Events Pre-1600 461 – Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer.John of Antioch, Historia chronike, fragment 203; Marcellinus, sa 461; Fasti vindobonenses priores, No 588. Procopius (VII.14–15) does not mention the Emperor's return from Hispania and said that Majorian died of dysentery: it is possible that the news has been put about by Ricimer (Fik Meijer, Emperors Do not Die in Bed, Routledge, 2004, , p. 155). Victor of Tonnena erroneously claims that Majorian reached Rome and was killed there, and puts this event in 463 (Chronica, s.a. 463). 610 – Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628: Sassanid troops under general Shahrbaraz conquer the town of Zenobia. 626 – The Avar and Slav armies leave the siege of Constantinople. 768 – Pope Stephen III is elected to office, and quickly seeks Frankish protection against the Lombard threat, since the Byzantine Empire is no longer able to help. 936 – Coronation of King Otto I of Germany. 1461 – The Ming dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor. 1479 – Battle of Guinegate: French troops of King Louis XI are defeated by the Burgundians led by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg.
1601–1900 1679 – The brigantine Le Griffon becomes the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America. 1714 – The Battle of Gangut: The first important victory of the Russian Navy. 1743 – The Treaty of Åbo ends the 1741–1743 Russo-Swedish War.Shirokorad A.B. Northern Wars of Russia. Moscow, 2001 (in Russian)Merovuo, Jenni. "‘Divided and validated’? The institutionalization of the Russo-Swedish border region in the 1743 peace treaty." Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 66.4 (2017): pp. 283-293. 1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart. 1786 – The first federal Indian Reservation is created by the United States. 1789 – The United States Department of War is established. 1791 – American troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in the Northwest Indian War. 1794 – U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. 1819 – Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá. 1858 – The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College. p303. 1890 – Anna Månsdotter, found guilty of the 1889 Yngsjö murder, becomes the last woman to be executed in Sweden.
1901–present 1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California. 1926 – The first British Grand Prix was held at Brooklands. 1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York. 1930 – The last confirmed lynching of black people in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana; two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are murdered. 1933 – The Kingdom of Iraq slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Simele. This date is recognized as Martyrs Day or National Day of Mourning by the Assyrian community in memory of the Simele massacre. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal begins as the United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. 1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I). 1946 – The government of the Soviet Union presented a note to its Turkish counterparts which refuted the latter's sovereignty over the Turkish Straits, thus beginning the Turkish Straits crisis. 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.(pdf ) 1947 – The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST). 1959 – Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 1960 – Ivory Coast becomes independent from France. 1962 – Canadian-born American pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey is awarded the U.S. President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for her refusal to authorize thalidomide.. 1964 – Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces. 1969 – Richard Nixon appoints Luis R. Bruce, a Mohawk-Oglala Sioux and co-founder of the National Congress of American Indians, as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody. 1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the air. 1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars. 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently. 1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication. 1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts. 1987 – Cold War: Lynne Cox becomes the first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union. 1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia. 1989 – The National Cold Fusion Institute opened in Salt Lake City. 1990 – First American soldiers arrive in Saudi Arabia as part of the Gulf War. 1993 – Ada Deer, a Menominee activist, is sworn in as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1995 – The Chilean government declares state of emergency in the southern half of the country in response to an event of intense, cold, wind, rain and snowfall known as the White Earthquake. 1997 – Space Shuttle Program: The Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-85 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 1997 – Fine Air Flight 101 crashes after takeoff from Miami International Airport, killing five people. 1998 – Bombings at United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people. 1999 – The Chechnya-based Islamic International Brigade invades neighboring Dagestan. 2007 – At AT&T Park, Barry Bonds hits his 756th career home run to surpass Hank Aaron's 33-year-old record. 2008 – The start of the Russo-Georgian War over the territory of South Ossetia. 2020 – Air India Express Flight 1344 overshoots the runway at Calicut International Airport in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India, and crashes, killing 21 of the 190 people on board. 2026 – Debsirin Nonthaburi school shooting
Births Pre-1600 317 – Constantius II, Roman emperor (died 361) 1282 – Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (died 1316) 1533 – Alonso de Ercilla, Spanish soldier and poet (died 1595) 1560 – Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian aristocrat and purported serial killer (died 1614) 1571 – Thomas Lupo, English viol player and composer (died 1627) 1574 – Robert Dudley, English explorer and cartographer (died 1649) 1598 – Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish poet and linguist (died 1672)
1601–1900 1613 – William Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, Dutch stadtholder (died 1664) 1702 – Muhammad Shah, Mughal emperor of India (died 1748) 1726 – James Bowdoin, American banker and politician, 2nd Governor of Massachusetts (died 1790) 1742 – Nathanael Greene, American general (died 1786) 1751 – Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange (died 1820) 1779 – Carl Ritter, German geographer and academic (died 1859) 1826 – August Ahlqvist, Finnish professor, poet, scholar of the Finno-Ugric languages, author, and literary critic (died 1889) 1844 – Auguste Michel-Lévy, French geologist and author (died 1911) 1846 – Anna Swan, Canadian giantess at 7ft 11in (died 1888) 1862 – Henri Le Sidaner, French painter (died 1939) 1862 – Victoria of Baden (died 1931) 1867 – Emil Nolde, Danish-German painter and illustrator (died 1956) 1868 – Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, Russian-German economist and statistician (died 1931) 1868 – Huntley Wright, English actor (died 1941) 1869 – Mary Frances Winston, American mathematician (died 1959) 1876 – Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (died 1917) 1879 – Johannes Kotze, South African cricketer (died 1931) 1884 – Billie Burke, American actress and singer (died 1970) 1884 – Nikolai Triik, Estonian painter and illustrator (died 1940) 1887 – Anna Elisabet Weirauch, German author and playwright (died 1970) 1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, American author and activist (died 1964)
1901–present 1901 – Ann Harding, American actress and singer (died 1981) 1903 – Louis Leakey, Kenyan-English palaeontologist and archaeologist (died 1972) 1904 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971) 1907 – Albert Kotin, Belarusian-American soldier and painter (died 1980) 1911 – István Bibó, Hungarian lawyer and politician (died 1979) 1911 – Nicholas Ray, American director and screenwriter (died 1979) 1916 – Kermit Love, American actor, puppeteer, and costume designer (died 2008) 1918 – C. Buddingh', Dutch poet and translator (died 1985) 1918 – Gordon Zahn, American sociologist and author (died 2007) 1921 – Manitas de Plata, French guitarist (died 2014) 1921 – Karel Husa, Czech-American composer and conductor (died 2016) 1925 – Felice Bryant, American songwriter (died 2003) 1926 – Stan Freberg, American puppeteer, voice actor, and singer (died 2015) 1927 – Edwin Edwards, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 50th Governor of Louisiana (died 2021) 1928 – Betsy Byars, American author and academic (died 2020) 1928 – Owen Luder, English architect, designed Tricorn Centre and Trinity Square (died 2021) 1928 – James Randi, Canadian-American stage magician and author (died 2020) 1929 – Don Larsen, American baseball player (died 2020) 1930 – Togrul Narimanbekov, Azerbaijani-French painter and academic (died 2013) 1930 – Veljo Tormis, Estonian composer and educator (died 2017) 1932 – Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian runner (died 1973) 1932 – Edward Hardwicke, English actor (died 2011) 1932 – Rien Poortvliet, Dutch painter and illustrator (died 1995) 1932 – Maurice Rabb Jr., American ophthalmologist and academic (died 2005) 1933 – Eddie Firmani, South African footballer and manager 1933 – Elinor Ostrom, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2012) 1933 – Jerry Pournelle, American journalist and author (died 2017) 1933 – Alberto Romulo, Filipino politician and diplomat 1934 – Sándor Simó, Hungarian director, producer, and screenwriter (died 2001) 1935 – Lee Corso, American college football coach and broadcaster 1935 – Rahsaan Roland Kirk, American saxophonist and composer (died 1977) 1937 – Zoltán Berczik, Hungarian table tennis player and coach (died 2011) 1937 – Don Wilson, English cricketer and coach (died 2012) 1938 – Helen Caldicott, Australian physician and anti-nuclear activist 1938 – Giorgetto Giugiaro, Italian automotive designer 1940 – Jean-Luc Dehaene, French-Belgian lawyer and politician, 63rd Prime Minister of Belgium (died 2014) 1940 – Uwe Nettelbeck, German record producer, journalist and film critic (died 2007) 1941 – Matthew Evans, Baron Evans of Temple Guiting, English publisher and politician (died 2016) 1942 – Garrison Keillor, American humorist, novelist, short story writer, and radio host 1942 – Carlos Monzón, Argentinian boxer and actor (died 1995)