Events Pre-1600 538 – Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city to the victorious Byzantine general, Belisarius. 1088 – Election of Urban II as the 159th Pope of the Catholic Church. He is best known for initiating the Crusades. 1158 – German city Munich (München) is first mentioned as forum apud Munichen in the Augsburg arbitration by Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I. 1391 – Konrad von Wallenrode is elected the 24th Grand Master of the Teutonic Order (date is O.S.). 1579 – Start of the Siege of Maastricht, part of the Eighty Years' War.
1601–1900 1622 – Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Society of Jesus, are canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. 1689 – James II of England lands at Kinsale, starting the Williamite War in Ireland. 1811 – Peninsular War: A day after a successful rearguard action, French Marshal Michel Ney once again successfully delays the pursuing Anglo-Portuguese force at the Battle of Redinha. 1862 – Paddle steamer Brother Jonathan docks in Fort Victoria (now Victoria, British Columbia), carrying smallpox-infected passengers from San Francisco. The ensuing epidemic killed an estimated two-thirds of First Nations in the province of British Columbia.
1901–present 1912 – The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States. 1913 – The future capital of Australia is officially named Canberra. 1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for most of the period since 1713. 1920 – The Kapp Putsch begins when the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt is ordered to march on Berlin. 1928 – In California, the St. Francis Dam fails; the resulting floods kill 431 people. 1930 – Mahatma Gandhi begins the Salt March, a march to the sea to protest the British monopoly on salt in India. 1933 – Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats". 1938 – Anschluss: German troops occupy and annex Austria. 1940 – Winter War: Finland signs the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, ceding almost all of Finnish Karelia. 1940 – The most destructive train accident in Finnish history kills 39 and injures 69 people in Turenki, Janakkala. 1942 – The Battle of Java ends with the surrender of the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command to the Empire of Japan in Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies. 1947 – Cold War: The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism. 1950 – The Llandow air disaster kills 80 people when the aircraft they are travelling in crashes near Sigingstone, Wales. At the time this was the world's deadliest air disaster. 1967 – Suharto takes power from Sukarno when the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly inaugurate him as Acting President of Indonesia. 1968 – Mauritius gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1971 – The 1971 Turkish military memorandum is sent to the Süleyman Demirel government of Turkey and the government resigns. 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee submits his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web. 1992 – Mauritius becomes a republic while remaining a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. 1993 – Several bombs explode in Mumbai, India, killing about 300 people and injuring hundreds more. 1993 – North Korea announces that it will withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and refuses to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites. 1999 – Former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. 2003 – Zoran Đinđić, Prime Minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade. 2003 – The World Health Organization officially release a global warning of outbreaks of Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). 2004 – President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, is impeached by its National Assembly, the first such impeachment in the nation's history. 2006 – In Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi is raped and murdered by five American soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, who also murder both of her parents and her sister. 2009 – Financier Bernie Madoff pleads guilty to one of the largest frauds in Wall Street's history. 2011 – A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. 2014 – A gas explosion in the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem kills eight and injures 70 others. 2018 – US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 crashes at Tribhuvan International Airport in Katmandu, killing 51 and injuring 20. 2019 – In the House of Commons, the revised EU Withdrawal Bill was rejected by a margin of 149 votes. 2020 – The United States suspends travel from Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Births Pre-1600 1270 – Charles, Count of Valois (died 1325) 1515 – Caspar Othmayr, German Lutheran pastor and composer (died 1553)
1601–1900 1607 – Paul Gerhardt, German poet and composer (died 1676) 1613 – André Le Nôtre, French gardener and architect (died 1700) 1626 – John Aubrey, English historian and philosopher (died 1697) 1637 – Anne Hyde, Duchess of York and Albany (died 1671) 1672 – Richard Steele, Irish-Welsh journalist and politician (died 1729) 1685 – George Berkeley, Irish bishop and philosopher (died 1753) 1710 – Thomas Arne, English composer (died 1778) 1735 – François-Emmanuel Guignard, comte de Saint-Priest, French politician and diplomat (died 1821) 1753 – Jean Denis, French politician, lawyer, jurist, journalist, and historian (died 1827) 1766 – Claudius Buchanan, Scottish theologian (died 1815) 1781 – Frederica of Baden, Queen consort to Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden (died 1826) 1784 – William Buckland, English geologist and paleontologist; Dean of Westminster (died 1856) 1795 – William Lyon Mackenzie, Scottish-Canadian journalist and politician, 1st Mayor of Toronto (died 1861) 1795 – George Tyler Wood, American military officer and politician (died 1858) 1806 – Jane Pierce, American wife of Franklin Pierce, 15th First Lady of the United States (died 1863) 1807 – James Abbott, Indian Army officer (died 1896) 1815 – Louis-Jules Trochu, French military leader and politician (died 1896) 1821 – John Abbott, Canadian lawyer and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Canada (died 1893) 1821 – Medo Pucić, Croatian writer and politician (died 1882) 1823 – Katsu Kaishū, Japanese statesman (died 1899) 1824 – Gustav Kirchhoff, Russian-German physicist and academic (died 1887) 1832 – Charles Boycott, English farmer and agent (died 1897) 1834 – Hilary A. Herbert, American politician, Secretary of the Navy (died 1919) 1835 – Simon Newcomb, Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician (died 1909) 1835 – Sigismondo Savona, Maltese educator and politician (died 1908) 1837 – Alexandre Guilmant, French organist and composer (died 1911) 1838 – William Henry Perkin, English chemist and academic (died 1907) 1843 – Gabriel Tarde, French sociologist and criminologist (died 1904) 1855 – Eduard Birnbaum, Polish-born German cantor (died 1920) 1857 – William V. Ranous, American actor and director (died 1915) 1858 – Adolph Ochs, American publisher (died 1935) 1859 – Ernesto Cesàro, Italian mathematician (died 1906) 1860 – Eric Stenbock, Estonian poet and author (died 1895) 1863 – Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian soldier, journalist, poet, and playwright (died 1938) 1863 – Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian and Ukrainian mineralogist and chemist (died 1945) 1864 – W. H. R. Rivers, English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist, and psychiatrist (died 1922) 1864 – Alice Tegnér, Swedish organist, composer, and educator (died 1943) 1868 – Mary Karadja, Swedish writer, spiritualist and princess (died 1943) 1869 – George Forbes, New Zealand politician, 22nd Prime Minister of New Zealand (died 1947) 1874 – Edmund Eysler, Austrian composer (died 1949) 1877 – Wilhelm Frick, German lawyer and politician, German Federal Minister of the Interior (died 1946) 1878 – Gemma Galgani, Italian mystic and saint (died 1903) 1880 – Henry Drysdale Dakin, English-American chemist and academic (died 1952) 1881 – Väinö Tanner, Finnish politician of Social Democratic Party of Finland; the Prime Minister of Finland (died 1966) 1882 – Carlos Blanco Galindo, Bolivian politician (died 1943) 1883 – Sándor Jávorka, Hungarian botanist (died 1961) 1888 – Walter Hermann Bucher, German-American geologist and paleontologist (died 1965) 1888 – Hans Knappertsbusch, German conductor (died 1965) 1890 – Evert Taube, Swedish singer-songwriter and lute player (died 1976) 1896 – Jesse Fuller, American singer-songwriter and musician (died 1976) 1898 – Tian Han, Chinese playwright (died 1968) 1898 – Luitpold Steidle, German army officer and politician (died 1984) 1899 – Ramón Muttis, Argentine footballer (died 1955) 1900 – Rinus van den Berge, Dutch athlete (died 1972) 1900 – Sylvi Kekkonen, Finnish writer and wife of President of Finland Urho Kekkonen (died 1974) 1900 – Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, 19th President of Colombia (died 1975)
1901–present 1904 – Lyudmila Keldysh, Russian mathematician (died 1976) 1905 – Takashi Shimura, Japanese actor (died 1982) 1907 – Dorrit Hoffleit, American astronomer and academic (died 2007) 1908 – Rita Angus, New Zealand painter (died 1970) 1908 – David Marshall, Singaporean lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Minister of Singapore (died 1995) 1909 – Petras Cvirka, Lithuanian author (died 1947) 1910 – László Lékai, Archbishop of Esztergom and Cardinal (died 1986) 1910 – Masayoshi Ōhira, Japanese politician, 68th Prime Minister of Japan (died 1980) 1911 – Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Mexican academic and politician, 49th President of Mexico (died 1979) 1912 – Willie Hall, English footballer (died 1967) 1912 – Irving Layton, Romanian-Canadian poet and academic (died 2006) 1913 – Yashwantrao Chavan, Indian politician, 5th Deputy Prime Minister of India (died 1984) 1913 – Agathe von Trapp, Hungarian-American singer and author (died 2010) 1915 – Alberto Burri, Italian painter and sculptor (died 1995) 1915 – Jiří Mucha, Czech journalist (died 1991). 1917 – Leonard Chess, American record company executive, co-founder of Chess Records (died 1969) 1917 – Millard Kaufman, American author and screenwriter (died 2009) 1917 – Googie Withers, Indian-Australian actress (died 2011) 1918 – Elaine de Kooning, American painter and academic (died 1989) 1918 – Pádraig Faulkner, Irish Fianna Fáil politician (died 2012) 1921 – Gianni Agnelli, Italian businessman (died 2001) 1921 – Gordon MacRae, American actor and singer (died 1986) 1922 – Jack Kerouac, American author and poet (died 1969) 1922 – Lane Kirkland, American sailor and union leader (died 1999) 1923 – Hjalmar Andersen, Norwegian speed skater and cyclist (died 2013) 1923 – Norbert Brainin, Austrian violinist (died 2005) 1923 – Wally Schirra, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (died 2007) 1923 – Mae Young, American wrestler (died 2014) 1925 – Leo Esaki, Japanese physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1925 – Harry Harrison, American author and illustrator (died 2012) 1926 – George Ariyoshi, American lawyer and politician, 3rd Governor of Hawaii (died 2026) 1926 – Arthur A. Hartman, American career diplomat (died 2015) 1926 – John Clellon Holmes, American author and professor (died 1988) 1926 – David Nadien, American violinist (died 2014) 1927 – Raúl Alfonsín, Argentine lawyer and politician, 46th President of Argentina (died 2009) 1927 – Emmett Leith, American professor of electrical engineering and co-inventor of three-dimensional holography (died 2005) 1927 – Sudharmono, Indonesian politician, 5th Vice President of Indonesia (died 2006) 1928 – Edward Albee, American director and playwright (died 2016) 1929 – Win Tin, Burmese journalist and politician, co-founded the National League for Democracy (died 2014)