| 1540 | The Society of Jesus, a religious sub-cult under Ignatius Loyola, is approved by the Pope. | |
| 1669 | The island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea falls to the Ottoman Turks after a 21-year siege. | |
| 1791 | Jews in France are granted French citizenship. | |
| 1864 | Confederate guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson and his henchmen, including a teenage Jesse James, massacre 20 unarmed Union soldiers at Centralia, Missouri. The event becomes known as the Centralia Massacre. | |
| 1869 | Wild Bill Hickok, sheriff of Hays City, Kan., shoots down Samuel Strawhim, a drunken teamster causing trouble. | |
| 1916 | Constance of Greece declares war on Bulgaria. | |
| 1918 | President Woodrow Wilson opens his fourth Liberty Loan campaign to support men and machines for World War I. | |
| 1920 | Eight Chicago White Sox players are charged with fixing the 1919 World Series. | |
| 1939 | Germany occupies Warsaw as Poland falls to Germany and the Soviet Union. | |
| 1942 | Australian forces defeat the Japanese on New Guinea in the South Pacific. | |
| 1944 | Thousands of British troops are killed as German forces rebuff their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland. | |
| 1950 | U.S. Army and Marine troops liberate Seoul, South Korea. | |
| 1956 | The U.S. Air Force Bell X-2, the world’s fastest and highest-flying plane, crashes, killing the test pilot. | |
| 1964 | The Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, issues its report, stating its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman. | |
| 1979 | The US Congress approves the Department of Education as the 13th agency in the US Cabinet. | |
| 1983 | The Sukhumi massacre takes place: Abkhaz separatist forces and their allies commit widespread atrocities against the civilian population in the USSR state of Georgia. | |
| 1996 | The Taliban capture Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul. | |
| 2003 | The European Space Agency launches the SMART-1 satellite to orbit the moon. | |
| 2007 | NASA launches the Dawn probe to explore and study the two largest objects of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. | |
| 2008 | Zhai Zhigang becomes the first Chinese to walk in space; he was part of the Shenzhou 7 crew. |
An Arkansas man told his boss he wanted to use the cafe she owned to
host a meeting for the “wingnut cabal” he was a member of — and
once she found out they were flying Nazi flags, she sent him packing. 
