Event-a-Day

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1789. The first U.S. federal government agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs, is established (it will be later renamed Department of State).

1794, French Revolution: Maximilian Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 'enemies of the Revolution'.

1890, Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later.

1900, Kaiser Wilhelm II makes a speech comparing Germans to Huns; for years afterwards, "Hun" would be a disparaging name for Germans.

1919, The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and
537 injuries over a five-day period.

1929, The Geneva Convention of 1929, dealing with treatment of prisoners-of-war, is signed by 53 nations.

1940, The animated short A Wild Hare is released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.

1953, Fighting in the Korean War ends when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.

1955, The Allied occupation of Austria stemming from World War II, ends.

1974, Watergate scandal: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.

1987, RMS Titanic Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

1540, Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

1794, French Revolution: Maximilian Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

1866, At the age of 18, Vinnie Ream becomes the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln).

1868, The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.

1896, The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated.

1935, First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

1984, The 1984 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad were opened in Los Angeles.

1567, James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.

1921, Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1948, After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, open in London.

1958, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1959, The First United States Congress elections are held in Hawaii as a state of the Union.

1973, Greeks vote to abolish the monarchy, beginning the first period of the Metapolitefsi.

1981, A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

1987, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (Eurotunnel).

1859, First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.

1932, Premiere of Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

1965, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

1971, Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

1974, Watergate scandal: Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

1975, Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.

1498, On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1588, The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.

1715, Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.

1948, USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.

1961, At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in Major League Baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the ninth inning because of rain.

1964, Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.

1971, Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.

1991, The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.

1992, Georgia joins the United Nations.

2012, Michael Phelps breaks the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the most medals won at the Olympics.

1498, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.

1714, George, Elector of Hanover, becomes King George I of Great Britain, marking the beginning of the Georgian era of British history.

1800, The Acts of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1831, A new London Bridge opens.

1834, Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.

1838, Non-laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.

1840, Laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.

1876, Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.

1911, Harriet Quimby takes her pilot's test and becomes the first U.S. woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator's certificate.

1914, The German Empire declares war on the Russian Empire at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilizes because of World War I.

1944, World War II: The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.

338 BC, A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaperone, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.

216 BC, The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of Cannae.

1274, Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade and is crowned King seventeen days later.

1776, The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place.

1790, The first United States Census is conducted.

1830, Charles X of France abdicates the throne in favor of his grandson Henri.

1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President upon the death of President Warren G. Harding.

1934, Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg.

1492, Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.

1914, World War I: Germany declares war against France, while Romania declares its neutrality.

1921, Major League Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis confirms the ban of the eight Chicago Black Sox, the day after they were acquitted by a Chicago court.

1936, Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics.

1949, The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League finalize the merger, that would create the National Basketball Association.

2004, The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks.

1265, Second Barons' War: Battle of Evesham: The army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.

1327, First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.

1796, French Revolutionary Wars: Napoleon leads the French Army of Italy to victory in the Battle of Lonato.

1821, The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.

1914, In response to the German invasion of Belgium, Belgium and the United Kingdom declare war on Germany. The United States declares its neutrality.

1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.

1993, A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

2007, NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is launched.

1100, Henry I is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

1305, William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed.

1600, The Cowrie Conspiracy against King James VI of Scotland (later to become King James I of England) takes place.

1620, The Mayflower departs from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America.

1796, The Battle of Castiglione in Napoleon's first Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars.

1816, The British Admiralty dismisses Francis Ronalds's new invention of the first working electric telegraph as "wholly unnecessary", preferring to continue using the semaphore.

1824, Greek War of Independence: Constantine Kanaris leads a Greek fleet to victory against Ottoman and Egyptian ships in the Battle of Samos.

1861, The United States Army abolishes flogging.

1862, American Civil War: Battle of Baton Rouge: Along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Confederate troops attempt to take the city, but are driven back by fire from Union gunboats.

1864, American Civil War: The Battle of Mobile Bay begins at Mobile Bay near Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut leads a Union flotilla through Confederate defenses and seals one of the last major Southern ports.

1914, In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed.

1962, Apartheid in South Africa: Nelson Mandela is jailed. He would not be released until 1990.

1969, Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars.

1806, Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates, ending the Holy Roman Empire.

1914, World War I: Serbia declares war on Germany; Austria declares war on Russia.

1945, Hiroshima, Japan is devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.

1964, Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down.

1965, US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

1996, NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.

2012, NASA's Curiosity rover lands on the surface of Mars.

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.

1789, The United States Department of War is established.

1944, IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947, Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometers (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1955, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.

1959, The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.

1959, Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida

1974, Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

1976, Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.

Where's HCHCHC? It's not as fun doing this by myself.

1503, King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland.

1863, American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, which is refused.

1876, Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

1885, More than 1.5 million people attend the funeral of Ulysses S. Grant in New York City.

1908, Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.

1963, Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes.

1974, President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.

1989, Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission: Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.

1810, Napoleon annexes Westphalia as part of the First French Empire.

1842, The Webster–Ashburton Treaty is signed, establishing the United States–Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains.

1892, Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.

1902, Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1944, The United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.

1965, Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.

1974, As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.

1519, Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second-in-command Juan Sebastián Elcano will complete the expedition after Magellan's death in the Philippines.

1776, American Revolutionary War: Word of the United States Declaration of Independence reaches London.

1792, French Revolution: Storming of the Tuileries Palace: Louis XVI of France is arrested and taken into custody as his Swiss Guards are massacred by the Parisian mob.

1821, Missouri is admitted as the 24th U.S. state.

1846, The Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the United States Congress after James Smithson donates $500,000.

1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment, streamlining the defense agencies of the United States government, and replacing the Department of War with the United States Department of Defense.

1981, Murder of Adam Walsh: The head of John Walsh's son is found. This inspires the creation of the television series America's Most Wanted.

1988, Japanese American internment: U.S. President Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, providing $20,000 payments to Japanese Americans who were either interned in or relocated by the United States during World War II.

1990, The Magellan space probe reaches Venus.

1804, Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria.

1919, The constitution of the Weimar Republic is adopted.

1929, Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

1962, Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolaev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.

1968, The last steam hauled train runs on British Rail

1972, Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.

2015, For the first time in Major League Baseball history, all 15 home teams won their game. Prior to this happening, the record was 12 which was reached over a century ago in 1914.