| 310 | St. Eusebius of Vercelli begins his reign as Catholic Pope. | |
| 1521 | Martin Luther confronts the emperor Charles V, refusing to retract the views which led to his excommunication. | |
| 1676 | Sudbury, Massachusetts is attacked by Indians. | |
| 1775 | American revolutionaries Paul Revere and William Dawes ride though the towns of Massachusetts warning that “the British are coming.” | |
| 1791 | National Guardsmen prevent Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris. | |
| 1818 | A regiment of Indians and blacks is defeated at the Battle of Suwannee, in Florida, ending the First Seminole War. | |
| 1834 | William Lamb becomes prime minister of England. | |
| 1838 | The Wilkes’ expedition to the South Pole sets sail. | |
| 1847 | U.S. forces defeat Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the Mexican-American War. | |
| 1853 | The first train in Asia begins running from Bombay to Tanna. | |
| 1861 | Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down an offer to command the Union armies. | |
| 1895 | The First Sino-Japanese War ends. | |
| 1906 | A massive earthquake hits San Francisco, measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale. | |
| 1923 | Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a three-run homer as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1. | |
| 1937 | Leon Trotsky calls for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin. | |
| 1942 | James H. Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities. | |
| 1943 | Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is shot down by American P-38 fighters. | |
| 1946 | The League of Nations dissolves. | |
| 1949 | The Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth. | |
| 1950 | The first transatlantic jet passenger trip is completed. | |
| 1954 | Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt. | |
| 1978 | The U.S. Senate approves the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama. | |
| 1980 | Zimbabwe’s (Rhodesia) formal independence from Britain is proclaimed. | |
| 1983 | A suicide bomber kills U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. |
