Events Pre-1600 307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the retired Roman emperor Maximian. 1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade. 1174 – A conspiracy against Saladin, aiming to restore the Fatimid Caliphate, is revealed in Cairo, involving senior figures of the former Fatimid regime and the poet Umara al-Yamani. Modern historians doubt the extent and danger of the conspiracy reported in official sources, but its ringleaders will be publicly executed over the following weeks. 1272 – Pope Gregory X calls for a General Church Council to discuss reunion of Churches, Crusade to the Holy Land and Church reform. 1492 – Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile sign the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, ordering all Jews in their kingdoms to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. 1521 – Ferdinand Magellan and fifty of his men came ashore to present-day Limasawa to participate in the first Catholic mass in the Philippines.
1601–1900 1657 – The Long Parliament presents the Humble Petition and Advice offering Oliver Cromwell the British throne, which he eventually declines. 1706 – The last session of history of the Catalan Courts, the parliament of the Principality of Catalonia, ends. Catalonia's constitutional modernisation passed by the Courts aims to improve the guarantee of individual, political and economic rights (such as the secrecy of correspondence). 1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, preached in the presence of King George I of Great Britain, provokes the Bangorian Controversy. 1761 – The 1761 Lisbon earthquake strikes off the Iberian Peninsula with an estimated magnitude of 8.5, six years after another quake destroyed the city. 1774 – American Revolution: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act. 1814 – The Sixth Coalition occupies Paris after Napoleon's Grande Armée capitulates. 1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. 1885 – The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate. 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened. 1899 – Philippine–American War: Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.
1901–present 1901 – Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák premieres at the National Opera House in Prague. 1905 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany declares his support for Moroccan independence in Tangier, beginning the First Moroccan Crisis. 1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States. 1909 – Serbia formally withdraws its opposition to Austro-Hungarian actions in the Bosnian Crisis. 1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert. 1917 – According to the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, the islands become American possessions. 1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed. 1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time. 1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed. 1930 – The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years. 1931 – An earthquake in Nicaragua destroys Managua; killing 2,000. 1931 – A Transcontinental & Western Air airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne. 1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States. 1939 – Events preceding World War II in Europe: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledges British military support to the Second Polish Republic in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany. 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession. 1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands. 1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. 1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. 1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government. 1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265. 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum. 1964 – Brazilian General Olímpio Mourão Filho orders his troops to move towards Rio de Janeiro, beginning the coup d'état and 21 years of military dictatorship. 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon. 1966 – The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the 1966 United Kingdom general election. 1968 – American President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to the nation of "Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam" in a television address. At the conclusion of his speech, he announces: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President." 1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit. 1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors. 1986 – Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 crashes into the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range near the Mexican town of Maravatío, killing 167. 1990 – Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax. 1991 – Georgian independence referendum: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union. 1991 – The Warsaw Pact formally disbands. 1992 – The , the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California. 1992 – The Treaty of Federation is signed in Moscow. 1993 – The Macao Basic Law is adopted by the Eighth National People's Congress of China to take effect December 20, 1999. Resumption by China of the Exercise of Sovereignty over Macao 1995 – Selena is murdered by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas. 1995 – TAROM Flight 371, an Airbus A310-300, crashes near Balotesti, Romania, killing all 60 people on board. 1998 – Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license. 2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed. 2005 – The dwarf planet Makemake is discovered by a team led by astronomer Michael E. Brown at the Palomar Observatory. 2016 – NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko return to Earth after a yearlong mission at the International Space Station. 2018 – Start of the 2018 Armenian revolution. 2023 – A historic tornado outbreak occurs in the American Midwest and South.
Births Pre-1600 1360 – Philippa of Lancaster (died 1415) 1499 – Pope Pius IV (died 1565) 1504 – Guru Angad, Indian religious leader (died 1552) 1519 – Henry II of France (died 1559) 1536 – Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Japanese shōgun (died 1565) 1596 – René Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher (died 1650)
1601–1900 1601 – Jakov Mikalja, Italian linguist and lexicographer (died 1654) 1621 – Andrew Marvell, English poet and politician (died 1678) 1651 – Charles II, Elector Palatine, German husband of Princess Wilhelmine Ernestine of Denmark (died 1685) 1675 – Pope Benedict XIV (died 1758) 1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (died 1750) 1718 – Mariana Victoria of Spain (died 1781) 1723 – Frederick V of Denmark (died 1766) 1730 – Étienne Bézout, French mathematician and theorist (died 1783) 1732 – Joseph Haydn, Austrian pianist and composer (died 1809) 1740 – Panoutsos Notaras, Greek politician (died 1849) 1747 – Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, German pianist and composer (died 1800) 1777 – Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist and engineer (died 1859) 1778 – Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist and ornithologist (died 1858) 1794 – Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan, American lawyer and politician, 2nd United States Secretary of the Interior (died 1852) 1809 – Edward FitzGerald, English poet and translator (died 1883) 1809 – Otto Lindblad, Swedish composer (died 1864) 1813 – Félix María Zuloaga, Mexican general and unconstitutional interim president (1858 and 1860–1862) (died 1898) 1819 – Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (died 1901) 1823 – Mary Boykin Chesnut, American author (died 1886) 1833 – Mary Abigail Dodge, American writer and essayist (died 1896) 1835 – John La Farge, American artist (died 1910) 1847 – Hermann de Pourtalès, Swiss sailor (died 1904) 1847 – Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician and theorist (died 1878) 1851 – Francis Bell, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 20th Prime Minister of New Zealand (died 1936) 1855 – Alfred E. Hunt, American businessman (died 1899) 1859 – Emil Fenyvessy, Hungarian actor and screenwriter (died 1924) 1865 – Anandi Gopal Joshi, Indian physician (died 1887) 1871 – Arthur Griffith, Irish journalist and politician, 3rd President of Dáil Éireann (died 1922) 1872 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet manager and critic, founded the Ballets Russes (died 1929) 1874 – Benjamín G. Hill, Mexican revolutionary general, governor of Sonora (died 1920) 1874 – Henri Marteau, French violinist and composer (died 1934) 1876 – Borisav Stanković, Serbian author (died 1927) 1878 – Jack Johnson, American boxer (died 1946) 1884 – Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer and academic (died 1946) 1885 – Pascin, Bulgarian-American painter and illustrator (died 1930) 1890 – Ben Adams, American jumper (died 1961) 1890 – William Lawrence Bragg, Australian-English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971) 1891 – Victor Varconi, Hungarian-American actor and director (died 1976) 1893 – Clemens Krauss, Austrian conductor and manager (died 1954) 1893 – Herbert Meinhard Mühlpfordt, German physician and historian (died 1982) 1895 – Vardis Fisher, American author and academic (died 1968) 1900 – Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (died 1974)
1901–present 1905 – Robert Stevenson, English director and screenwriter (died 1986) 1905 – George Treweek, Australian rugby league player (died 1991) 1906 – Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1979) 1908 – Red Norvo, American vibraphone player and composer (died 1999) 1911 – Freddie Green, American guitarist (died 1987) 1911 – Elisabeth Grümmer, German soprano (died 1986) 1912 – William Lederer, American soldier and author (died 2009) 1913 – Etta Baker, African-American singer and guitarist (died 2006) 1914 – Octavio Paz, Mexican poet and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1998) 1914 – Dagmar Lange, Swedish author (died 1991) 1915 – Albert Hourani, English historian and author (died 1993) 1915 – Shoichi Yokoi, Japanese sergeant (died 1997)