Event-a-Day

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753 BC – Romulus founds Rome. (The traditional date, anyway)

1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII.

1809 – Two Austrian army corps are driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon as two French corps to the north hold off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmühl.

1856 – Australian labour movement: Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne march from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an eight-hour day.

1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports. When the U.S. Congress issued a declaration of war on April 25, it declared that a state of war had existed from this date.

1918 – World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme in France.

1965 – The 1964–1965 New York World's Fair opens for its second and final season.

1982 – Baseball: Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first pitcher to record 300 saves.

1809 – The second day of the Battle of Eckmühl: The Austrian army is defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon and driven over the Danube in Regensburg.

1836 – Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston identify Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna among the captives of the battle when one of his fellow captives mistakenly gives away his identity.

1876 – The first game in the history of the National League was played at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. This game is often pointed to as the beginning of the MLB.

1889 – At noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Rush of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.

1906 – The 1906 Summer Olympics, not now recognized as part of the official Olympic Games, open in Athens.

1915 – The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.

1930 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.

1945 – World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolt. Five hundred twenty are killed and around eighty escape. Meanwhile, after learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicide is his only recourse.

1954 – Red Scare: Witnesses begin testifying and live television coverage of the Army–McCarthy hearings begins.

1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston wins the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.

1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated.

1635 – The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston.

1660 – Treaty of Oliva is established between Sweden and Poland.

1661 – King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1941 – World War II: The Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.

1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler's designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz.

1946 – Manuel Roxas is elected the last President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.

1967 – Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1) a manned spaceflight carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov is launched into orbit.

1968 – Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

2005 – The first ever YouTube video, titled "Me at the zoo", was published by user "jawed".

1184 BC – Traditional date of the fall of Troy.

1558 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.

1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, is published.

1800 – The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress".

1877 – Russo-Turkish War: Russian Empire declares war on Ottoman Empire.

1885 – American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.

1895 – Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard the sloop "Spray".

1913 – The Woolworth Building, a skyscraper in New York City, is opened.

1918 – First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1967 – Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission. Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."

1707 – A coalition of England, the Netherlands and Portugal is defeated by a Franco-Spanish army at Almansa (Spain) in the War of the Spanish Succession.

1792 – Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine. "La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem) is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

1901 – New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.

1915 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins.

1945 – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two. 1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini is captured after trying to escape. This day was set as a public holiday to celebrate the Liberation of Italy. The last German troops retreat from Finland's soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military acts of Second World War end in Finland.

1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.

1959 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.

1960 – The United States Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

1983 – American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war. Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit.

1607 – English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.

1777 – Legend tells that Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces

1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.

1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Régime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.

1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.

1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.

1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.

1923 – The Duke of York (The Future King George VI) weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.

1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.

1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.

1958 – Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.

1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after twelve years of dictatorial rule.

1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.

1296 – First War of Scottish Independence: John Balliol's Scottish army is defeated by an English army commanded by John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey at the Battle of Dunbar.

1521 – Battle of Mactan: Explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines led by chief Lapu-Lapu.

1570 – Pope Pius V declares Queen Elizabeth I a heretic.

1667 – John Milton, blind and impoverished, sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

1861 – American President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.

1945 – World War II: German troops are finally expelled from Finnish Lapland. Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

1953 – Operation Moolah offers $50,000 to any pilot who defected with a fully mission-capable Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 to South Korea. The first pilot was to receive $100,000.

1974 – Ten thousand march in Washington, D.C., calling for the impeachment of U.S. President Richard Nixon

1978 – Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.

1981 – Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse.

1994 – South African general election: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote. The Interim Constitution comes into force.

2006 – Construction begins on the Freedom Tower (later renamed One World Trade Center) in New York City.

1503 – The Battle of Cerignola is fought. It is noted as the first battle in history won by small arms fire using gunpowder.

1788 – Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.

1792 – France invades the Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium and Luxembourg), beginning the French Revolutionary Wars.

1796 – The Armistice of Cherasco is signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Vittorio Amedeo III, King of Sardinia, expanding French territory along the Mediterranean coast.

1869 – Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay ten miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.

1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico.

1930 – The Independence Producers hosted the first night game in the history of Organized Baseball in Independence, Kansas.

1945 – Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement.

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

1952 – Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Occupied Japan by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers: The United States occupation of Japan ends as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, comes into force. The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) is signed in Taipei, Taiwan between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.

1967 – Vietnam War: Boxer Muhammad Ali refuses his induction into the United States Army and is subsequently stripped of his championship and license.

1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France.

1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.

1429 – Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orléans.

1770 – James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names.

1861 – American Civil War: Maryland's House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union.

1862 – American Civil War: The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces under David Farragut.

1944 – World War II: British agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo's most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group.

1945 – World War II: The German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies. In the Führerbunker, Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both commit suicide the following day. Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.Start of Operation Manna.

1953 – The first U.S. experimental 3D television broadcast showed an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.

1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

1974 – Watergate scandal: United States President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal.

1992 – Los Angeles riots: Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.

2011 – The Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.

2015 – A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

1513 – Edmund de la Pole, Yorkist pretender to the English throne, is executed on the orders of Henry VIII.

1803 – Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.

1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana.

1885 – Governor of New York David B. Hill signs legislation creating the Niagara Reservation, New York's first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial and commercial use.

1900 – Hawaii becomes a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor.

1904 – The Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair opens in St. Louis, Missouri.

1907 – Honolulu, Hawaii becomes an independent city.

1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

1938 – The animated cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt debuts in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit (a prototype of Bugs Bunny).

1939 – NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N.Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

1943 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Seraph surfaces near Huelva to cast adrift a dead man dressed as a courier and carrying false invasion plans.

1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building. Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9000 American and British airmen.

1947 – In Nevada, Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam for the second time.

1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company's refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom.

1973 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that White House Counsel John Dean has been fired and that other top aides, most notably H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, have resigned.

1975 – Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Dương Văn Minh.

1328 – Wars of Scottish Independence end: By the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton the Kingdom of England recognises the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state.

1707 – The Act of Union joins the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1786 – In Vienna, Austria, Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro is performed for the first time.

1851 – Queen Victoria opens The Great Exhibition at The Crystal Palace in London.

1866 – The Memphis Race Riots begin. In three days time, 46 blacks and two whites were killed. Reports of the atrocities influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1884 – Proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States. Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes the first black person to play in a professional baseball game in the United States.

1915 – The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her 202nd, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives.

1930 – The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named.

1931 – The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City.

1945 – World War II: Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda commit suicide in the Reich Garden outside the Führerbunker. Their children are also killed by having cyanide pills inserted into their mouths by their mother, Magda.

1960 U-2 incident: Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.

1994 – Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

1999 – The body of British climber George Mallory is found on Mount Everest, 75 years after his disappearance in 1924.

2009 – Same-sex marriage is legalized in Sweden.

1194 – King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.

1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.

1559 – John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the nascent Scottish Reformation.

1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Loch Leven Castle.

1863 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later.

1920 – The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis.

1941 – Following the coup d'état against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launches the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power.

1945 – World War II: Fall of Berlin: The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building.

2011 – Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man, is killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

1715 – A total solar eclipse was visible across northern Europe, and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within 4 minutes accuracy.

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.

1937 – Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1942 – World War II: Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo that results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia.

1947 – New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.

1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

1951 – The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.

1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole. The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network.

1957 – Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, to Los Angeles.

1960 – The Anne Frank House museum opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing new-found
attention to the Civil Rights Movement.

1973 – The 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world's tallest building.

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury: Edward IV soundly defeats the Lancastrians and kills Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales.

1675 – King Charles II of England orders the construction of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

1686 – The Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines.

1776 – Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.

1814 – Emperor Napoleon I of France arrives at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile. King Ferdinand VII of Spain signs the Decree of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism.

1871 – The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal.

1910 – The Royal Canadian Navy is created.

1932 – In Atlanta, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

1953 – Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.

1959 – The 1st Annual Grammy Awards are held.

1961 – American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South.

1979 – Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1215 – Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to King John of England — part of a chain of events leading to the signing of the Magna Carta.

1260 – Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire.

1494 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica and claims it for Spain.

1640 – King Charles I of England dissolves the Short Parliament.

1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1821 – Emperor Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

1865 – American Civil War: The Confederate District of the Gulf surrenders about 4,000 men at Citronelle, Alabama. The Confederate government was declared dissolved at Washington, Georgia.

1866 – Memorial Day first celebrated in United States at Waterloo, New York.

1904 – Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.

1955 – West Germany gains full sovereignty.

1961 – The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.

1973 – Secretariat wins the 1973 Kentucky Derby in 1:59 2/5, an as-yet unbeaten record.

1527 – Spanish and German troops sack Rome; some consider this the end of the Renaissance. 147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, die fighting the forces of Charles V in order to allow Pope Clement VII to escape into Castel Sant'Angelo.

1682 – Louis XIV of France moves his court to the Palace of Versailles.

1835 – James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald.

1840 – The Penny Black postage stamp becomes valid for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1861 – American Civil War: Arkansas secedes from the Union.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.

1910 – George V becomes King of the United Kingdom upon the death of his father, Edward VII.

1915 – Babe Ruth, then a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, hits his first major league home run.

1935 – New Deal: Executive Order 7034 creates the Works Progress Administration.

1937 – Hindenburg disaster: The German zeppelin Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people are killed.

1940 – John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1941 – At California's March Field, Bob Hope performs his first USO show. The first flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.

1949 – EDSAC, the first practical electronic digital stored-program computer, runs its first operation.

1954 – Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.

1960 – More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princess Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey.

1998 – Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Houston Astros to tie the major league record held by Roger Clemens. He threw a one-hitter and did not walk a batter in his fifth career start.

2013 – Three women missing for more than a decade are found alive in the U.S. city of Cleveland, Ohio.