• 48 BC - Battle of Dyrrhachium, Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey in Macedonia.
• 988 - The City of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey.
• 1212 - The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground.
• 1460 - Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton.
• 1553 - Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England.
• 1584 - William I of Orange was assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland by Balthasar Gérard.
• 1645 - English Civil War: Battle of Langport.
• 1778 - American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.
• 1789 - Alexander Mackenzie reaches Mackenzie River Delta.
• 1796 - Carl Friedrich Gauss discovered that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers.
• 1800 - The British Indian Government established Fort William College to promote Urdu, Hindi and other vernaculars of sub continent.
• 1806 - The Vellore Mutiny was the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company
• 1821 - The United States takes possession of its newly-bought territory of Florida from Spain.
• 1832 - President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States.
• 1850 - Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, 16 months into his term.
• 1877 - The then villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain.
• 1890 - Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.
• 1913 - Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States.
• 1925 - The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), the official news agency of the Soviet Union, is established.
• 1925 - Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers still observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration.
• 1925 - Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a state law against it.
• 1938 - Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.
• 1940 - World War II: Vichy France government established.
• 1940 - World War II: Battle of Britain - The German Luftwaffe begin to hit British convoys in the English Channel thus starting the battle (this start date is contested, though).
• 1941 - Jedwabne Pogrom was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the village of Jedwabne in Poland.
• 1942 - The diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union were established.
• 1943 - World War II: The launching of Operation Husky begins the Italian Campaign.
• 1947 - Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor General of Pakistan by then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee.
• 1951 - Korean War: At Kaesong, armistice negotiations begin.
• 1958 - Alaska, highest tsunami wave ever recorded at Lituya Bay, at 524 m high.
• 1962 - Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.
• 1967 - Uruguay becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
• 1968 - Maurice Couve de Murville becomes Prime Minister of France
• 1973 - The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1973 - National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on Bangladesh recognition.
• 1976 - The Seveso Disaster occurs in Italy.
• 1976 - One US and three UK mercenaries executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial.
• 1978 - World News Tonight premieres on ABC
• 1978 - Mauritania, President Moktar Ould Daddah is ousted in a bloodless coup.
• 1985 - Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland, New Zealand Harbor by French DGSE agents.
• 1991 - Boris Yeltsin begins his 5-year term as the first elected President of Russia.
• 1991 - South African cricket team readmitted into the International Cricket Council (ICC) following the end of Apartheid.
• 1992 - In Miami, Florida, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.
• 1993 - In Amelia, Ohio, former NBA superstar Bradley Jay Sherman was born.
• 1997 - London, scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the out of Africa theory of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
• 1997 - Spain, Partido Popular member Miguel Ángel Blanco is kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests.
• 1998 - Roman Catholic sex abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by former priest Rudolph Kos.
• 2000 - A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline.
• 2000 - EADS, the world's second largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA.
• 2002 - At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Kenneth Thomson.
• 2003 - A Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off a bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. This is the deadliest traffic accident to date in Hong Kong.
• 2005 - Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle causing billions of dollars in damage.
• 2006 - Pakistan International Flight PK-688 crashes in Multan, Pakistan shortly after takeoff, killing all 45 people on board.

Births