper Myanmar.
• 1816 – Facing rising discontent in France, Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve the Chambre introuvable, the legislature dominated by Ultra-royalists.
• 1887 – A fire that killed 186 people broke out at the Theatre Royal, Exeter.
• 1964 – Hurricane Cleo dissipated after causing 156 deaths, mainly in Haiti, and causing roughly US$187 million in damages across the Caribbean and southeastern United States.
• 1975 – Squeaky Fromme (pictured), a devotee of Charles Manson, attempted to assassinate U.S. president Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California.

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September 6: Arba'een / Arba'een Pilgrimage ( Shia Islam, 2023); Krishna Janmashtami (Hinduism, 2023); Defence Day in Pakistan ( 1965)

• 1492 – Christopher Columbus set sail from San Sebastián de La Gomera, before a five-week voyage across the Atlantic to the Americas.
• 1520 – Suleiman I, the longest reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies at the age of 71.
• 1970 – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airliners, landing two at Dawson's Field in Jordan and one in Cairo, while the last hijacking attempt was foiled.
• 2017 – Hurricane Irma (pictured) reached peak intensity and reached the Carribbean islands of Barbuda, Saint Martin, and Virgin Gorda.
• 2022 – In the United Kingdom, Liz Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, ending the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis.

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September 7

• 1652 – Chinese peasants on Formosa (now Taiwan) began a rebellion against Dutch rule which was suppressed four days later.
• 1778 – Anglo-French War: France invaded the Caribbean island of Dominica and captured its British fort before Britain had even learned of the Franco-American alliance.
• 1936 – The last thylacine (pictured) died in captivity in Hobart Zoo, Australia.
• 1940 – Second World War: The Luftwaffe changed their strategy in the Battle of Britain and began bombing London and other cities and towns.
• 2010 – A Chinese fishing trawler operating in disputed waters collided with Japan Coast Guard patrol boats near the Senkaku Islands, sparking a major diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

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September 8: Victory Day in Malta

• 1100 – Theodoric was elected by opponents of Pope Paschal II, following the death of Antipope Clement III.
• 1565 – St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the contiguous United States, was founded by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
• 1831 – The Russian Empire suppressed the November Uprising in Poland with the capture of Warsaw after a two-day assault.
• 1954 – Eight nations signed a collective-defense treaty in Manila to create the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (flag pictured), modelled on NATO.
• 1991 – At the Tailhook Association symposium in Las Vegas, US Navy and Marine Corps aviators were alleged to have sexually assaulted 90 persons.

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September 9

• AD 9 – During the Germanic Wars, an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius engaged Roman forces at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, defeating three legions within a few days.
• 1141 – Yelü Dashi, the Liao general who founded the Qara Khitai, defeated Seljuq and Kara-Khanid forces at the Battle of Qatwan, near Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan.
• 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: A naval engagement between French and British fleets off the coast of Sumatra ended inconclusively.
• 1954 – An earthquake registering 6.7  M_w struck near Chlef, Algeria, killing over 1,200 people and forcing the government to implement comprehensive reforms in building codes.
• 1971 – Imagine, the second solo album by John Lennon (pictured), was released.

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September 10

• 1509 – The " Minor Judgement Day" earthquake struck in the Sea of Marmara, devastating much of Constantinople and killing more than 1,000 people.
• 1779 – American Revolutionary War: Captain William Pickles of the Continental Navy boarded and captured the British sloop HMS West Florida at the Battle of Lake Pontchartrain.
• 1945 – Mike the Headless Chicken (pictured) was decapitated on a farm in Colorado; he survived another 18 months as part of sideshows before choking to death.
• 1974 – After centuries of Portuguese rule, the country of Guinea-Bissau was formally recognized as independent.
• 1983 – Typhoon Ellen dissipated after destroying hundreds of homes across Hong Kong and the Philippines.

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September 11: National Day of Catalonia

• 1297 – First War of Scottish Independence: Scottish forces under Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated English troops at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on the River Forth.
• 1945 – The Japanese-run camp at Batu Lintang, Sarawak, in Borneo was liberated by the Australian 9th Division, averting the planned massacre of its 2,000-plus Allied POWs and civilian internees by four days.
• 1978 – British medical photographer Janet Parker became the last recorded person to die from smallpox, leading to a debate on whether the virus should be preserved.
• 1995 – Mir EO-19, the nineteenth crewed mission to the Russian space station Mir, returned to Earth after approximately 75 days in space. It was the first Mir expedition launched on an American Space Shuttle.
• 2001 – Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners headed for California to carry out a series of terrorist attacks (second attack pictured) against targets in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area.

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September 12

• 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I took the throne as the ruler ( ajaw) of the Mayan city of Tikal.
• 1846 – The English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (pictured) eloped to Italy, marrying in secret to avoid their disapproving families.
• 1933 – Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in Bloomsbury, London.
• 1948 – The People's Liberation Army launched the Liaoshen campaign, the first of the three major military campaigns during the late stage of the Chinese Civil War.
• 1995 – Hurricane Ismael formed off the southwest coast of Mexico; it went on to kill over a hundred people in the country.

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September 13

• 509 BC – According to Roman tradition, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (depicted), the most important temple in ancient Rome, was dedicated.
• 1567 – The siege of Inabayama Castle, the final battle in Oda Nobunaga's campaign to conquer Mino Province, began; it culminated in a decisive victory for Nobunaga.
• 1848 – An explosion drove an iron rod through the head of railroad foreman Phineas Gage; his survival and recovery influenced 19th-century discussion of psychology and neuroscience.
• 1919 – The Boston police strike ended after four days of rule by the state militia, the deaths of nine people, and accusations that striking officers were "agents of Lenin".
• 2005 – A software bug caused a simulated pandemic in the online video game World of Warcraft, serving as a model for epidemiologists to understand how human interaction influences disease outbreaks.

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September 14

• AD 81 – Domitian, the last Flavian emperor of Rome, was confirmed by the Senate to succeed his brother Titus.
• 919 – A coalition of native Irish, led by Niall Glúndub, failed in their attempt to drive the Vikings of the Uí Ímair from Ireland.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The Little Rock campaign ended with the Union Army capturing Little Rock, Arkansas.
• 1914 – HMAS AE1 (pictured), the Royal Australian Navy's first submarine, was lost at sea; its wreck was not found until 2017.
• 1989 – Typhoon Sarah dissipated after causing extensive damage along an erratic path across the Western Pacific, killing 71 in Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Gotō Islands.

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September 15: Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom ( 1940)

• 1462 – The Ottoman conquest of Lesbos ended upon the surrender of commander Niccolò Gattilusio; the conquering Mehmed II executed 300 Italian soldiers by chopping them in half, claiming he was fulfilling a promise to "spare their heads".
• 1830 – The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&M), the first locomotive-hauled railway to connect two major cities, opened with the Duke of Wellington in attendance.
• 1954 – The scene in The Seven Year Itch of Marilyn Monroe standing in a white dress over a subway grate (pictured) was filmed by Billy Wilder.
• 2013 – The Belarusian serial killer Ivan Kulesh murdered two saleswomen in Lida.

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September 16

• 681 – At the Third Council of Constantinople, Pope Honorius I was posthumously excommunicated, with his support for monothelitism deemed to be heretical.
• 1844 – Felix Mendelssohn completed the score of the Violin Concerto, his final concerto.
• 1963 – Malaysia was formed as an independent nation from the Federation of Malaya, the Colony of Singapore, the Crown Colony of North Borneo, and the Crown Colony of Sarawak.
• 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
• 1990 – Construction of the Northern Xinjiang railway (terminus pictured) was completed between Ürümqi South and Alashankou, linking the railway lines of China and Kazakhstan and adding a sizeable portion to the Eurasian Land Bridge.

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September 17: Mid-Autumn Festival in China (2024); Constitution Day in the United States

• 1176 – Byzantine–Seljuk wars: Seljuq Turks prevented Byzantine forces from taking the interior of Anatolia at the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia.
• 1382 – Following the death of Louis I without a male heir, his daughter Mary was crowned with the title of King of Hungary.
• 1859 – Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton (pictured) distributed letters to various newspapers in San Francisco proclaiming himself to be Emperor Norton.
• 1894 – The controversial Mormon bishop and prophetic dreamer John Hyrum Koyle began excavating the Dream Mine, which he believed would provide financial support to members of the LDS Church.
• 1914 – Andrew Fisher, whose previous term as Prime Minister of Australia oversaw a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, became prime minister for the third time.

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September 18

• AD 96 – Nerva, the first of the " Five Good Emperors" of ancient Rome, came to power following the assassination of his predecessor Domitian.
• 1809 – The second Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (interior pictured), opened in London after the original was destroyed by fire.
• 1875 – The Indianola hurricane dissipated over Mississippi after killing around eight hundred people in Texas.
• 1961 – An aircraft crashed near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, resulting in the deaths of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others on board.
• 1981 – While posing as an aristocrat, Belgian serial killer Nestor Pirotte murdered an antiques dealer in Brussels, for which crime he was sentenced to death.

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September 19: Ganesh Chaturthi (Hinduism, 2023); International Talk Like a Pirate Day

• 1692 – Salem witch trials: Giles Corey was crushed to death for refusing to enter a plea to charges of witchcraft, reportedly asking officials for "more weight".
• 1846 – Near La Salette-Fallavaux in southeastern France, shepherd children Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud reported a Marian apparition, now known as Our Lady of La Salette (statue pictured).
• 1940 – World War II: Polish resistance leader Witold Pilecki allowed himself to be captured by German forces and sent to Auschwitz to gather intelligence.
• 1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival was held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, England.
• 1995 – Industrial Society and Its Future, the manifesto of American domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, was published in The Washington Post almost three months after it was submitted.

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September 20

• 1498 – A tsunami caused by the Meiō earthquake washed away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha (pictured) at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Japan; the statue has since stood in the open air.
• 1792 – The French Army achieved its first major victory of the War of the First Coalition at the Battle of Valmy.
• 1967 – L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, announced the story of Xenu in a taped lecture sent to all Scientologists.
• 1997 – Hurricane Erika, the strongest and longest-lasting hurricane of the 1997 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing flooding and power outages throughout Puerto Rico.

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September 21: International Day of Peace

• 1170 – Norman invasion of Ireland: English and Irish forces conquered Dublin, forcing Ascall mac Ragnaill, the last Norse–Gaelic king of Dublin, into exile.
• 1823 – According to Joseph Smith, he was first visited by the Angel Moroni, who would guide him to the golden plates that became the basis of the Book of Mormon.
• 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Nazareth ended with the British Empire victorious over the Ottomans.
• 1958 – The first section of Interstate 80 in Iowa (pictured) opened in the Des Moines metropolitan area.
• 2001 – Several British Muslim youths in Peterborough, England, murdered 17-year-old Ross Parker, leading to debate over whether the British media failed to cover racially-motivated crimes with white victims.

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September 22

• 1236 – Livonian Crusade: The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were soundly defeated by pagan Samogitian and Semigallian troops at the Battle of Saule.
• 1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General was formally established.
• 1957 – François Duvalier (pictured), nicknamed Papa Doc, was elected President of Haiti as a populist before consolidating power and ruling as a dictator for the rest of his life.
• 2003 – Dolphin, the first emulator for the GameCube that could run commercial video games, was released.
• 2013 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan, was attacked by two suicide bombers who killed 127 people.

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September 23: Celebrate Bisexuality Day

• 1122 – Pope Callixtus II and Holy Roman emperor Henry V agreed to the Concordat of Worms (pictured), ending the Investiture Controversy.
• 1642 – First English Civil War: The Battle of Powick Bridge, the first engagement between the primary field armies of the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, ended in a Royalist victory.
• 1884 – The French steamship Arctique ran aground on the northern coast of Cape Virgenes in Argentina; gold was discovered during the rescue effort, triggering the Tierra del Fuego gold rush.
• 1920 – The Louisiana hurricane dissipated over Kansas after forcing around 4,500 people to evacuate and causing $1.45 million in damages.
• 2010 – Teresa Lewis became the first woman to be executed by the U.S. state of Virginia since 1912, and the first woman in the state to be executed by lethal injection.

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September 24: Heritage Day in South Africa; Independence Day in Guinea-Bissau ( 1973)

• 1645 – English Civil War: Royalists commanded by King Charles I suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of Rowton Heath.
• 1869 – Jay Gould, James Fisk, and other speculators plotted but failed to control the United States gold market, causing prices to plummet.
• 1890 – Wilford Woodruff, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote the first draft of a manifesto that officially disavowed the future practice of plural marriage.
• 1941 – Operation Barbarossa: A Wehrmacht training event known as the Mogilev Conference began, marking an increase in violence against Jews and other civilians in the areas under General Max von Schenckendorff's command.
• 1993 – Norodom Sihanouk (pictured) became King of Cambodia with the restoration of the monarchy after a 23-year interregnum.

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September 25

• 844 – Viking expansion: A Viking fleet arrived near Seville, then part of the Emirate of Córdoba, and began a raid of the city that was eventually repelled by Muslim defenders.
• 1790 – Peking opera was born with the introduction of Hui opera to Beijing by the "Four Great Anhui Troupes" in honour of the Qianlong Emperor's 80th birthday.
• 1890 – Sequoia National Park (pictured) was established to conserve giant sequoia trees in an area affected by logging in the southern Sierra Nevada in California.
• 1983 – In one of the largest prison escapes in British history, 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners hijacked a prison meals lorry and broke out of HM Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
• 2005 – Typhoon Longwang, the deadliest tropical cyclone to hit China in that year, formed just north of the Mariana Islands.

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September 26:

• 46 BC – Julius Caesar dedicated the Temple of Venus Genetrix in Rome to Venus, the mythical ancestor of his family.
• 1580 – English explorer Francis Drake's galleon the Golden Hind (replica pictured) sailed into Plymouth, completing his circumnavigation of the globe.
• 1928 – The Nationalist government of China adopted Gwoyeu Romatzyh as the official system for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese.
• 1983 – Cold War: Soviet lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov averted a potential nuclear war by identifying as a false alarm signals that appeared to indicate an impending U.S. missile attack.
• 2010 – Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove and three Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by members of the Taliban in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

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September 27

• 1822 – In a letter to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris, Jean-François Champollion announced his initial successes in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone (pictured).
• 1851 – The British East India Company inaugurated the Horsburgh Lighthouse on the rocky outcrop of Pedra Branca, Singapore, which later became the subject of a territorial dispute.
• 1917 – The Broadhurst Theatre opened in New York City with a performance of Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw.
• 1975 – Two members of ETA political-military and three members of the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front, sentenced to death for murder, became the last people to be executed in Spain.
• 1983 – American software developer Richard Stallman announced plans for the Unix-like operating system GNU, the first free software developed by the GNU Project.

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September 28: Meskel in Ethiopia and Eritrea (2024)

• 235 – Pope Pontian resigned after being exiled to Sardinia, becoming the first pope to relinquish the position; he was reportedly beaten to death with sticks weeks later.
• 1066 – William the Conqueror and his fleet of around 600 ships landed at Pevensey, Sussex, beginning the Norman conquest of England.
• 1901 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas killed more than forty American soldiers in a surprise attack on the town of Balangiga on the island of Samar.
• 1928 – Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming (pictured) discovered penicillin when he noticed a bacteria-killing mould growing in his laboratory.
• 1975 – An attempted robbery of Spaghetti House, a restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, turned into a six-day hostage situation.

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September 29: Michaelmas (Western Christianity)

• 1011 – An army of Viking pirates that had besieged the English city of Canterbury for weeks took Archbishop Ælfheah prisoner and seized power.
• 1760 – The Williamsburg Bray School, the oldest-surviving school building in the U.S. dedicated to educating Black children, opened at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion.
• 1833 – The Spanish American wars of independence ended with the death of King Ferdinand VII, with what had once been the Spanish Empire disintegrating into independent Latin American states.
• 1940 – During a Royal Australian Air Force training exercise over Brocklesby, two planes collided and interlocked in mid-air (pictured); the pilot of the upper plane was able to land safely using the lower plane's engines.
• 1954 – Twelve countries signed a convention to establish the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which manages the world's largest particle physics laboratory.

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September 30: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada

• 1139 – A violent earthquake struck the Caucasus near Ganja, killing up to an estimated 300,000 people.
• 1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, composed shortly before his death, premiered at Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna.
• 1920 – Times Square Theater (pictured) opened on Broadway with a production of The Mirage, a play written by its owner, Edgar Selwyn.
• 1939 – NBC broadcast the first televised American football game, between the Fordham Rams and the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets.
• 2000 – Twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah was shot dead in the Gaza Strip; the Israel Defense Forces initially accepted responsibility but retracted it five years later.

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