Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/All
Today's anniversaries[edit]
Lego bricks
- 1142 – Despite having saved the southern Song dynasty from attempts by the northern Jin dynasty to conquer it, Chinese general Yue Fei was executed by the Song government.
- 1547 – Nine-year-old Edward VI, the first English monarch to be raised as a Protestant, became king.
- 1813 – English author Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice was published, using material from an unpublished manuscript originally written between 1796 and 1797.
- 1958 – The Lego Group, a Danish toy company, filed a patent in Denmark for the design of Lego bricks (pictured).
- 1984 – Tropical Storm Domoina made landfall in southern Mozambique, causing some of the most severe flooding recorded in the region.
- Paul Luther (b. 1533)
- Colette (b. 1873)
- Paul Henderson (b. 1943)
More anniversaries:
Selected anniversaries for January[edit]
January 1: Public Domain Day; Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (Roman Rite Catholicism)
Ellis Island
- 1739 – Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, the most remote island in the world, was discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
- 1773 – The hymn "Amazing Grace" was probably first used in a prayer meeting in Olney, England, without the music familiar to modern listeners.
- 1892 – The immigration station on Ellis Island (pictured) in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.
- 1928 – Joseph Stalin's personal secretary, Boris Bazhanov, crossed the Iranian border and defected from the Soviet Union.
- 1998 – Argentinian physicist Juan Maldacena published a landmark paper initiating the study of AdS/CFT correspondence, which links string theory and quantum gravity.
- Lorenzo de' Medici (b. 1449)
- Eugène-Anatole Demarçay (b. 1852)
- Shirley Chisholm (d. 2005)
More anniversaries:
January 2: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Basil of Caesarea (Roman Rite Catholicism, Anglicanism)
Urbain Le Verrier
- 533 – Mercurius, a Roman priest, was elected Pope John II; he was apparently the first pope to adopt a new name upon elevation to the papacy.
- 1680 – Trunajaya rebellion: Amangkurat II of Mataram of Java and his courtiers stabbed Trunajaya to death a week after the rebel leader surrendered to VOC forces.
- 1860 – French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier (pictured) announced the putative discovery of the planet Vulcan at a meeting at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.
- 1944 – World War II: United States and Australian forces successfully landed in Papua New Guinea in an attempt to cut off a Japanese retreat.
- 1963 – Vietnam War: The Viet Cong won its first major victory at the Battle of Ap Bac.
- Lodomer (d. 1298)
- Tex Rickard (b. 1870)
- Dnyaneshwar Agashe (d. 2009)
James Lick telescope
- 1521 – Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, excommunicating Martin Luther for refusing to retract 41 alleged errors found in his 95 Theses and other writings.
- 1888 – The 36-inch (91 cm) refracting telescope (pictured) at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, California, the largest in the world until 1897, was used for the first time.
- 1911 – A gun battle in the East End of London left two dead and sparked a political row over the operational involvement of Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.
- 1973 – CBS announced the sale of the New York Yankees professional baseball team to a group of investors headed by American businessman George Steinbrenner.
- 1976 – The multilateral International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, part of the International Bill of Human Rights, came into effect.
- Clement Attlee (b. 1883)
- J. R. R. Tolkien (b. 1892)
- Anna May Wong (b. 1905)
January 4: Colonial Repression Martyrs' Day in Angola (1961)
Aeneas Mackintosh
- 1853 – Solomon Northup regained his freedom after having been sold into slavery in the American South; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave later became a bestseller.
- 1909 – British explorer Aeneas Mackintosh (pictured), a member of the Nimrod Expedition, escaped death by fleeing across ice floes.
- 1951 – Korean War: Chinese and North Korean troops captured Seoul from United Nations forces.
- 1973 – Last of the Summer Wine, the longest-running sitcom in the world, premiered as an episode of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse.
- 2020 – Sembawang Hot Spring Park in Singapore reopened after being redeveloped by the National Parks Board.
- Louis Braille (b. 1809)
- Johanna Westerdijk (b. 1883)
- David Berman (b. 1967)
January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)
Ernest Shackleton
- 1922 – Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton (pictured) died of a heart attack during his final expedition.
- 1941 – Second World War: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces in Bardia, Libya, the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part.
- 2005 – The dwarf planet Eris was discovered by a team using images from the Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory.
- 2007 – The Taiwan High Speed Rail opened, connecting Taipei and Kaohsiung.
- 2009 – In Eng Foong Ho v Attorney-General, the Court of Appeal of Singapore held that equality before the law was satisfied by a "reasonable nexus" between state action and the object of the law.
- Hayao Miyazaki (b. 1941)
- Bradley Cooper (b. 1975)
- Deepika Padukone (b. 1986)
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Maria Montessori
- 1066 – Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon monarch before the Norman Conquest, was crowned King of England.
- 1322 – Stefan Dečanski was crowned King of Serbia, succeeding his half-brother Stefan Konstantin, whom he later defeated in battle.
- 1839 – The worst storm to impact Ireland in 300 years damaged or destroyed more than 20 per cent of houses in Dublin with 100-knot (190 km/h) winds.
- 1907 – Italian educator Maria Montessori (pictured) opened her first school and day-care centre for working-class children in Rome, employing a philosophy of education that now bears her name.
- 1994 – Two-time American Olympic figure-skating medalist Nancy Kerrigan was hit on the leg with a police baton by an assailant hired by the ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding.
- Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares (b. 1587)
- Jedediah Smith (b. 1799)
- Alan Wiggins (d. 1991)
January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia (1979); Tricolour Day in Italy (1797)
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Bank of North America
- 1610 – Through his telescope, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei made the first observation of Jupiter's Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, although he was not able to distinguish the first two until the following night.
- 1782 – The Bank of North America (pictured) opened in Philadelphia as the de facto first central bank of the United States.
- 1989 – Representatives of Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to consider Islam as an alternative to communism, and predicting the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.
- 1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings, the country's former military ruler, as president.
- 2012 – A hot air balloon flight from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a power line while landing, causing it to crash and killing all eleven people on board.
- Nicholas Hilliard (d. 1619)
- E. Louisa Mather (b. 1815)
- Juan Gabriel (b. 1950)
January 8: Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2024)
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
- 1198 – Lotario dei Conti was elected as Pope Innocent III; he later worked to restore papal power in Rome.
- 1889 – American statistician Herman Hollerith received a patent for his electromechanical tabulating machine for punched-card data.
- 1936 – Reza Shah issued the Kashf-e hijab decree, ordering Iranian police to remove hijabs from any women in public.
- 1972 – Following Pakistan's defeat in the Bangladesh Liberation War, President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto released Bangladeshi politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (pictured) from prison in response to international pressure.
- 1991 – Jeremy Wade Delle committed suicide in his high-school class in Richardson, Texas, an event that inspired the Pearl Jam song "Jeremy".
- Athelm (d. 926)
- Fanny Bullock Workman (b. 1859)
- David Bowie (b. 1947)
January 9: Coming of Age Day in Japan (2023); Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2023)
The plane involved in the Iran Air Flight 277 crash
- 1857 – An earthquake registering 7.9 Mw ruptured part of the San Andreas Fault in central and southern California.
- 1970 – The Presidential Council for Minority Rights, an appointed body to review legislation and prevent discrimination against minorities, was created in Singapore.
- 1978 – Iranian Revolution: Protests took place in Qom after an article insulting Ruhollah Khomeini was published.
- 1991 – Representatives from the United States and Iraq met at the Geneva Peace Conference to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
- 2011 – In poor weather conditions, Iran Air Flight 277 (plane pictured) crashed near Urmia Airport, Iran, killing 78 of the 105 people on board.
- William Dugard (b. 1606)
- Samuel Gridley Howe (d. 1876)
- Makinti Napanangka (d. 2011)
More anniversaries:
Construction of the Metropolitan Railway
- AD 9 – The Western Han dynasty of China ended after the throne was usurped by Wang Mang, who founded the Xin dynasty.
- 1475 – Moldavian–Ottoman Wars: Stephen the Great led Moldavian forces to defeat an Ottoman attack under Hadım Suleiman Pasha near Vaslui in present-day Romania.
- 1863 – Service began on the Metropolitan Railway (construction depicted) between Paddington and Farringdon Street, today the oldest segment of the London Underground.
- 1923 – Lithuanian residents of the Klaipėda Region began a revolt, ahead of a League of Nations decision on their future which they expected to be against their interest.
- 2007 – A general strike began in Guinea as an attempt to force President Lansana Conté to resign, eventually resulting in the appointment of two new prime ministers.
- Hugh I of Cyprus (d. 1218)
- Katharine Burr Blodgett (b. 1898)
- Kalki Koechlin (b. 1984)
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January 11: Prithvi Jayanti in Nepal
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Byzantine coin depicting Theodora
- 1055 – Theodora Porphyrogenita (pictured) became the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire after the death of her brother-in-law Constantine IX Monomachos.
- 1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named Oberon and Titania by his son John.
- 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Arkansas Post concluded with the Union Army capturing a fort from Confederate forces near the mouth of the Arkansas River.
- 1923 – Troops from France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr to force the Weimar Republic to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I.
- 2013 – French special forces failed in an attempted rescue of a DGSE agent, who had been taken hostage in 2009 by al-Shabaab, in Bulo Marer, Somalia.
- Domenico Ghirlandaio (d. 1494)
- Bayard Taylor (b. 1825)
- Peter Badcoe (b. 1934)
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Mission Santa Clara de Asís
- 1554 – Bayinnaung, who later assembled what was probably the largest empire in the history of mainland Southeast Asia, was crowned as the king of the Burmese Toungoo dynasty.
- 1777 – Mission Santa Clara de Asís (pictured), a Spanish mission in California that formed the basis of both the city of Santa Clara and Santa Clara University, was established by the Franciscans.
- 1918 – An underground explosion at a coal mine in Staffordshire, England, killed 155 men and boys.
- 1964 – Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah was overthrown by rebels led by John Okello, ending 200 years of Arab dominance in Zanzibar.
- 2010 – Iranian physicist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was assassinated while leaving his home for the University of Tehran, where he was a professor.
- John Winthrop (b. 1587 or 1588)
- Étienne Lenoir (b. 1822)
- Austin Chapman (d. 1926)
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January 13: Saint Knut's Day in Finland and Sweden
Sylvanus Olympio
- 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: A naval battle off the coast of Brittany between two British frigates and a French ship of the line ended with hundreds of deaths when the latter ran aground.
- 1842 – First Anglo-Afghan War: William Brydon, an assistant surgeon in the British Army, was the sole European of the 14,000 people retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad who evaded capture or death.
- 1915 – About 30,000 people were killed when an earthquake struck the Province of L'Aquila in Italy.
- 1963 – Togo's first president, Sylvanus Olympio (pictured), was assassinated by military officers in a coup d'état led by Emmanuel Bodjollé, Étienne Eyadéma, and Kléber Dadjo.
- 2012 – The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground on a reef and capsized off Isola del Giglio, Tuscany.
- Lucy Filippini (b. 1672)
- Salmon P. Chase (b. 1808)
- Guido Dessauer (d. 2012)
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January 14: Ratification Day in the United States (1784)
Elvis Presley
- 1301 – King Andrew III died without any male heirs, ending the Árpád dynasty, which had ruled Hungary since the late 9th century.
- 1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca, based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
- 1939 – Norway claimed Queen Maud Land, a 2.7-million km2 (1.0-million sq mi) region of Antarctica, as a dependent territory.
- 1957 – Hindu spiritual leader Kripalu Maharaj was named the fifth original jagadguru, meaning 'world teacher'.
- 1973 – Elvis Presley's (pictured) concert Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was broadcast live to audiences in Asia and Oceania.
- Carrie Derick (b. 1862)
- James P. Hagerstrom (b. 1921)
- Arfa Karim (d. 2012)
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January 15: John Chilembwe Day in Malawi; World Religion Day (2023)
Fragment of the Derveni papyrus
- 1815 – War of 1812: The American frigate USS President, commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur, was captured by a squadron of four British frigates.
- 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Nationalist and Republican forces both withdrew after suffering heavy losses at the Second Battle of the Corunna Road.
- 1947 – The mutilated corpse of the Black Dahlia, a 22-year-old woman whose murder is one of the most famous unsolved crimes in the United States, was found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.
- 1962 – The Derveni papyrus (fragment pictured), the oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, was discovered in Macedonia in northern Greece.
- 1975 – Portugal and the nationalist factions UNITA, the MPLA and the FNLA signed the Alvor Agreement, ending the Angolan War of Independence.
- Wilhelm Marx (b. 1863)
- Sylvia Lawler (b. 1922)
- Bo Yibo (d. 2007)
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January 16: Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2023)
Frank McGee
- 1537 – Sir Francis Bigod began an armed rebellion against King Henry VIII and the English Parliament.
- 1780 – American Revolutionary War: The Royal Navy gained their first major naval victory over their European enemies in the war when they defeated a Spanish squadron in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
- 1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is enacted by the U.S. Congress.
- 1905 – Despite being blind in one eye, ice hockey player Frank McGee (pictured) set the record for most goals in a Stanley Cup game when he scored 14 against the Dawson City Nuggets.
- 2016 – After gunmen took hostages the previous night at a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, government commandos stormed the premises to bring the situation to an end.
- John C. Breckinridge (b. 1821)
- Osip Brik (b. 1888)
- Lorna Kesterson (d. 2012)
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Patrice Lumumba
- 1562 – Representatives of Catherine de' Medici, the regent of France, drew up the Edict of Saint-Germain, providing limited tolerance to the Protestant Huguenots.
- 1773 – On James Cook's second voyage, his vessel HMS Resolution became the first vessel to cross the Antarctic Circle.
- 1912 – Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition reached the South Pole, only to find that Roald Amundsen's team had beaten them by 33 days.
- 1961 – Patrice Lumumba (pictured), a former prime minister of Congo-Léopoldville, was murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the Belgian and US governments.
- 2002 – Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, began an eruption that killed hundreds and left about 120,000 people homeless in the nearby town of Goma.
- Henry of Asti (d. 1345)
- Thomas Jaggar (d. 1953)
- Zhao Ziyang (d. 2005)
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Marion Barry
- 474 – The young child Leo II became the sole Byzantine emperor upon the death of his grandfather Leo I.
- 1535 – Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands he conquered for the Spanish crown.
- 1788 – The armed tender HMS Supply, the first ship of the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia.
- 1943 – World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege.
- 1958 – Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, becoming the first black Canadian to compete in the NHL.
- 1990 – In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Marion Barry (pictured), the mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.
- Jobst of Moravia (d. 1411)
- Jeanne Quinault (d. 1783)
- Vinod Kambli (b. 1972)
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Klaus Barbie
- 1419 – Hundred Years' War: The Siege of Rouen ended with English troops capturing the city from Norman French forces.
- 1511 – War of the League of Cambrai: Troops led by Pope Julius II captured Mirandola after a brief siege.
- 1920 – The American Civil Liberties Union was founded by the directors of the National Civil Liberties Bureau.
- 1972 – The French newspaper L'Aurore revealed that the former Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie (pictured), the "Butcher of Lyon", had been found to be living in Peru.
- 2012 – The Hong Kong–based file-sharing website Megaupload was shut down by the FBI.
- Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (d. 1636)
- Arthur Morris (b. 1922)
- Sarah Burke (d. 2012)
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January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990)
2009 inauguration of Barack Obama
- 1356 – Edward Balliol, whose father John was briefly King of Scotland, gave up his claim to the throne in exchange for an English pension.
- 1942 – The Holocaust: Reinhard Heydrich and other senior Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin to discuss the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
- 2009 – In Washington, D.C., Barack Obama was inaugurated (pictured) as the first African American president of the United States.
- Wulfstan (d. 1095)
- Carl Linnaeus the Younger (b. 1741)
- Naomi Parker Fraley (d. 2018)
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Members of the First Dáil
- 763 – The Abbasid Caliphate crushed the Alid revolt when a rebel leader was mortally wounded in battle near Basra in present-day Iraq.
- 1789 – The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel, was published.
- 1919 – The First Dáil (members pictured) convened at the Mansion House in Dublin and adopted a declaration of independence calling for the establishment of the Irish Republic.
- 1972 – Tripura, formerly part of the independent Twipra Kingdom, became a state of India.
- 2017 – Millions of people participated in the worldwide Women's March, to advocate for legislation and policies on human rights and other issues.
- Theodor Fliedner (b. 1800)
- Edith Tolkien (b. 1889)
- Vincent Lingiari (d. 1988)
More anniversaries:
January 22: Chinese New Year (2023), Day of Unity of Ukraine (1919)
Depiction of a 19th-century Swiss Guard
- 1506 – The first contingent of 150 Swiss Guards (example depicted) arrived in Rome to provide security for the pope.
- 1689 – The Convention Parliament met to decide the fate of the throne after James II, the last Catholic monarch of England, fled to France following the Glorious Revolution.
- 1906 – SS Valencia was wrecked off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, in a location so treacherous it was known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.
- 1973 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, striking down laws restricting abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
- 2012 – Croatia held a referendum, in which it voted to become a member of the European Union.
- Karl Ernst Claus (b. 1796)
- Gisela Januszewska (b. 1867)
- Michael Hutchence (b. 1960)
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Elizabeth Blackwell
- 1556 – One of the deadliest earthquakes in history struck Shaanxi, China, resulting in at least 100,000 direct deaths.
- 1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell (pictured) graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York, making her the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.
- 1909 – Two men committed an armed robbery in Tottenham, London, and led police on a two-hour chase, partially by tram, that ended in the perpetrators' suicides.
- 1942 – World War II: Japan began an invasion of the island of New Britain in the Australian Territory of New Guinea.
- 1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released, becoming the first popular web browser.
- Mary Ward (b. 1585)
- Ernst Abbe (b. 1840)
- Louisa Cadamuro (b. 1987)
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January 24: Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities in Romania (1859)
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University of Calcutta shortly after its founding
- AD 41 – Cassius Chaerea and disgruntled Praetorian Guards murdered the Roman emperor Caligula, leading to him being succeeded by his uncle Claudius.
- 1857 – The University of Calcutta (pictured) was established as the first modern university in the Indian subcontinent.
- 1915 – First World War: British ships of the Grand Fleet intercepted and surprised a German High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, sinking a cruiser and damaging several other vessels.
- 1966 – Air India Flight 101, en route from Bombay to London, crashed into Mont Blanc in France, killing all 117 people on board.
- 1989 – American serial killer Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida for the murders of thirty young women.
- Richard de Bury (b. 1287)
- Edith Wharton (b. 1862)
- Mark Eaton (b. 1957)
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January 25: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Orthodoxy) and Dwynwen (Wales)
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SS Laurentic
- 1704 – English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their native allies began a series of raids against the largely peaceful population of Apalachee in Spanish Florida.
- 1917 – Serving as a British armed merchant cruiser, Laurentic (pictured) was sunk by German naval mines off the northern coast of Ireland, resulting in 354 deaths.
- 1967 – South Vietnamese junta leader Nguyễn Cao Kỳ fired his rival Nguyễn Hữu Có while the latter was overseas on a diplomatic visit.
- 1995 – A team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII sounding rocket, which was mistaken by Russian forces for a Trident missile.
- Mihrimah Sultan (d. 1578)
- John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (b. 1841)
- Mikhail Suslov (d. 1982)
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January 26: Australia Day (1788); Republic Day in India (1950)
Cullinan Diamond
- 1700 – An earthquake with a moment magnitude of around 9.0 occurred off the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, as evidenced by Japanese records of tsunamis.
- 1841 – Commodore Gordon Bremer took formal possession of Hong Kong Island for the United Kingdom at Possession Point.
- 1905 – The 3,106-carat (621 g) Cullinan Diamond (pictured), the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, was discovered at the Premier Mine in Gauteng, South Africa.
- 1945 – Audie Murphy engaged in action at the Colmar Pocket that won him a Medal of Honor and made him one of the most famous and decorated U.S. soldiers of World War II.
- Giuseppe Genco Russo (b. 1893)
- Angela Davis (b. 1944)
- David Kato (d. 2011)
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Entrance to Auschwitz I
- 945 – The brothers Stephen and Constantine Lekapenos, having deposed their father as Byzantine emperor a few weeks earlier, were themselves overthrown by Constantine VII, their co-emperor.
- 1820 – A Russian expedition led by the naval officers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev made the first sighting of the coast of Antarctica.
- 1945 – The Soviet Red Army liberated about 7,000 prisoners left behind by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp (entrance pictured).
- 1974 – Brisbane, Australia, was flooded when the Brisbane River broke its banks.
- 2003 – The first selections for the United States National Recording Registry were announced by the Library of Congress.
- Angela Merici (d. 1540)
- Eunice Hale Cobb (b. 1803)
- Yang Chuan-kwang (d. 2007)
More anniversaries:
Lego bricks
- 1142 – Despite having saved the southern Song dynasty from attempts by the northern Jin dynasty to conquer it, Chinese general Yue Fei was executed by the Song government.
- 1547 – Nine-year-old Edward VI, the first English monarch to be raised as a Protestant, became king.
- 1813 – English author Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice was published, using material from an unpublished manuscript originally written between 1796 and 1797.
- 1958 – The Lego Group, a Danish toy company, filed a patent in Denmark for the design of Lego bricks (pictured).
- 1984 – Tropical Storm Domoina made landfall in southern Mozambique, causing some of the most severe flooding recorded in the region.
- Paul Luther (b. 1533)
- Colette (b. 1873)
- Paul Henderson (b. 1943)
More anniversaries:
_Liber_Chronicarum_(serietitel),_RP-P-2016-49-64-5_(cropped).jpg?lang=en)
Pope Sergius III
- 904 – Sergius III (pictured), whose pontificate was marked by feudal violence and disorder in central Italy, came out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher.
- 1863 – American Indian Wars: The U.S. Army led by Patrick Edward Connor massacred Chief Bear Hunter and Shoshone forces at the Bear River Massacre in present-day Franklin County, Idaho.
- 1911 – Mexican Revolution: The Magonista rebellion began when Mexican Liberal Party troops captured the town of Mexicali.
- 1959 – The first Melodifestivalen, an annual Swedish music competition that determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, was held in Stockholm.
- 2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring nineteen others.
- Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (d. 1871)
- Alice Catherine Evans (b. 1881)
- Aminah Cendrakasih (b. 1938)
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January 30: Martyrs' Day in India (1948)
Attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson
- 1607 – Low-lying places around the coasts of the Bristol Channel of Britain were flooded, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths.
- 1835 – Richard Lawrence became the first person to attempt to assassinate a sitting US president when he failed to kill Andrew Jackson at the US Capitol (assassination attempt pictured) and was subdued by the crowd.
- 1939 – In a speech to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler threatened the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
- 1972 – The Troubles: On Bloody Sunday, members of the British Parachute Regiment shot 26 civil-rights protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing at least 13 people.
- William More (b. 1520)
- Angela of the Cross (b. 1846)
- Abdullah II of Jordan (b. 1962)
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January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)
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Doug Williams
- 1208 – King Sverker II of Sweden was defeated at the Battle of Lena by Eric Knutsson, who succeeded to the throne.
- 1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory at the Battle of Gembloux, which led to a breakup of the Seventeen Provinces into the Catholic Union of Arras and the Protestant Union of Utrecht.
- 1957 – A DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima, California.
- 1988 – Doug Williams (pictured) became the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, leading the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII.
- 2010 – James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over US$2 billion worldwide.
- James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby (b. 1607)
- Manuel Alberti (d. 1811)
- Eleanor Holm (d. 2004)
More anniversaries:
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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Selected anniversaries for February[edit]
February 1: Saint Brigid's Day/Imbolc in Ireland; the Fajr decade begins in Iran; Black History Month begins in North America
Skyline of Kuala Lumpur
- 1327 – Fourteen-year-old Edward III was crowned King of England, but with the country ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
- 1662 – Sino-Dutch conflicts: The Dutch East India Company's rule in Taiwan ended after a siege by the Ming loyalist Koxinga, who established the Kingdom of Tungning on the island.
- 1942 – Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States federal government, began broadcasting with programs aimed at Axis-controlled areas during World War II.
- 1972 – Kuala Lumpur (pictured), the capital of Malaysia, became the first settlement in the country to be granted city status since independence.
- 2012 – Following an Egyptian Premier League match in Port Said, Al Masry fans rioted and violently attacked Al Ahly supporters, resulting in 74 deaths.
- Alexios I of Trebizond (d. 1222)
- Clara Butt (b. 1872)
- Hassan Al-Turabi (b. 1932)
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February 2: Candlemas (Western Christianity); Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States
Vineyard in Stellenbosch, South Africa
- 506 – Alaric II, King of the Visigoths, promulgated a collection of Roman law known as the Breviary of Alaric.
- 1659 – Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of Cape Town, produced the first bottle of South African wine (vineyard pictured).
- 1913 – New York City's Grand Central Terminal, the world's largest train station by number of platforms, opened immediately after midnight.
- 1942 – The first act of the Norwegian resistance movement took place with the bombing of Oslo East Station by the Osvald Group to protest the inauguration of Vidkun Quisling.
- 2009 – Omid, Iran's first domestically made satellite, was successfully launched from Semnan Space Center.
- Alix Le Clerc (b. 1576)
- José Guadalupe Posada (b. 1852)
- Alfred Delp (d. 1945)
More anniversaries:
February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States (1943)
James I of Aragon entering Murcia
- 1266 – Mudéjar revolt: King James I of Aragon entered the Muslim-held city of Murcia (depicted), conquered following its surrender three days earlier.
- 1852 – The Argentine Confederation was defeated in the Platine War by an alliance consisting of Brazil, Uruguay and the Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes.
- 1918 – At 11,675 ft (3,559 m) long, the Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco opened as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at the time.
- 2010 – An edition of L'Homme qui marche I, a bronze sculpture by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, was sold for £65 million, setting the record for the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.
- Horace Greeley (b. 1811)
- Tatyana Velikanova (b. 1932)
- C. N. Annadurai (d. 1969)
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Emperor Taizu of Song
- 960 – Emperor Taizu (pictured) came to power, initiating the Song dynasty of China that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
- 1797 – The Riobamba earthquake, the most powerful in Ecuador's history, devastated Riobamba and many other cities, causing at least 6,000 casualties.
- 1820 – Chilean War of Independence: Chilean forces captured the city of Valdivia and its harbour, depriving the Spanish Empire of an important naval base.
- 1899 – The Philippine–American War began when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired on a Filipino soldier in Manila.
- 2015 – Shortly after takeoff from Taipei Songshan Airport, the crew of TransAsia Airways Flight 235 shut down the wrong engine in response to a flameout, leading to a crash that resulted in 43 deaths.
- Ceolnoth (d. 870)
- Carl Michael Bellman (b. 1740)
- Jenny Shipley (b. 1952)
More anniversaries:
February 5: Lantern Festival in China (2023); Tu BiShvat (Judaism, 2023)
Charles XIV John
- 1637 – Ninety-eight sales for rare tulip bulbs were recorded on the last day of tulip mania, a speculative bubble in the Dutch Republic.
- 1818 – Charles XIV John (pictured) succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway as the first monarch of the House of Bernadotte.
- 1861 – In a speech before the U.S. Congress, Representative John Edward Bouligny refused to join his fellow Louisiana congressmen in heeding the state's secession convention and resigning.
- 1913 – Greek military aviators Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
- 2004 – At least 21 cockle-gatherers were drowned by an incoming tide in Morecambe Bay, England, prompting the establishment of the British government's Gangmasters Licensing Authority.
- Philipp Spener (d. 1705)
- William Cullen (d. 1790)
- Neymar (b. 1992)
More anniversaries:
February 6: Sámi National Day (1917); Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)
Queen Elizabeth II
- 1820 – The first ship of the American Colonization Society departed from New York for West Africa with 88 African-American emigrants aboard to found the colony of Liberia.
- 1840 – British representatives and Māori chiefs first signed the Treaty of Waitangi, widely regarded to be the founding document of New Zealand.
- 1952 – Elizabeth II (pictured) became the queen regnant of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon upon the death of her father, King George VI.
- 1976 – Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admitted that the company had paid out approximately US$3 million in bribes to the office of Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka.
- 2018 – The SpaceX launch vehicle Falcon Heavy made its maiden flight.
- Thurstan (d. 1140)
- Bernard of Corleone (b. 1605)
- Axl Rose (b. 1962)
More anniversaries:
February 7: Constitution Day in Mexico (2022)
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Bust of Leo I
- 457 – Leo I (pictured), who ruled for nearly 20 years, was crowned Byzantine emperor.
- 1813 – Napoleonic Wars: Two evenly matched French and British frigates fought for four hours at the Îles de Los off the Guinean coast, resulting in a stalemate.
- 1900 – A Chinese immigrant in San Francisco fell ill with the bubonic plague in the first epidemic of the disease in the continental United States.
- 1941 – Soviet border guards opened fire on civilians attempting to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near Lunca, killing several hundred people.
- 1992 – The Maastricht Treaty, which led to the formation of the European Union, was signed by the member states of the European Communities.
- 1997 – Steve Jobs returned to Apple Inc. as a consultant after the company's acquisition of his technology startup NeXT.
- Azar Bigdeli (b. 1722)
- Louisa Jane Hall (b. 1802)
- Eddie Izzard (b. 1962)
More anniversaries:
William D. Boyce
- 1601 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led a failed rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England.
- 1879 – Angered by a controversial umpiring decision, cricket spectators rioted and attacked the England team during a match in Sydney, Australia.
- 1910 – William D. Boyce (pictured) established the Boy Scouts of America, expanding the Scout Movement into the United States.
- 1965 – After taking evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision just after taking off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 84 people on board.
- 2010 – A freak storm triggered a series of avalanches that buried more than 3.5 km (2.2 mi) of road near the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing 175 people and trapping more than 2,500 travellers.
- Helen of Anjou (d. 1314)
- Kate Chopin (b. 1850)
- Peter Kropotkin (d. 1921)
More anniversaries:
The Beatles arriving at John F. Kennedy Airport
- 1234 – The Jin dynasty capital of Caizhou was captured by Mongols and their Song allies, bringing an end to Jurchen rule.
- 1855 – A series of hoof-like marks in the snow continuing through the countryside for some 40 to 100 miles (60 to 160 km) were discovered in Devon, England.
- 1913 – A meteor procession was visible across much of eastern North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude that its source was a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.
- 1964 – As Beatlemania swept the U.S., the Beatles (pictured) made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show before a record-breaking audience, beginning a musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion.
- 1976 – The Australian Defence Force was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
- Minamoto no Yoritomo (d. 1199)
- Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
- Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (d. 2002)
More anniversaries:
February 10: Saint Scholastica's Day (Christianity); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy (1947)
Roy Lichtenstein
- 1712 – Huilliches in Chile's Chiloé Archipelago rose up against Spanish encomenderos as vengeance for perceived injustices.
- 1763 – Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War, significantly reducing the size of the French colonial empire while at the same time marking the beginning of an extensive period of British dominance outside of Europe.
- 1906 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched, representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.
- 1962 – The first solo exhibition by Roy Lichtenstein (pictured) opened, and it included Look Mickey, which featured his first employment of Ben Day dots, speech balloons, and comic imagery sourcing.
- Robert Garran (b. 1867)
- Árpád Göncz (b. 1922)
- Lilly King (b. 1997)
More anniversaries:
February 11: Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979); National Foundation Day in Japan (660 BC)
"Le beau vingt-et-unième"
from La fille du régiment
from La fille du régiment
- 1584 – Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa founded the town of Nombre de Jesús, the first of two short-lived colonies at the Strait of Magellan.
- 1823 – About 110 boys were killed in a human crush at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta on the last day of the Maltese Carnival.
- 1840 – La fille du régiment (audio featured), an opéra comique by Gaetano Donizetti, premiered in Paris to highly negative reviews but later became a success.
- 1919 – Friedrich Ebert was elected the provisional president of Germany by the Weimar National Assembly.
- 2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.
- René Descartes (d. 1650)
- Elizabeth Siddal (d. 1862)
- Whitney Houston (d. 2012)
More anniversaries:
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"Bar" suit from Dior's New Look
- 1502 – Queen Isabella I issued an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
- 1855 – The precursor of Michigan State University in East Lansing was founded as the United States' first agricultural college.
- 1947 – The French fashion company Dior unveiled its New Look collection (suit pictured), which revolutionized women's dress and re-established Paris as the centre of the fashion world after World War II.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: Unarmed citizens in the villages of Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất were massacred, allegedly by South Korean Marines.
- 2016 – In the first meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed the Havana Declaration at José Martí International Airport in Cuba.
- Lord Guildford Dudley (d. 1554)
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (b. 1884)
- Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat (d. 2015)
More anniversaries:
Covering of the Senne
- 1692 – Members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands were massacred, allegedly for failing to pledge allegiance to the new monarchs, William III and Mary II.
- 1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne (pictured), burying the polluted main river of Brussels to allow for urban renewal in the centre of the city.
- 1945 – World War II: The Allies began a strategic bombing of Dresden, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
- 1978 – A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the site of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, killing three people and injuring eleven others.
- 2012 – The first Vega rocket was launched by the European Space Agency.
- Béla II of Hungary (d. 1141)
- Sarojini Naidu (b. 1879)
- Waylon Jennings (d. 2002)
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Great Ormond Street Hospital
- 1804 – Serb chieftains elected Đorđe Petrović as their leader, and began an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1852 – The Hospital for Sick Children (pictured), the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
- 1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was renamed to International Business Machines, which grew into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
- 1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, a novel considered to be blasphemous by some Muslims.
- Domenico Ferrabosco (b. 1513)
- William Blackstone (d. 1780)
- Adnan Saidi (d. 1942)
More anniversaries:
February 15: National Flag of Canada Day (1965); Statehood Day in Serbia (1804)
British troops surrendering in Singapore
- 1113 – Pope Paschal II issued the papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis, formally recognising the establishment of the Knights Hospitaller.
- 1493 – Christopher Columbus wrote a letter, which was widely distributed upon his return to Portugal, announcing the results of his first voyage to the Americas.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: British cavalry led by John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley in present-day South Africa.
- 1942 – Second World War: Japanese forces led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita captured Singapore, with the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history (pictured).
- 2012 – The world's deadliest prison fire took place at the National Penitentiary at Comayagua, Honduras, killing 361 people.
- Ibn Tabataba (d. 815)
- V. A. Urechia (b. 1834)
- Roger B. Chaffee (b. 1935)
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February 16: Day of the Shining Star in North Korea; Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska
Painting of Philadelphia burning by Edward Moran
- 1804 – First Barbary War: Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a U.S. Navy raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli (depicted), denying her use to the Barbary States.
- 1859 – The French government passed a law setting the musical note A4 to a frequency of 435 hertz, in the first attempt to standardize concert pitch.
- 1923 – English Egyptologist and archaeologist Howard Carter unsealed Tutankhamun's tomb, KV62, in the Valley of the Kings.
- 1959 – Fidel Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba, beginning his decades-long rule over the country.
- 2013 – At least 91 people were killed and 190 others injured after a bomb hidden in a water tank exploded at a market in Hazara Town, Pakistan.
- Henry Raspe (d. 1247)
- Henry Wilson (b. 1812)
- Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (b. 1922)
More anniversaries:
Model of Vanguard 2
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon led a French army to a crushing victory in the Battle of Mormant, nearly destroying a Russian division.
- 1894 – Rudolf Diesel's first working diesel engine ran for one minute.
- 1944 – World War II: The U.S. Navy began Operation Hailstone, a massive naval air and surface attack against the Japanese naval and air base at Truk in the Caroline Islands.
- 1959 – Vanguard 2 (model pictured), the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution.
- 2006 – A massive landslide in the Philippine province of Southern Leyte killed over 1,000 people.
- Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles (d. 1680)
- Margot Heuman (b. 1928)
- Nestor Chylak (d. 1982)
More anniversaries:
Enterprise on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
- 1766 – Malagasy captives on the VOC slave ship Meermin began a mutiny that led to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army began the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among Chinese Singaporeans.
- 1977 – NASA's first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, made its first test flight on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (both pictured).
- 2007 – Terrorist bombs exploded on a Samjhauta Express train in Panipat, India, killing 68 people.
- Michelangelo (d. 1564)
- George Henschel (b. 1850)
- Sergo Ordzhonikidze (d. 1937)
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Bombing of Darwin
- 1600 – The stratovolcano Huaynaputina, in present-day Peru, produced the largest recorded volcanic explosion in South America.
- 1674 – Charles II of England signed the Treaty of Westminster to end the Third Anglo-Dutch War, confirming English and Dutch sovereignty over New Netherland and Surinam, respectively.
- 1942 – Second World War: In the largest attack mounted by a foreign power against Australia, more than 240 Japanese aircraft bombed Darwin, Northern Territory (pictured).
- 2012 – Forty-four inmates died during a riot at a prison in Apodaca, Mexico.
- Thomas Arundel (d. 1414)
- Émilie Gamelin (b. 1800)
- Sylvia Rivera (d. 2002)
More anniversaries:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
- 1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.
- 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured), today the largest art museum in the United States with a collection of more than two million works, opened in New York.
- 1931 – Paraguayan anarchists briefly seized the city of Encarnación as part of a larger plan to initiate a social revolution in the country.
- 1992 – Appearing on the talk show Larry King Live, U.S. industrialist Ross Perot announced that he would begin a presidential campaign if "ordinary people" wanted him to run for office.
- Laura Bassi (d. 1778)
- Ansel Adams (b. 1902)
- Maria Goeppert Mayer (d. 1972)
More anniversaries:
February 21: Language Movement Day in Bangladesh (1952); Family Day in Canada (2022); Washington's Birthday / Presidents' Day in the United States (2022)
Lucy Hobbs Taylor
- 1437 – King James I of Scotland was murdered at Perth in a failed coup by his uncle and former ally Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl.
- 1866 – Lucy Hobbs Taylor (pictured) became the first woman to receive a doctorate from a dental college.
- 1929 – In the first battle of the Warlord Rebellion in northeastern Shandong against the Nationalist government of China, a 24,000-strong rebel force led by Zhang Zongchang was defeated at Zhifu by 7,000 NRA troops.
- 1952 – A number of student protesters demanding the establishment of Bengali as an official language were killed by police in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
- Raimondo Montecuccoli (b. 1609)
- Goscombe John (b. 1860)
- Helen Hooven Santmyer (d. 1986)
More anniversaries:
USS Connecticut
- 1316 – The Catalan forces of Ferdinand of Majorca defeated troops loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut at the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in modern-day Greece.
- 1909 – The sixteen United States Navy battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut (pictured), completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
- 1997 – Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the existence of Dolly, a female sheep who was the first mammal to have successfully been cloned from an adult cell.
- 2006 – At least six men staged the largest cash robbery in Britain at a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom.
- August Bebel (b. 1840)
- Saufatu Sopoanga (b. 1952)
- Chuck Jones (d. 2002)
More anniversaries:
February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan (1960)
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
- 1739 – The identity of English highwayman Dick Turpin was uncovered by his former schoolmate, who recognised his handwriting, leading to Turpin's trial.
- 1847 – Mexican–American War: The United States Army used artillery to repulse the much larger Mexican army at the Battle of Buena Vista near Saltillo.
- 1941 – Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
- 1945 – American photographer Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (pictured) during the Battle of Iwo Jima, an image that was later reproduced on the Marine Corps War Memorial.
- 2017 – Syrian civil war: Allied troops led by the Turkish Armed Forces captured the city of al-Bab from the Islamic State.
- Pope Paul II (b. 1417)
- George Taylor (d. 1781)
- James Herriot (d. 1995)
More anniversaries:
February 24: Fat Thursday (Western Christianity, 2022); Independence Day in Estonia (1918)
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
- 1525 – A Habsburg army defeated French forces at the Battle of Pavia, the decisive engagement of the Italian War of 1521–1526.
- 1720 – War of the Quadruple Alliance: Spanish forces began a failed assault on the British settlement of Nassau in the Bahamas.
- 1809 – After having stood for only 15 years, London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (pictured), the third building of that name, burned down.
- 1968 – Vietnam War: South Vietnamese forces led by Ngô Quang Trưởng recaptured the citadel of Huế.
- 1978 – Five men disappeared after attending a college basketball game in Chico, California; the bodies of four of them were discovered four months later.
- Edmund Andros (d. 1714)
- Carlo Buonaparte (d. 1785)
- Risa Hontiveros (b. 1966)
More anniversaries:
February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)
Edvard Beneš
- 628 – Khosrow II, the last great king of the Sasanian Empire, was overthrown by his son Kavad II.
- 1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human skull that a prominent geologist claimed was proof (later disproved) that humans had existed during the Pliocene.
- 1948 – Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, President Edvard Beneš (pictured) ceded control of the government to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
- 1956 – In a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.
- 1992 – First Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed at least 161 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians in the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Khojaly.
- Sharafkhan Bidlisi (b. 1543)
- S. O. Davies (d. 1972)
- Yi Han-yong (d. 1997)
More anniversaries:
Napoleon leaving Elba
- 1606 – Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing in Australia, although he believed that he was on New Guinea.
- 1815 – Napoleon escaped from the Italian island of Elba (depicted), to which he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
- 1917 – The Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues", the first jazz single ever released.
- 1935 – With the aid of a radio station in Daventry, England, and two receiving antennae, Scottish engineer and inventor Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the use of radar.
- 2012 – African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood-watch coordinator George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, prompting a nationwide controversy.
- Manfred, King of Sicily (d. 1266)
- Camille Flammarion (b. 1842)
- Raosaheb Gogte (d. 2000)
More anniversaries:
February 27: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Narek (Catholicism)
Mary of Guise
- 380 – Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire as a consequence of the Edict of Thessalonica.
- 1560 – The Treaty of Berwick was signed, setting the terms under which an English fleet and army could enter Scotland to expel French troops defending the regency of Mary of Guise (pictured).
- 1962 – Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bombed the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed attempt to assassinate President Ngo Dinh Diem.
- 1982 – The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, known for its performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas, gave its final performance.
- 2002 – Violent riots, perceived to have been instigated by a train fire that killed 59 Hindu pilgrims, broke out in the Indian state of Gujarat, killing at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, over three days.
- Pietro Gnocchi (b. 1689)
- Ellen Terry (b. 1847)
- Tina Strobos (d. 2012)
More anniversaries:
February 28: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2022); Kalevala Day / Finnish Culture Day
Protesters in Taipei before the shooting
- 1638 – The National Covenant was formally adopted in opposition to proposed reforms to the Church of Scotland by King Charles I.
- 1897 – Ranavalona III, the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by French military forces.
- 1928 – Indian physicist C. V. Raman and his colleagues discovered what is now known as Raman scattering, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- 1947 – Nationalist soldiers fired on protesters in Taipei (crowd pictured), triggering widespread uprisings and the violent suppression in the Taiwanese White Terror.
- 1975 – A London Underground train at Moorgate station failed to stop at the terminal Moorgate station, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people .
- Cornelius Gemma (b. 1535)
- Pierre Fatou (b. 1878)
- Yaşar Kemal (d. 2015)
More anniversaries:
Stanisław II Augustus of Poland
- 1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
- 1768 – A group of Polish nobles established the Bar Confederation to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence and King Stanisław II Augustus (portrait shown).
- 1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
- 1980 – La Bougie du Sapeur, a humorous French newspaper that is published only on leap days, printed its first issue.
- 2008 – Belgian author Misha Defonseca admitted that her bestselling memoir about surviving the Holocaust was in fact a literary forgery.
Oswald of Worcester (d. 992) · Ina Coolbrith (d. 1928) · Pedro Sánchez (b. 1972)
More anniversaries:
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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Selected anniversaries for March[edit]
March 1: Disability Day of Mourning; Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras (Western Christianity, 2022); Independence Day in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992); Saint David's Day in Wales; Yap Day in Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia
Bison in Yellowstone
- 1562 – An attempt by Francis, Duke of Guise, to disperse a church service by Huguenots in Wassy, France, turned into a massacre, resulting in 50 dead, and starting the French Wars of Religion.
- 1872 – Yellowstone National Park (bison pictured), located mostly in the present-day U.S. state of Wyoming, was established as the world's first national park.
- 1944 – World War II: American and Australian troops won the Battle of Sio in New Guinea.
- 2008 – The Armenian military and national police attacked a crowd of people protesting the results of the recent election in Yerevan, leading to 10 deaths and over 100 arrests.
- George Wishart (d. 1546)
- Théophile Delcassé (b. 1852)
- Robert Bork (b. 1927)
More anniversaries:
March 2: Ash Wednesday (Western Christianity, 2022); the Nineteen-Day Fast begins (Baháʼí Faith, 2022)
Vladimír Remek
- 1444 – The League of Lezhë, an alliance of regional chieftains, was established in Venetian Albania with Skanderbeg as their commander.
- 1859 – The Great Slave Auction, the largest single sale of slaves in U.S. history, with more than 400 people sold, began in Georgia.
- 1919 – Communist, revolutionary-socialist, and syndicalist delegates met in Moscow to establish the Communist International.
- 1962 – Led by General Ne Win, the Burmese military seized power in a coup d'état.
- 1978 – As a cosmonaut on Soyuz 28, Czechoslovak military pilot Vladimír Remek (pictured) became the first person from outside the Soviet Union or the United States to go into space.
- Pope Adrian VI (b. 1459)
- James A. Gilmore (b. 1876)
- Lionel Matthews (d. 1944)
March 3: Liberation Day in Bulgaria (1878); Hinamatsuri in Japan
Poster for the premiere of Carmen
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Samuel Nicholas and the Continental Marines successfully landed on New Providence in the Bahamas and began a raid of Nassau, capturing the port the next day.
- 1875 – French composer Georges Bizet's opera Carmen (poster pictured), based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
- 1945 – Second World War: The Royal Air Force mistakenly bombed the neighbourhood of Bezuidenhout in The Hague, killing 511 evacuees.
- 1972 – The British rock band Jethro Tull released Thick as a Brick, a parody concept album allegedly adapted from an eight-year-old boy's epic poem.
- 2012 – Two passenger trains collided near Szczekociny, Poland, resulting in 16 deaths and 58 injuries.
- Michael Kantakouzenos Şeytanoğlu (d. 1578)
- Ghulam Kadir (d. 1789)
- Tolu Ogunlesi (b. 1982)
March 4: Feast day of Saint Casimir (Catholicism)
John Flamsteed
- 1675 – John Flamsteed (pictured) was appointed the first Astronomer Royal by King Charles II of England.
- 1804 – Irish convicts formerly involved at the Battle of Vinegar Hill during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 began an uprising against British colonial authorities in New South Wales, Australia.
- 1837 – Chicago, Illinois, was incorporated as a city after its population increased in seven years from 200 to more than 4,000.
- 1943 – The Holocaust: Almost all Jews in Bulgarian-occupied northern Greece were deported to Treblinka extermination camp to be killed.
- 2012 – A series of blasts occurred at an arms dump in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, killing at least 250 people and injuring 2,300 others.
- Stephen III of Hungary (d. 1172)
- Miriam Makeba (b. 1932)
- Harold Barrowclough (d. 1972)
March 5: Learn from Lei Feng Day in China; St Piran's Day in Cornwall, England
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Gordon French, co-founder of the Homebrew Computer Club
- 363 – Roman–Persian Wars: Roman emperor Julian and his army set out from Antioch to attack the Sasanian Empire.
- 1279 – The Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order suffered a great loss when 71 knights died in the Battle of Aizkraukle.
- 1824 – The First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in British Indian history, began.
- 1966 – BOAC Flight 911 disintegrated and crashed near Mount Fuji shortly after departure from Tokyo International Airport, killing all 113 passengers and 11 crew members on board.
- 1975 – Computer hobbyists in Silicon Valley held the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club (founder pictured), whose members went on to have great influence on the development of the personal computer.
- Gerardus Mercator (b. 1512)
- Alessandro Volta (d. 1827)
- Elaine Paige (b. 1948)
Muhammad Ali
- 1447 – Tomaso Parentucelli became Pope Nicholas V.
- 1853 – Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata premiered at La Fenice in Venice, but the performance was considered so bad that it caused him to revise portions of the opera.
- 1933 – The Nazi Party took the first step in the Gleichschaltung process by passing the Enabling Act, giving the government the right to make laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
- 1964 – In a radio broadcast, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad announced that American boxer Cassius Clay would change his name to Muhammad Ali (pictured).
- 1987 – The ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized while leaving the harbour of Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing 193 people on board.
- Princess Clémentine of Orléans (b. 1817)
- Ayn Rand (d. 1982)
- Francisco Xavier do Amaral (d. 2012)
March 7: Feast day of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism); National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2022)
Artist's impression of the Kepler space telescope
- 1277 – Bishop Étienne Tempier promulgated a condemnation of 219 heretical propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris.
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon's army forced Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov's Russian troops to withdraw from the Chemin des Dames, but French casualties exceeded Russian losses.
- 1985 – The charity single "We Are the World" by the supergroup United Support of Artists for Africa was released, and went on to sell more than 20 million copies.
- 2009 – The Kepler space telescope (depicted), designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, was launched.
- Heraclianus (d. 413)
- Harriet Jacobs (d. 1897)
- Viv Richards (b. 1952)
March 8: International Women's Day; Aurat March in Pakistan
Anne of Great Britain
- 1702 – Anne (pictured) became the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding her brother-in-law William III.
- 1736 – Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty, was crowned Shah of Iran.
- 1919 – During the Egyptian Revolution, British authorities arrested rebel leader Saad Zaghloul and exiled him to Malta.
- 1978 – BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other formats.
- 1983 – Cold War: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
- 2017 – The Azure Window, a limestone natural arch in Gozo, Malta, collapsed during a storm.
- Beatrice of Castile (b. 1293)
- Frederic Goudy (b. 1865)
- José Raúl Capablanca (d. 1942)
Éamon de Valera
- 1009 – The first known record of the name of Lithuania appeared in an entry of the Annals of Quedlinburg, written in Saxony-Anhalt, present-day Germany.
- 1842 – Nabucco, the opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi that established his reputation, premiered at La Scala in Milan.
- 1847 – Mexican–American War: The Siege of Veracruz began, the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces.
- 1932 – Éamon de Valera (pictured), one of the dominant political figures in 20th-century Ireland, became President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State.
- 1959 – The popular fashion doll known as Barbie debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York City.
- Mary Anning (d. 1847)
- Qayyum Chowdhury (b. 1932)
- The Notorious B.I.G. (d. 1997)
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Aircraft involved in Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302
- 241 BC – The Roman Republic defeated Carthaginian forces at the Battle of the Aegates, off the western coast of Sicily, in the final battle of the First Punic War.
- 1916 – The final letter in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence was written, agreeing that Britain would recognise Arab independence in return for the Sharif of Mecca launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1949 – Mildred Gillars, nicknamed Axis Sally, was convicted of treason for working with the Nazis as a broadcaster.
- 1967 – British progressive-rock band Pink Floyd released their first single, "Arnold Layne".
- 2019 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (aircraft pictured) crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa, with the deaths of all 157 people on board.
- Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1315)
- François Girardon (b. 1628)
- Anita Brookner (d. 2016)
Eta Carinae and the surrounding Homunculus Nebula
- 222 – Disaffected with Roman emperor Elagabalus's disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and his mother, throwing his mutilated body into the Tiber.
- 1843 – During a period of activity known as the Great Eruption, Eta Carinae (pictured) briefly became the second-brightest star in the night sky.
- 1945 – World War II: Imperial Japan established the Empire of Vietnam, a short-lived puppet state, with Bảo Đại as its ruler.
- 1966 – President Sukarno signed the Supersemar, giving Indonesian general Suharto the authority to restore order during recent mass killings.
- 2012 – U.S. Army soldier Robert Bales murdered sixteen civilians and wounded six others in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
- Marie of France, Countess of Champagne (d. 1198)
- Anna Bochkoltz (b. 1815)
- Madam Auring (b. 1940)
Lord Ismay
- 1622 – Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, were canonized by Pope Gregory XV.
- 1881 – Andrew Watson captained the Scotland national football team against England, becoming the world's first black international footballer.
- 1934 – Supported by the Estonian army, Konstantin Päts staged a coup d'état, beginning the Era of Silence.
- 1952 – British diplomat Lord Ismay (pictured) was appointed the first secretary general of NATO.
- 2014 – A gas leak caused an explosion in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, destroying two apartment buildings and causing eight deaths.
- Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022)
- Lise Tréhot (d. 1922)
- Jack Kerouac (b. 1922)
Participants of the Kapp Putsch in Berlin
- 1697 – Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya kingdom, fell to Spanish conquistadors, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.
- 1781 – William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus from the garden of his house in Bath, England, initially considering it to be a comet.
- 1811 – Napoleonic Wars: A British frigate squadron defeated a much larger squadron of French and Italian frigates and smaller vessels in the Battle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea.
- 1920 – The Kapp Putsch (participants pictured), an attempted coup aiming to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, briefly ousted the government of the Weimar Republic.
- 1988 – The Seikan Tunnel, the longest and deepest tunnel in the world at the time, opened between the cities of Hakodate and Aomori, Japan.
- John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent (d. 1823)
- Sālote Tupou III (b. 1900)
- Anne Acheson (d. 1962)
March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhism); Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2022); White Day in parts of East Asia; Pi Day
Catherine Cornaro
- 1309 – On Eid al-Fitr, the citizens of Granada stormed palaces in the city, deposing Sultan Muhammad III and placing his half-brother Nasr on the throne.
- 1489 – Catherine Cornaro (pictured), Queen of Cyprus, was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the island to the Republic of Venice.
- 1885 – The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's most frequently performed Savoy opera, debuted at the Savoy Theatre in London.
- 1969 – Edward M. Burke, the longest-serving alderman in the history of the Chicago City Council, was sworn into office.
- 1984 – Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by Ulster Freedom Fighters in central Belfast, Northern Ireland.
- Charles Ammi Cutter (b. 1837)
- Phil Vincent (b. 1908)
- Lies Noor (d. 1961)
Michael III
- 856 – Byzantine emperor Michael III (pictured) overthrew his mother Theodora's regency to assume power for himself.
- 1147 – Reconquista: Portuguese troops under King Afonso I captured the city of Santarém from the Almoravids.
- 1875 – John McCloskey, Archbishop of New York, was created the first cardinal from the United States.
- 1972 – The Godfather, a gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo, was released.
- 1990 – Iraqi authorities hanged Iranian freelance reporter Farzad Bazoft on charges of spying for Israel.
- Daniele Comboni (b. 1831)
- Grace Chisholm Young (b. 1868)
- Arthur Compton (d. 1962)
March 16: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2022); Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires
FA Cup trophy
- 1322 – Despenser War: A royalist army defeated troops loyal to Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, in the Battle of Boroughbridge, which allowed King Edward II of England to hold on to power for another five years.
- 1872 – In the inaugural final of the FA Cup (trophy pictured), the world's oldest association football competition, Wanderers defeated Royal Engineers 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.
- 1918 – Finnish Civil War: The Whites won the Battle of Länkipohja, after which they executed at least 70 Reds.
- 1962 – Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, a charter flight carrying U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers, disappeared without a trace, prompting one of the largest searches in the history of the Pacific.
- 2014 – Annexation of Crimea: The Autonomous Republic of Crimea held a controversial referendum in which voters overwhelmingly chose to join Russia as a federal subject.
- Alaric Alexander Watts (b. 1797)
- John Pope (b. 1822)
- Manjural Islam Rana (d. 2007)
March 17: Saint Patrick's Day (Christianity); Anniversary of the Unification of Italy (1861)
Richard Ramirez
- 1001 – The Song Shi recorded a tributary mission from the Rajahnate of Butuan, centered on the Philippine island of Mindanao, to the Song dynasty of China.
- 1677 – Franco-Dutch War: France captured the town of Valenciennes in the Spanish Netherlands.
- 1942 – The Holocaust: The first mass killings of Jews began at Belzec extermination camp in occupied Poland, the first of the Operation Reinhard camps to begin operation.
- 1963 – An eruption of Mount Agung on Bali, Indonesia, killed approximately 1,500 people.
- 1985 – American serial killer Richard Ramirez (pictured), known as "the Night Stalker", began a home invasion burglary and killing spree that resulted in 13 deaths and 11 sexual assaults over the following five months.
- Rosina Heikel (b. 1842)
- Toni Preckwinkle (b. 1947)
- Margaret Whitlam (d. 2012)
March 18: Feast day of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (Christianity)
Traian Vuia's monoplane
- 1068 – An estimated 20,000 people died across the Near East when a violent earthquake struck the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba.
- 1892 – Canadian governor general Lord Stanley of Preston pledged to donate an award to Canada's top-ranked amateur ice hockey club, now known as the Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America.
- 1906 – Romanian inventor Traian Vuia became the first person to fly a heavier-than-air monoplane (pictured) with an unassisted takeoff.
- 1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov donned a space suit and ventured outside the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod 2, becoming the first person to walk in space.
- 1985 – The first episode of the soap opera Neighbours was broadcast on the Seven Network, later becoming the longest-running drama in Australian television history.
- Randal Cremer (b. 1828)
- Marcellin Berthelot (d. 1907)
- Unita Blackwell (b. 1933)
March 19: Saint Joseph's Day (Western Christianity)
Bob Dylan
- 1277 – The Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice signed a treaty that renegotiated and extended by two years a previous treaty between them.
- 1808 – King Charles IV of Spain was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand VII as a result of the Tumult of Aranjuez.
- 1962 – Influential American musician Bob Dylan (pictured) released his eponymous debut album, mainly comprising traditional folk songs.
- 1998 – An unscheduled Ariana Afghan Airlines flight crashed into a mountain on approach into Kabul, killing all 45 people aboard.
- 2008 – The gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B, the farthest object that could be seen by the naked eye, was observed.
- Francis B. Spinola (b. 1821)
- Anna Held (b. 1872)
- Kym Bonython (d. 2011)
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Douglas MacArthur
- 235 – Maximinus Thrax acceded to the throne of the Roman Empire as a so-called barracks emperor, who gained power by virtue of his command of the army.
- 1815 – After escaping from exile in Elba, Napoleon entered Paris, beginning the period known as the Hundred Days.
- 1922 – The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley.
- 1942 – World War II: After being forced to flee the Philippines for Australia, U.S. Army general Douglas MacArthur (pictured) announced: "I came through and I shall return."
- 2014 – Taliban militants carried out a mass shooting at the Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan, killing nine civilians.
- Benjamin Truman (d. 1780)
- Maud Menten (b. 1879)
- S. Arasaratnam (b. 1930)
March 21: Oltenia Day in Romania
Poster for the Moondog Coronation Ball
- 1788 – A large fire destroyed 856 of the 1,100 structures in New Orleans.
- 1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: At the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube in north-central France, Napoleon suddenly realized that his French army was vastly outnumbered by Allied forces, and hurriedly ordered a retreat.
- 1952 – The Moondog Coronation Ball (poster pictured), generally considered to be the first major rock and roll concert, took place at the Cleveland Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
- 2019 – A major explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China, killed 78 people and injured 617 others.
- Salvador Lutteroth (b. 1897)
- Nobuo Uematsu (b. 1959)
- Marina Salye (d. 2012)
Phan Xích Long
- 1508 – Ferdinand II of Aragon appointed Amerigo Vespucci to the post of Chief Navigator of Spain.
- 1784 – The Emerald Buddha, considered to be the sacred palladium of Thailand, was installed in its current location at Wat Phra Kaew on the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.
- 1913 – Phan Xích Long (pictured), the self-proclaimed emperor of Vietnam, was arrested for organising a revolt against the colonial rule of French Indochina, which was nevertheless carried out by his supporters the following day.
- 1942 – Second World War: British and Italian naval forces fought the Second Battle of Sirte in the Gulf of Sidra north of Libya.
- John Kemp (d. 1454)
- Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (b. 1822)
- Odysseas Angelis (d. 1987)
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Lee Teng-hui
- 1400 – After 175 years of rule, the Trần dynasty of Vietnam was deposed by Hồ Quý Ly, a court official.
- 1775 – American Revolution: Patrick Henry made his "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech to the House of Burgesses of Virginia, urging military action against the British Empire.
- 1905 – About 1,500 Cretans, led by Eleftherios Venizelos, met at the village of Theriso to call for the island's unification with Greece, beginning the Theriso revolt.
- 1919 – Benito Mussolini and his supporters founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, the predecessor of the National Fascist Party.
- 1996 – Lee Teng-hui (pictured) was elected President of the Republic of China in the first direct presidential election in Taiwan.
- Mary of Jesus de León y Delgado (b. 1643)
- Juan Gris (b. 1887)
- Ben Hollioake (d. 2002)
March 24: World Tuberculosis Day
1898 Winton advertisement
- 1869 – New Zealand Wars: Māori leader Tītokowaru's conflict ended with the last of his forces surrendering to the New Zealand colonial government.
- 1898 – The Winton Motor Carriage Company (ad pictured), one of the first American car companies, sold its first unit.
- 1922 – Irish War of Independence: In Belfast, two men wearing police uniforms broke into a house and murdered a Catholic family in what was believed to be a reprisal for the deaths of two policemen the day before.
- 1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act came into effect, which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years.
- 1980 – One day after making a plea to Salvadoran soldiers to stop carrying out the government's repression, Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
- Hugh III of Cyprus (d. 1284)
- Antoine-Henri Jomini (d. 1869)
- Rudra Rajasingham (d. 2006)
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
March 25: Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day
- 1410 – The Yongle Emperor of Ming China launched the first of his military campaigns against the Mongols, resulting in the fall of the Mongol khan Bunyashiri.
- 1655 – Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of Saturn.
- 1911 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (pictured) in New York City killed 146 sweatshop workers, many of whom could not escape because the doors to the stairwells and exits had been locked.
- 1934 – Enrico Fermi published his discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938.
- 1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by his nephew Faisal bin Musaid.
- Novalis (d. 1801)
- Harriet Backer (d. 1932)
- Elton John (b. 1947)
March 26: Earth Hour (20:30 local time in various areas, 2022)
Serbian artillery at Adrianople
- 1697 – The Safavid Empire began a four-year occupation of the Ottoman city of Basra on the Persian Gulf.
- 1885 – Perceiving that the Canadian government was failing to protect their rights, the Métis people led by Louis Riel began the North-West Rebellion.
- 1913 – First Balkan War: After a five-month siege, Bulgarian and Serbian forces (artillery pictured) captured the Ottoman city of Adrianople.
- 1975 – The Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons, entered into force.
- 1997 – Police in Rancho Santa Fe, California, discovered the bodies of 39 members of the religious group Heaven's Gate who had died in an apparent cult suicide.
- Jacob van Eyck (d. 1657)
- James Hutton (d. 1797)
- Guido Stampacchia (b. 1922)
March 27: Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2022); Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania (1918)
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Mary Mallon
- 1638 – The first of four strong earthquakes struck Calabria in southern Italy, which resulted in up to 30,000 combined deaths.
- 1850 – San Diego, the first European settlement in present-day California, was incorporated as a city.
- 1915 – Mary Mallon (pictured), the first person to be identified as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, was placed into quarantine in New York City, where she spent the rest of her life.
- 1977 – Two Boeing 747 airliners collided on a foggy runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife, killing 583 people in the worst aircraft accident in aviation history.
- 2002 – Second Intifada: A suicide bomber killed around 30 Israeli civilians and injured about 140 others in Netanya, triggering Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale counter-terrorist military incursion into the West Bank.
- Simon Bradstreet (d. 1697)
- Thomas Graham Brown (b. 1882)
- T. Sailo (d. 2015)
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Vienna Philharmonic, 2019
- 1802 – German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered Pallas, the second asteroid ever identified, though it was considered to be a planet at the time.
- 1842 – The Vienna Philharmonic (pictured) held its first concert, conducted by Otto Nicolai.
- 1918 – World War I: British and Australian troops soundly defeated German forces at the First Battle of Dernancourt in northern France.
- 1942 – Second World War: The port of Saint-Nazaire in occupied France was disabled by British naval forces.
- 1979 – British prime minister James Callaghan was defeated by one vote in a vote of no confidence after his government struggled to cope with widespread strikes during the Winter of Discontent.
- Flodoard (d. 966)
- Solomon Foot (d. 1866)
- John Alderdice, Baron Alderdice (b. 1955)
March 29: Boganda Day in the Central African Republic (1959); Martyrs' Day in Madagascar (1947)
Viking siege of Paris
- 845 – Viking expansion: Viking raiders, possibly led by the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, plundered and occupied Paris (depicted), holding the city for a large ransom.
- 1800 – William Matthews was ordained as the first British America-born Catholic priest.
- 1807 – German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered Vesta, the brightest asteroid and second-most massive body in the asteroid belt.
- 1982 – Queen Elizabeth II granted royal assent to the Canada Act 1982, which ended any remaining constitutional dependence of Canada on the United Kingdom by a process known as patriation.
- 2010 – Islamist separatists of the Caucasus Emirate detonated two bombs on the Moscow Metro, killing 40 people and injuring 102 others.
- Santorio Santorio (b. 1561)
- March Fong Eu (b. 1922)
- Pap Cheyassin Secka (d. 2012)
March 30: Land Day in Palestinian communities (1976)
Usmar Ismail
- 1822 – The United States merged East Florida and West Florida to create the Florida Territory.
- 1861 – British chemist William Crookes published his discovery of thallium using flame spectroscopy.
- 1912 – Sultan Abd al-Hafid signed the Treaty of Fes, making Morocco a French protectorate.
- 1950 – Usmar Ismail (pictured) began shooting Darah dan Doa, widely recognised as the first Indonesian film.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: North Vietnamese forces began the Easter Offensive in an attempt to gain as much territory and destroy as many South Vietnamese units as possible.
- Juan Manuel de Rosas (b. 1793)
- Nicolae Rădescu (b. 1874)
- Fred Korematsu (d. 2005)
March 31: Cesar Chavez Day in various U.S. states (1927)
USS Missouri
- 1761 – Lisbon experienced its second major earthquake in six years, with effects felt as far north as Scotland.
- 1899 – Philippine–American War: Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces.
- 1942 – Second World War: Because of a mutiny by Indian soldiers against their British officers, Japanese troops captured Christmas Island without any resistance.
- 1992 – USS Missouri (pictured), the last active United States Navy battleship, was decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
- 2018 – Nikol Pashinyan began his protest walk, starting in the city of Gyumri, opening the 2018 Armenian revolution.
- Pope Benedict XIV (b. 1675)
- Edward FitzGerald (b. 1809)
- Ahmad Sayyed Javadi (d. 2013)
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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Selected anniversaries for April[edit]
April 1: Iranian Islamic Republic Day (1979)
Two men marrying in Amsterdam, 1 April 2001
- 1293 – Robert Winchelsey left England for Rome to be consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, but a papal vacancy delayed the ceremony.
- 1833 – Mexican Texans met at San Felipe de Austin to begin the Convention of 1833.
- 1941 – Soviet border guards opened fire on civilians attempting to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near Fântâna Albă, killing between 44 and 3,000 people.
- 2001 – Same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was legalised (wedding pictured), with the country becoming the first to do so.
- Franz Egon von Fürstenberg-Heiligenberg (d. 1682)
- Frederick Denison Maurice (d. 1872)
- Anne McCaffrey (b. 1926)
April 2: World Autism Awareness Day; first day of Ramadan (Islam, 2022); Cheti Chand begins / Ugadi in parts of India (Hinduism, 2022); feast day of Saint Francis of Paola (Catholicism); Malvinas Day in Argentina
John Gotti
- 1863 – About 5,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, mostly poor women, rioted in protest of the high price of bread.
- 1982 – Argentine special forces invaded the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War against the United Kingdom.
- 1992 – John Gotti (pictured), the head of the Gambino crime family of New York City, was convicted of racketeering, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, loansharking, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, and tax evasion.
- 2002 – Second Intifada: Palestinian militants sought refuge from advancing Israeli forces in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, beginning a month-long siege.
- Charlemagne (b. 747)
- Paškal Buconjić (b. 1834)
- Juanito (d. 1992)
Oscar Wilde
- 1860 – The Pony Express, a mail service that became the most direct means of long-distance communication across the United States before the first transcontinental telegraph, began operation.
- 1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde (pictured) began, eventually resulting in his arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of gross indecency.
- 1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 1948 – Division of Korea: A communist uprising began on Jeju Island, eventually leading to thousands of deaths and atrocities committed by both sides.
- 2016 – The first news stories on the Panama Papers were published, revealing that shell corporations represented by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had been used for illegal purposes.
- George Herbert (b. 1593)
- Ernst Chladni (d. 1827)
- SethBling (b. 1987)
Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1866 – Russian tsar Alexander II narrowly survived an assassination attempt by Dmitry Karakozov.
- 1873 – The Kennel Club, the world's oldest kennel club, was founded in the United Kingdom after Sewallis Shirley became frustrated by trying to organise dog shows without a consistent set of rules.
- 1905 – An earthquake hit the Kangra Valley in India, killing more than 20,000 people and destroying most buildings in Kangra, McLeod Ganj, and Dharamshala.
- 1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, establishing NATO, an organization that constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
- 1968 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured) was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
- William Strachey (b. 1572)
- Pierre Monteux (b. 1875)
- Isaac K. Funk (d. 1912)
April 5: Feast day of Saint Vincent Ferrer (Catholicism); Hansik in South Korea (2022)
The collapsed stand at Ibrox Park
- 919 – The Fatimid Caliphate began a second unsuccessful invasion of Egypt, then under Abbasid rule.
- 1614 – Pocahontas, a Native American woman, married English colonist John Rolfe in the Colony of Virginia.
- 1902 – A spectator stand collapsed (pictured) during a Scotland–England football match at Ibrox Park, Govan, killing 25 supporters and injuring more than 500 others.
- 1944 – Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from Auschwitz with the aid of an SS officer who opposed the Holocaust.
- 1986 – The Libyan secret service bombed a discotheque in West Berlin, resulting in three deaths and 229 others injured.
- 2018 - Agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid a slaughterhouse in Tennessee, detaining nearly 100 undocumented Hispanic workers in one of the largest immigration raids in the history of the U.S, prompting protests and federal lawsuits.
- Jules Cambon (b. 1845)
- María Blanchard (d. 1932)
- Jim Marshall (d. 2012)
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Juvénal Habyarimana
- 1712 – A group of 23 slaves in New York City revolted, setting fire to a building, but were soon recaptured.
- 1830 – Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and others formally organized the Church of Christ, starting the Latter Day Saint movement.
- 1994 – The aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana (pictured) and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down in Kigali; the event became the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide.
- 2012 – The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad unilaterally declared the region of Azawad independent from Mali.
- Leonora Baroni (d. 1670)
- Philip Henry Gosse (b. 1810)
- Julie Ertz (b. 1992)
April 7: National Beer Day in the United States
Fridtjof Nansen
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces defeated Confederate troops at the Battle of Shiloh, the bloodiest battle in U.S. history at the time, in Hardin County, Tennessee.
- 1896 – An Arctic expedition led by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (pictured) reached 86°13.6′N, almost three degrees beyond the previous Farthest North latitude.
- 1949 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, opened on Broadway.
- 1972 – Communist forces overran the South Vietnamese town of Lộc Ninh.
- 1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops began a massacre of hundreds of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
- Berengar I of Italy (d. 924)
- Martha Ray (d. 1779)
- Joseph Lyons (d. 1939)
Bust of Caracalla
- 217 – Roman emperor Caracalla (pictured) was assassinated near Harran and succeeded by his Praetorian Guard prefect Macrinus.
- 876 – Abbasid forces decisively defeated those of Saffarid emir Ya'qub ibn Laith, forcing the latter to halt his advance into Iraq.
- 1630 – Kiliaen van Rensselaer purchased land near present-day Albany, New York, to found the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, which became the most successful patroonship under the Dutch West India Company.
- 1904 – Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan, was renamed Times Square after the New York Times building.
- 1942 – World War II: The United States Army Air Forces flew its first mission from India over the Hump (the eastern end of the Himalayas) to deliver materiel to China.
- John II Komnenos (d. 1143)
- Niels Juel (d. 1697)
- Jack Tramiel (d. 2012)
April 9: Vimy Ridge Day in Canada (1917); Day of Valor in the Philippines (1942)
Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr
Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr
- 1860 – Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded himself singing "Au clair de la lune" on his phonautograph, producing the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.
- 1917 – First World War: The Canadian Corps began the first wave of attacks at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Vimy, France.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces defeated Allied troops at the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines before beginning to forcibly transfer more than 90,000 prisoners of war to prison camps in the Bataan Death March.
- 1980 – Iraqi philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (pictured) and his sister Amina were executed by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
- 1999 – President of Niger Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara was shot dead by soldiers in Niamey.
- al-Muqtafi (d. 1096)
- Mary Jackson (b. 1921)
- Peter Canavan (b. 1971)
April 10: Holy Week begins (Western Christianity, 2022)
General Emiliano Zapata
- 1815 – Mount Tambora in Indonesia began the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history, killing at least 71,000 people and affecting temperatures worldwide.
- 1858 – Big Ben, the bell in the Palace of Westminster's clock tower in London, was cast after the original bell cracked during testing.
- 1919 – Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata (pictured) was shot to death near Ciudad Ayala, Morelos.
- 1963 – The U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593) sank with all hands lost during deep-diving tests in the North Atlantic Ocean.
- 1992 – First Nagorno-Karabakh War: Dozens of Armenian civilians were massacred in the village of Maraga by Azerbaijani forces.
- Samuel Hahnemann (b. 1755)
- Kishori Amonkar (b. 1932)
- Stu Sutcliffe (d. 1962)
Nevill Ground's cricket pavilion after the arson attack
- 1241 – Mongol invasion of Europe: Mongol forces led by Batu Khan and Subutai defeated the army of King Béla IV at the Battle of Mohi near the river Sajó, a key victory in their first invasion of Hungary.
- 1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition, and forcing Napoleon to abdicate as ruler of France and sending him into exile on Elba.
- 1913 – The cricket pavilion at the Nevill Ground was destroyed in an arson attack (damage pictured) that was attributed to militant suffragettes as part of a country-wide campaign co-ordinated by the Women's Social and Political Union.
- 2002 – In a coup attempt, members of the Venezuelan military detained President Hugo Chávez and demanded his resignation.
- Christopher Smart (b. 1722)
- Percy Lavon Julian (b. 1899)
- Muhammad Kamaruzzaman (d. 2015)
April 12: Cosmonautics Day in Russia (1961); Education and Sharing Day in the United States (2022); Yuri's Night
- 1204 – Troops of the Fourth Crusade entered Constantinople and began a sack of the city, temporarily dissolving the Byzantine Empire.
- 1822 – Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks (depicted) on the island of Chios.
- 1961 – Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes.
- 1980 – Samuel Doe took control of Liberia in a coup d'etat, overthrowing President William Tolbert and ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
- 2014 – A fire broke out in the hills near Valparaíso, Chile, eventually destroying at least 2,500 homes and leaving approximately 11,000 people homeless.
- Richeza of Poland, Queen of Sweden (b. 1116)
- Nicola Amati (d. 1684)
- Abbie Hoffman (d. 1989)
Damage caused by the Kamień Pomorski homeless hostel fire
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian forces conducted a surprise attack against a Continental Army outpost at Bound Brook, New Jersey.
- 1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act received royal assent, removing the most substantial restrictions on Catholics in the United Kingdom.
- 1942 – Austrian soldier Anton Schmid was executed for rescuing Jews from the Ponary massacre in Vilnius.
- 1956 – The Vietnamese National Army captured Ba Cụt, a military commander of the religious sect Hòa Hảo, which ran a de facto state in South Vietnam in opposition to Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm.
- 2009 – Twenty-three people died in a fire at a homeless hostel (aftermath pictured) in Kamień Pomorski; it was Poland's deadliest fire since 1980.
- Arthur Matthew Weld Downing (b. 1850)
- Joe Hewitt (b. 1901)
- Evelyne Daitz (b. 1936)
April 14: Vaisakhi (Sikhism, 2022); Tamil New Year and other New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asia (2022); Day of the Georgian Language (1978); N'Ko Alphabet Day in West Africa (1949)
Hailstones from the 1999 Sydney hailstorm
- 966 – Polish ruler Mieszko I converted to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
- 1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
- 1908 – The first Hauser Dam in the U.S. state of Montana failed, causing severe flooding and damage downstream.
- 1945 – World War II: The German town of Friesoythe was razed by the 4th Canadian Division on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes.
- 1999 – A storm dropped around 500,000 tonnes of hailstones on Sydney (examples pictured) and the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history.
- Anne Sullivan (b. 1866)
- John Gielgud (b. 1904)
- M. Visvesvaraya (d. 1962)
April 15: Day of the Sun in North Korea
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John B. Kendrick
- 769 – The final session of the Lateran Council, convened to rectify abuses in the papal electoral process that had led to the elevation of the antipopes Constantine II and Philip, was held in Rome.
- 1632 – Thirty Years' War: A Swedish–German army defeated the forces of the Catholic League at the Battle of Rain, mortally wounding their commander Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly.
- 1912 – More than 1,500 people on the Titanic died when the passenger liner sank after colliding with an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland.
- 1922 – U.S. senator John B. Kendrick (pictured) introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal involving U.S. president Warren G. Harding's administration, leading to the Teapot Dome scandal.
- 1952 – The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered, strategic bomber operated by the U.S. Air Force for most of the aircraft's history, made its first flight.
- Leonhard Euler (b. 1707)
- Arsenio Lacson (d. 1962)
- Seth Rogen (b. 1982)
April 16: First day of Passover (Judaism, 2022)
Harriet Quimby
- 1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles I, revolted when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
- 1862 – Slavery in Washington, D.C., ended when the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law.
- 1912 – American pilot Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1963 – In response to an open letter written by white clergymen, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail in defence of the strategy of nonviolent resistance against racism.
- 2001 – India and Bangladesh began a six-day conflict over their disputed border, which ended in a stalemate.
- Tabinshwehti (b. 1516)
- Farran Zerbe (b. 1871)
- Johnny Peirson (d. 2021)
April 17: Easter (Western Christianity, 2022); Evacuation Day in Syria (1946)
Superstructure of Minas Geraes
- 1080 – Canute IV became King of Denmark upon the death of his brother Harald III.
- 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: British forces commanded by Lieutenant-General Ralph Abercromby invaded the Spanish colonial port of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- 1907 – Minas Geraes (pictured), the first of three Brazilian dreadnought battleships, was laid down, sparking a vastly expensive South American naval arms race with Argentina and Chile.
- 1951 – The Peak District was designated the first national park in the United Kingdom.
- 1971 – Ustaše-affiliated Croatian separatists attacked the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm, fatally shooting the ambassador, Vladimir Rolović.
- Benjamin Franklin (d. 1790)
- Karen Blixen (b. 1885)
- Victoria Beckham (b. 1974)
April 18: Patriots' Day in various U.S. states (2022)
Roland Garros
- 1689 – Glorious Revolution: Provincial militia and citizens in Boston revolted, arresting officials of the Dominion of New England.
- 1915 – World War I: Hit by ground fire, French aviation pioneer Roland Garros (pictured) landed his aircraft behind enemy lines and was taken prisoner.
- 1949 – The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 came into force, declaring Ireland a republic and terminating its membership in the British Commonwealth of Nations.
- 1958 – Controversial American poet Ezra Pound was released from St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., in which he had been incarcerated for twelve years.
- 2019 – The United States Department of Justice released a redacted version of the Mueller report about the investigation of Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election to Congress and the public.
- Gratian (b. 359)
- Polydore Vergil (d. 1555)
- Robert Christgau (b. 1942)
April 19: Feast day of Saint Alphege of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism)
Grace Kelly
- 1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Pragmatic Sanction, allowing the Habsburg hereditary possessions to be inherited by a daughter.
- 1775 – The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the British colony of Massachusetts.
- 1903 – Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia Governorate, causing the death of nearly 50 Jews and focusing worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia.
- 1956 – American actress Grace Kelly (pictured) became the princess consort of Monaco upon her marriage to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
- 1984 – "Advance Australia Fair", written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.
- Ernst Rüdin (b. 1874)
- Jiroemon Kimura (b. 1897)
- Kwon Ki-ok (d. 1988)
April 20: 420 (cannabis culture)
Enoch Powell
- 1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: The English navy sank much of a Spanish treasure fleet at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife off the Canary Islands, but was unable to capture the treasure.
- 1828 – French explorer René Caillié reached Timbuktu in present-day Mali, and later received a 9,000-franc prize from the Société de Géographie for being the first European to return with a description of the city.
- 1914 – A fire and a gun battle between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners led to 17 deaths in the Ludlow Massacre.
- 1968 – Enoch Powell (pictured), a British Conservative member of Parliament, made a controversial speech in opposition to immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in his removal from the shadow cabinet.
- Peter Bartholomew (d. 1099)
- Allegra Byron (d. 1822)
- Toller Cranston (b. 1949)
April 21: First day of Ridván (Baháʼí Faith, 2022); Grounation Day (Rastafari)
Romulus and Remus suckling from the Capitoline Wolf
- 753 BC – Romulus and Remus (depicted) legendarily founded the city of Rome, according to the calculations of ancient Roman scholar Varro Reatinus.
- 1509 – Henry VIII became King of England, following the death of his father Henry VII, eventually becoming a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy.
- 1925 or 1926 – Al-Baqi Cemetery in Medina, the site of the mausoleum of four of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam, was demolished by Wahhabis.
- 1962 – The Century 21 Exposition, the first world's fair in the United States since World War II, opened in Seattle.
- Pope Alexander II (d. 1073)
- Antonín Kammel (b. 1730)
- Cheryl Gillan (b. 1952)
Two-cent piece first issued in 1864
- 1500 – A fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral anchored off the coast of present-day Brazil, claiming the land for the Portuguese Empire.
- 1622 – Anglo-Persian forces combined to capture the Portuguese garrison at Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf.
- 1864 – The U.S. Congress authorized the creation of a two-cent coin (pictured), the first U.S. currency to bear the phrase "In God We Trust".
- 1945 – About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 managed to escape while the remainder were killed by the Ustaše regime.
- 2004 – Flammable cargo exploded at a railway station in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing at least 54 people and injuring more than a thousand others.
- Germaine de Staël (b. 1766)
- Henry Conwell (d. 1842)
- Donna Williams (d. 2017)
April 23: National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey (1920)
1927 FA Cup programme
- 1661 – Charles II was crowned King of England, Scotland and Ireland at Westminster Abbey.
- 1891 – Chilean Civil War: The armored frigate Blanco Encalada was sunk at the Battle of Caldera Bay, the first ironclad warship lost to a self-propelled torpedo.
- 1927 – Cardiff City defeated Arsenal 1–0 in the FA Cup Final (match programme pictured), the only time the FA Cup has been won by a non-English team.
- 1942 – Second World War: In retaliation for the Royal Air Force's bombing of Lübeck, the Luftwaffe began a series of air raids across England, beginning with Exeter.
- 2019 – A landslide triggered the collapse of a jade mine in Hpakant, Myanmar, resulting in six confirmed deaths and presumed dozens more.
- Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (d. 1792)
- Halston (b. 1932)
- Leni Robredo (b. 1965)
April 24: Easter (Eastern Christianity, 2022); Divine Mercy Sunday (Catholicism, 2022); Night of Decree (Shia Islam, 2022); Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (1915)
North flank of Kinder Scout
- 1704 – John Campbell released the first issue of The Boston News-Letter, the first continuously published newspaper in British North America.
- 1866 – German composer Max Bruch conducted the premiere of his first violin concerto, which later became his most famous work.
- 1922 – The first portion of the Imperial Wireless Chain, a strategic international wireless telegraphy communications network created to link the countries of the British Empire, opened.
- 1932 – An estimated 400 ramblers committed a wilful mass trespass of Kinder Scout (pictured) in the Peak District to highlight the denial of access to areas of open country in England.
- 1965 – Cold War: The Dominican Civil War broke out due to tensions following a military coup against the democratically elected government of President Juan Bosch two years earlier.
- Axel von Fersen the Elder (d. 1794)
- Benjamin Lee Whorf (b. 1897)
- Richard M. Daley (b. 1942)
April 25: Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand (1915); Liberation Day in Italy (1945)
Dedication of New Zealand's National War Memorial
- 799 – Leo III was attacked by partisans of his predecessor Adrian I, but was rescued and taken to Charlemagne, as described in the epic Karolus magnus et Leo papa.
- 1644 – Ming–Qing transition: The Ming dynasty of China fell when the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng.
- 1932 – Gladys Elinor Watkins consecrated the carillon of the National War Memorial in New Zealand (dedication pictured).
- 1946 – Two passenger trains collided in Naperville, Illinois, leaving 45 people dead and some 125 injured.
- 1990 – Violeta Chamorro took office as president of Nicaragua, becoming the first female head of state in the Americas to have been elected in her own right.
- Anders Celsius (d. 1744)
- Kojo Tovalou Houénou (b. 1887)
- Henck Arron (b. 1936)
April 26: World Intellectual Property Day
B&O Royal Blue
- 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Republic of Florence, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici and killed his brother Giuliano at Florence Cathedral.
- 1865 – U.S. Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, ending a twelve-day manhunt.
- 1941 – Boris Kidrič and Edvard Kardelj founded the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, the main anti-fascist Slovene civil-resistance and political organization during World War II.
- 1958 – Service ended on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue Line, one of the first major electrified train lines in the U.S. (steam train pictured).
- 1970 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) came into being when the WIPO Convention entered into force.
- Samuel Bellamy (d. 1717)
- Hack Wilson (b. 1900)
- Margaret Scott (b. 1922)
April 27: Koningsdag in the Netherlands; Administrative Professionals Day in various countries (2022)
Dennis Taylor
- 1522 – Four Years' War: The combined forces of Spain and the Papal States defeated a French and Venetian army at the Battle of Bicocca.
- 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British Army regulars defeated Patriot militias in the Battle of Ridgefield, galvanizing resistance in the Connecticut Colony.
- 1961 – Prime Minister Milton Margai led the Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate to independence from the United Kingdom.
- 1985 – The black-ball final, one of the most famous snooker matches in history, began between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor (pictured).
- 2012 – Unknown perpetrators carried out a series of four bombings in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine.
- Ulysses S. Grant (b. 1822)
- Sheila Scott (b. 1922)
- Olivier Messiaen (d. 1992)
April 28: Workers' Memorial Day; Sa die de sa Sardigna in Sardinia, Italy
Guillaume Schnaebelé
- 1611 – The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment, was founded.
- 1887 – A week after being arrested by the Prussian Secret Police, French police inspector Guillaume Schnaebelé (pictured) was released on the order of William I, the German Emperor, defusing a possible war.
- 1910 – Flying from London to Manchester, French aviator Louis Paulhan won the first long-distance aeroplane race in England.
- 1952 – Japan and the Republic of China signed the Treaty of Taipei to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War, seven years after fighting in that conflict ended due to World War II.
- Rhys ap Gruffydd (d. 1197)
- Tobias Asser (b. 1838)
- Penélope Cruz (b. 1974)
April 29: International Quds Day (2022)
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Buildings burned during the Los Angeles riots
- 1386 – The Grand Duchy of Lithuania decisively won the Battle of the Vikhra River, forcibly making the Principality of Smolensk a vassal state.
- 1760 – Seven Years' War: France began an unsuccessful attempt to retake Quebec City, which had been captured by Britain.
- 1910 – Parliament passed the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the express intent of redistributing wealth.
- 1992 – The acquittal of policemen who had beaten African-American motorist Rodney King sparked six days of civil unrest in Los Angeles (damage pictured), during which 63 people were killed.
- George Farquhar (d. 1707)
- Marietta Blau (b. 1894)
- Giacomo dalla Torre (d. 2020)
April 30: Reunification Day in Vietnam (1975)
Remnant of SN 1006
- 1006 – SN 1006 (remnant pictured), the brightest supernova in recorded history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus.
- 1789 – George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City.
- 1897 – British physicist J. J. Thomson and his team announce the discovery of the electron.
- 1945 – World War II: As Allied forces closed in on Berlin, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker with Eva Braun one day after their marriage.
- 1982 – Sixteen monks and a nun of the Hindu organisation Ananda Marga were beaten to death and set on fire in Calcutta, India.
- Marie of the Incarnation (d. 1672)
- Emily Stowe (d. 1903)
- Kirsten Dunst (b. 1982)
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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Selected anniversaries for May[edit]
May 1: International Workers' Day; Beltane and Samhain in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India (1960); Loyalty Day in the United States
Moses Fleetwood Walker
- 880 – The Nea Ekklesia church in Constantinople, on which many later cross-in-square Orthodox churches were based, was consecrated.
- 1776 – The secret society known as the Order of Illuminati was founded by Adam Weishaupt and Adolph Freiherr Knigge in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.
- 1884 – Moses Fleetwood Walker (pictured), the last African American in Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson, played his first game for the Toledo Blue Stockings.
- 1947 – Sicilian separatist Salvatore Giuliano and his gang fired into a crowd of May Day marchers near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, killing 11 and wounding 33.
- 2016 – The evacuation of nearly 88,000 people began when a wildfire swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, and burned for another 14 months, becoming the costliest disaster in Canadian history.
- Paul I Šubić of Bribir (d. 1312)
- Adelsteen Normann (b. 1848)
- Aram Khachaturian (d. 1978)
May 2: Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2022); Flag Day in Poland
ARA General Belgrano
- 1670 – A royal charter granted the Hudson's Bay Company a monopoly in the fur trade in Rupert's Land (present-day Canada).
- 1878 – A dust explosion at the world's largest flour mill in Minneapolis resulted in 18 deaths.
- 1945 – World War II: General Helmuth Weidling, the German commander of Berlin, surrendered to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, ending the Battle of Berlin.
- 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano (pictured), the only ship ever to have been deliberately sunk by a nuclear submarine in battle.
- 2014 – Russo-Ukrainian War: Forty-eight people were killed during a confrontation between pro-Russian protesters and pro-Ukrainian unity protesters in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa.
- Blanche of Artois (d. 1302)
- Ichiyō Higuchi (b. 1872)
- Dwayne Johnson (b. 1972)
May 3: World Press Freedom Day; Constitution Memorial Day in Japan (1947); Onbashira Festival in Nagano, Japan (2022); Constitution Day in Poland (1791)
Scene from Raja Harishchandra
- 1791 – The Great Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ratified the first codified national constitution in Europe.
- 1845 – A long-running feud between two towns in Wisconsin came to a head when a schooner crashed into a bridge; they later merged to form the city of Milwaukee.
- 1913 – Raja Harishchandra (scene pictured), the first Indian feature-length film, was released.
- 1942 – Second World War: Japanese forces began an invasion of Tulagi and nearby islands in the British Solomon Islands, enabling them to threaten and intercept supply and communication routes between the United States and Australasia.
- 1999 – A Doppler on Wheels team measured the fastest winds recorded on Earth, at 301 ± 20 mph (484 ± 32 km/h), in a tornado near Bridge Creek, Oklahoma.
- Catherine of St. Augustine (b. 1632)
- Jacob Riis (b. 1849)
- Len Shackleton (b. 1922)
May 4: Youth Day in China; Yom HaZikaron in Israel (2022); Literary Day in Taiwan; Star Wars Day
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Parliament House, Valletta
- 1493 – Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter caetera, establishing a line of demarcation dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal.
- 1776 – American Revolution: The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Allied naval forces at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other.
- 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet missile, killing 20 sailors and leading to its sinking six days later—the first Royal Navy ship sunk in action since World War II.
- 2015 – The Parliament of Malta moved from the Grandmaster's Palace to the purpose-built Parliament House (pictured).
- Herman II of Swabia (d. 1003)
- Franklin Carmichael (b. 1890)
- Amos Oz (b. 1939)
May 5: Lusophone Culture Day; Independence Day in Israel (2022); Children's Day in Japan; Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the United States (1862); National Day of Prayer in the United States (2022)
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
- 1891 – Carnegie Hall (interior pictured) in New York City, built by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, officially opened with a concert conducted by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
- 1992 – The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, 202 years after it was first proposed.
- 2019 – Aeroflot Flight 1492 was struck by lightning after leaving Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport and caught fire during the subsequent emergency landing attempt, killing 41 people on board.
- Samuel Cooper (d. 1672)
- William George Beers (b. 1843)
- Irene Gut Opdyke (b. 1922)
Cartoon of a Chinese man barred from entering the U.S.
- 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: The 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo was captured by the outmanned and outgunned HMS Speedy.
- 1882 – U.S. president Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law (cartoon pictured), implementing a ban on Chinese immigration to the United States that remained for 61 years.
- 1915 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: SY Aurora, anchored in McMurdo Sound, broke loose during a gale and began a 312-day drift in sea ice.
- 1988 – Widerøe Flight 710 crashed into the fog-covered mountain of Torghatten in Brønnøy, Norway, killing all 36 people on board.
- 2008 – British barrister Mark Saunders was shot dead by police after a five-hour siege at his home in Chelsea, London.
- Henry David Thoreau (d. 1862)
- Martin Brodeur (b. 1972)
- Reg Grundy (d. 2016)
Winston Churchill
- 1697 – The 13th-century castle of Tre Kronor in Stockholm burned down; plans for the current royal palace were presented within the year.
- 1763 – Pontiac, a Native American chief of the Odawa tribe, led an attempt to seize Fort Detroit from the British, marking the start of Pontiac's War.
- 1940 – A three-day debate began in the House of Commons that resulted in British prime minister Neville Chamberlain being replaced by Winston Churchill (pictured).
- 1999 – Kosovo War: NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
- 2009 – Police in Napier, New Zealand, began a 40-hour siege of the home of a former New Zealand Army member who had shot at officers during the routine execution of a search warrant.
- Mary of Modena (d. 1718)
- Philip Baxter (b. 1905)
- Willard Boyle (d. 2011)
May 8: World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day; Anniversary of the birth of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico (1753); Victory in Europe Day (1945)
The remains of Tollund Man shortly after his discovery
- 1821 – Greek War of Independence: At the Battle of Gravia Inn, a 120-man Greek force led by Odysseas Androutsos repulsed an Ottoman army of 8,000 soldiers.
- 1927 – French aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli aboard the biplane L'Oiseau Blanc took off from Paris, attempting to make the first non-stop flight to New York, only to disappear before arrival.
- 1942 – World War II: The Axis launched a major counteroffensive, turning the tide of the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula.
- 1950 – The Tollund Man (pictured), a naturally mummified corpse, was discovered in a peat bog near Silkeborg, Denmark.
- 1972 – Four members of Black September hijacked Sabena Flight 571 to demand the release of 315 convicted Palestinian terrorists.
- Thomas Drury (b. 1551)
- Helena Blavatsky (d. 1891)
- Beatrice Worsley (d. 1972)
May 9: Europe Day in the European Union; Victory Day in various Eastern European countries (1945); Liberation Day in the Channel Islands (1945)
Battle of Heligoland
- 328 – Athanasius took office as Patriarch of Alexandria.
- 1864 – Second Schleswig War: The Battle of Heligoland (depicted), the last naval engagement fought by squadrons of wooden ships, took place between the Danish and Austro-Prussian fleets.
- 1918 – First World War: Germany repelled Britain's second attempt to blockade the Belgian port of Ostend.
- 1992 – An underground methane explosion occurred at the Westray Mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia, killing all 26 Canadian coal miners who were working at the time.
- 2012 – The pilots of a Sukhoi Superjet, ignoring alerts from the terrain warning system, crashed the aircraft into Mount Salak in Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of all 45 people on board.
- Al-Adid (b. 1151)
- John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair (d. 1747)
- Yukiya Amano (b. 1947)
Ethan Allen demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga
- 28 BC – The first precisely dated observation of a sunspot was made by Chinese astronomers of the Han dynasty.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: A small force of Patriots led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga (depicted) in New York, without significant injury or incident.
- 1941 – World War II: German Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the British government.
- 1997 – An earthquake registering 7.3 Mw struck near Qaen, Iran, killing at least 1,567 and leaving around 50,000 others homeless.
- 2017 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces, assisted by the U.S. military, captured the Tabqa Dam and surrounding countryside, completing the Battle of Tabqa.
- Leonhart Fuchs (d. 1566)
- Karl Barth (b. 1886)
- Arthur Kopit (b. 1937)
Deep Blue
- 1745 – War of the Austrian Succession: French forces defeated those of the Pragmatic Allies at the Battle of Fontenoy in the Austrian Netherlands in present-day Belgium.
- 1812 – Spencer Perceval was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, becoming the only British prime minister to be assassinated.
- 1963 – African Americans rioted in Birmingham, Alabama, in response to two bombings, perceiving local police to be complicit with the perpetrators.
- 1997 – Deep Blue (pictured) defeated Garry Kasparov in six games to become the first chess computer to win a match against a world champion.
- 2011 – An earthquake registering Mw 5.1, the worst to hit the region for more than 50 years, struck near Lorca, Spain.
- Juliette Récamier (d. 1849)
- William Grant Still (b. 1895)
- Abel Goumba (d. 2009)
Coppergate Helmet
- 1846 – The Donner Party, an American pioneer group which became known for resorting to cannibalism when they became trapped in the Sierra Nevada, left Independence, Missouri, for California.
- 1863 – American Civil War: The Confederates were routed in the Battle of Raymond, a small battle that had an inordinately large impact on the Vicksburg campaign.
- 1888 – North Borneo was established as a British protectorate.
- 1975 – The Cambodian navy seized the American container ship SS Mayaguez in what they claimed to be Cambodian territorial waters.
- 1982 – The Coppergate Helmet (pictured), the best preserved of the six known Anglo-Saxon helmets, was discovered.
- Thomas Palaiologos (d. 1465)
- Otto Frank (b. 1889)
- Rami Malek (b. 1981)
Julian of Norwich
- 1373 – The English mystic Julian of Norwich (statue pictured) recovered from a severe illness during which she experienced a series of intense visions of Christ, which she later described in the first known English-language book written by a woman.
- 1861 – The Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered the Great Comet of 1861, through the tail of which the Earth passed later that year.
- 1913 – The Russian inventor Igor Sikorsky flew the self-designed Russky Vityaz, the world's first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft.
- 1972 – The Troubles: A car bomb planted by Ulster loyalists exploded outside a crowded pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland, beginning two days of gun battles between the British Army, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and the Ulster Volunteer Force.
- 1992 – Li Hongzhi introduced the Falun Gong movement at a public lecture in Changchun, China.
- Cornelis Schut (b. 1597)
- Lorna Hodgkinson (b. 1887)
- H. Trendley Dean (d. 1962)
May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Catholicism)
U.S. Camel Corps at the Drum Barracks in California
- 1264 – Second Barons' War: King Henry III was defeated at the Battle of Lewes and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
- 1856 – Major Henry C. Wayne arrived in Indianola, Texas, with 34 camels to form the short-lived United States Camel Corps (pictured).
- 1919 – Sir Harry Hands, the mayor of Cape Town, performed the first public observance of a two-minute silence in remembrance of those killed in World War I.
- 1939 – In Lima, Peru, Lina Medina became the youngest confirmed mother in history, giving birth at the age of five years, seven months and twenty-one days.
- 2008 – On the day of the UEFA Cup Final, violence erupted between football hooligan supporters of both teams and the Greater Manchester Police, resulting in 39 arrests and 39 injured officers.
- Pope John XII (d. 964)
- Ants Kurvits (b. 1887)
- Christian B. Anfinsen (d. 1995)
May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities
Baily's beads observed during a solar eclipse in 1999
- 1252 – Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition.
- 1836 – English astronomer Francis Baily observed Baily's beads (example pictured), a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows sunlight to shine through.
- 1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union Army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
- 1972 – The Ryukyu Islands were returned to Japan by the United States, and the U.S. occupation government was abolished.
- 2010 – Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Jessica Watson arrived in Sydney after sailing non-stop and unassisted around the world.
- Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (bapt. 1633)
- Jakucho Setouchi (b. 1922)
- Jean-Luc Dehaene (d. 2014)
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Flag of Sikkim, prior to its 1975 annexation by India
- 1811 – Peninsular War: Allied British, Spanish, and Portuguese forces clashed with French troops at the Battle of Albuera fought south of Badajoz, Spain.
- 1832 – Prospector Juan Godoy discovered a silver outcrop in Chañarcillo, sparking the Chilean silver rush.
- 1925 – The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria occurred in Paris.
- 1958 – The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, a supersonic interceptor aircraft, set a world flight airspeed record of 1,404.012 mph (2,259.538 km/h).
- 1975 – Based on the results of a referendum held about one month earlier, the Kingdom of Sikkim (flag pictured) abolished its monarchy and was annexed to become the 22nd state of India.
- Andrew Bobola (d. 1657)
- Horace Hutchinson (b. 1859)
- Nancy Roman (b. 1925)
May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia; Galician Literature Day in Galicia, Spain
Coco Chanel
- 1395 – An outnumbered Wallachian army repulsed invading Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rovine.
- 1902 – The Antikythera mechanism, the oldest known surviving geared mechanism, was discovered among artifacts retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.
- 1947 – After renegotiating a contract with the makers of her signature perfume Chanel No. 5, Coco Chanel (pictured) received a share of wartime profits from its sale, making her one of the richest women in the world.
- 1974 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force detonated a series of car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland, killing 34 people and injuring almost 300 more.
- Martin Delrio (b. 1551)
- Dorothy Levitt (d. 1922)
- Maggie Laubser (d. 1973)
May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti (1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine and several other countries
The Bath School after the explosions
- 1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
- 1695 – An earthquake measuring Ms7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
- 1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
- 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.
- 2006 – The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.
- Guido Luca Ferrero (b. 1537)
- Elijah Craig (d. 1808)
- Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (d. 1922)
May 19: Global Accessibility Awareness Day (2022); Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2022); Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey (1919); Ho Chi Minh's Birthday in Vietnam
Thai soldiers during the crackdown on political protests
- 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: England invaded Spanish Jamaica, capturing it a week later.
- 1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer using the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the melting point of water and 100 its boiling point.
- 1828 – The United States Congress passed the largest tariff in the nation's history, which resulted in severe economic hardship in the American South.
- 1997 – The Sierra Gorda Biosphere, which encompasses the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, was established as a result of grassroots efforts.
- 2010 – In Bangkok, the Thai military (pictured) concluded a week-long crackdown on widespread protests by forcing the surrender of opposition leaders.
- Helena of Moscow (b. 1476)
- Ruth Ella Moore (b. 1903)
- John Gorton (d. 2002)
May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1976); National Day in Cameroon (1972); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908); Sanja Matsuri begins in Tokyo, Japan (2022)
Abdulaziz, also known as Ibn Saud
- 1609 – Thomas Thorpe published the first copies of Shakespeare's sonnets, possibly without William Shakespeare's consent.
- 1875 – Representatives from seventeen countries signed the Metre Convention, which set up an institute for the purpose of coordinating international metrology and for coordinating the development of the metric system.
- 1927 – By the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia (pictured) over Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become Saudi Arabia.
- 1965 – While attempting to land at Cairo International Airport, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 705 crashed for unknown reasons, killing all but 6 of the 121 people on board.
- 2012 – The first of two major earthquakes struck Northern Italy, resulting in seven deaths.
- Thado Minsaw of Ava (b. 1531)
- Hieronymus von Colloredo (d. 1812)
- Nizamuddin Asir Adrawi (d. 2021)
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Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis
- 1403 – King Henry III of Castile sent an embassy to the Timurid court to discuss a potential alliance against the Ottoman Empire.
- 1911 – Mexican president Porfirio Díaz and the revolutionary Francisco I. Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to end hostilities between each other's forces, concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution.
- 1927 – Aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, American aviator Charles Lindbergh (pictured) completed the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight, flying from Roosevelt Field near New York City to Paris–Le Bourget Airport.
- 1946 – While working with a mass of plutonium known as the demon core, Manhattan Project physicist Louis Slotin accidentally exposed himself to a lethal dose of hard radiation.
- 2014 – A Taiwanese man carried out a stabbing spree on a Taipei Metro train, killing four people and injuring 24 others.
- Luis Fajardo (d. 1617)
- Anne Walter Fearn (b. 1867)
- Leonidas Vasilikopoulos (b. 1932)
May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity
Trevi Fountain
- 1762 – The Trevi Fountain (pictured) in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
- 1897 – The first Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames was opened to improve commerce and trade in the East End of London.
- 1905 – Sultan Abdul Hamid II established the Ullah Millet, a separate millet for Aromanians within the Ottoman Empire.
- 1972 – The Dominion of Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and officially became a republic within the Commonwealth.
- 2002 – Police announced that the skeletal remains of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy, who had been missing for a year, had been found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
- T. Boone Pickens (b. 1928)
- Lady Gregory (d. 1932)
- Myrtle Bachelder (d. 1997)
May 23: Aromanian National Day; Victoria Day in Canada (2022)
Joan of Arc
- 1430 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc (pictured) was captured by Burgundian forces at the Siege of Compiègne.
- 1706 – War of the Spanish Succession: The Grand Alliance armies routed the Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army in Ramillies, present-day Belgium.
- 1873 – The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
- 1934 – During a strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company in Toledo, Ohio, U.S., a fight began between nearly 10,000 strikers and sheriff's deputies, later involving the Ohio National Guard.
- 2008 – The International Court of Justice awarded the Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca to Singapore, resolving a 29-year-old territorial dispute in the Singapore Strait.
- Philip I of France (b. 1052)
- C. R. M. F. Cruttwell (b. 1887)
- Florence Violet McKenzie (d. 1982)
May 24: Aldersgate Day (Methodism)
John Wesley
- 1567 – The mentally ill King Erik XIV of Sweden and his guards murdered five incarcerated nobles, including some members of the influential Sture family.
- 1738 – At a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate, London, John Wesley (pictured) experienced a spiritual rebirth, leading him to launch the Methodist movement.
- 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: After five days of fighting, Egyptian forces captured the Israeli community of Yad Mordechai after the defenders had abandoned it.
- 1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
- 2006 – An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary film that has been credited for raising international public awareness of climate change and re-energizing the environmental movement, was released.
- Cathinka Buchwieser (b. 1789)
- Henry Sandham (b. 1842)
- Fanny Searls (d. 1939)
May 25: Africa Day (1963); Anniversary of the First National Government in Argentina (1810); Independence Day in Jordan (1946)
Great Wall of China
- 1644 – Ming–Qing transition: Ming general Wu Sangui allowed the invading Manchu to cross the Great Wall of China (pictured), enabling them to capture Beijing and establish the Qing dynasty.
- 1810 – The Primera Junta, the first independent government in Argentina, was established in an open cabildo in Buenos Aires, marking the end of the May Revolution.
- 1944 – The Wehrmacht and their collaborationist allies launched Operation Rösselsprung, a failed attempt to assassinate the Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito.
- 1962 – The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, went out of business.
- 2012 – In a test flight, SpaceX's Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station.
- Flann Sinna (d. 916)
- Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville (b. 1818)
- Elisabeth Geleerd (d. 1969)
May 26: National Sorry Day in Australia; Independence Day in Georgia (1918)
Artist's impression of the Grue Church fire
- 1644 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese and Spanish forces both claimed victory at the Battle of Montijo.
- 1822 – The deadliest fire in Norwegian history (depicted) occurred at a church in Grue, killing at least 113 people.
- 1897 – The Church of England returned the original manuscript of William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, an account of the Pilgrims and the early years of the Plymouth Colony, to the state of Massachusetts.
- 1940 – Second World War: The Allies began a mass evacuation of British, French and Belgian troops cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk.
- 2002 – Barges being towed destroyed part of a bridge near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, causing vehicles to fall into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.
- Edmond de Goncourt (b. 1822)
- Jyoti Gogte (b. 1956)
- Mufti Abdul Razzaq (d. 2021)
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Pope Benedict XV
- 1199 – King John was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
- 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French Army of the Danube, capturing the strategically important Swiss town of Winterthur.
- 1917 – Pope Benedict XV (pictured) promulgated the Pio-Benedictine Code, the first official comprehensive codification of Latin canon law.
- 1962 – A fire at a landfill in Centralia, Pennsylvania, spread to an abandoned coal mine, where it continues burning today.
- 2006 – An earthquake registering 6.4 Mw struck near the city of Yogyakarta on the southern side of the Indonesian island of Java, killing more than 5,700 people.
- Diego Ramírez de Arellano (d. 1624)
- John Cockcroft (b. 1897)
- Abram Hoffer (d. 2009)
May 28: Republic Day in Armenia (1918); Independence Day in Azerbaijan (1918)
Battle of Jumonville Glen
- 585 BC – According to the Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse, accurately predicted by Thales of Miletus, abruptly ended the Battle of Halys between the Lydians and the Medes.
- 1754 – French and Indian War: Led by 22-year-old George Washington, a company of Virginia colonial militiamen ambushed a force of 35 Canadiens at the Battle of Jumonville Glen (depicted).
- 1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated with his accession as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 1998 – The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission carried out five underground nuclear tests, becoming the seventh country in the world to successfully develop and publicly test nuclear weapons.
- 2002 – An independent commission appointed by the Football Association voted two-to-one to allow Wimbledon F.C. to relocate from London to Milton Keynes.
- Robert Baldock (d. 1327)
- Carl Larsson (b. 1853)
- Maeve Binchy (b. 1939)
May 29: Feast day of Saint Paul VI (Catholicism)
Igor Stravinsky
- 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols entered and began looting Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty of China, after a 13-month siege.
- 1453 – With the fall of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans.
- 1913 – During the premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky (pictured) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience.
- 1942 – Bing Crosby recorded his version of the song "White Christmas", which went on to become the best-selling single worldwide, with more than 50 million copies sold.
- 1999 – President Olusegun Obasanjo took office as Nigeria's first elected and civilian head of state after 16 years of military dictatorship.
- Louise-Adéone Drölling (b. 1797)
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold (b. 1897)
- John Barrymore (d. 1942)
May 30: Statehood Day in Croatia (1990); Lod Massacre Remembrance Day in Puerto Rico (1972); Memorial Day in the United States
Statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial
- 1854 – The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law, establishing the U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas, and allowing their settlers to determine if slavery would be permitted.
- 1866 – Bedřich Smetana's comic opera The Bartered Bride premiered in Prague.
- 1922 – The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring a sculpture of the sixteenth U.S. president Abraham Lincoln (pictured) by Daniel Chester French, opened.
- 1972 – Members of the Japanese Red Army carried out the Lod Airport massacre in Tel Aviv, Israel, on behalf of PFLP External Operations, killing over 20 people and injuring almost 80 others.
- 2008 – The Convention on Cluster Munitions, prohibiting the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster bombs, was adopted.
- Antonina Houbraken (b. 1686)
- Wyndham Halswelle (b. 1882)
- Marcel Bich (d. 1994)
May 31: World No Tobacco Day; Feast of the Visitation (Catholicism and Anglicanism)
Mark Felt
- 1293 – Majapahit forces under Raden Wijaya won a major victory in the Mongol invasion of Java, now considered to be the founding date of the Indonesian city of Surabaya.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops under Joseph E. Johnston and G. W. Smith engaged Union forces under George B. McClellan at the Battle of Seven Pines outside Richmond, Virginia.
- 1902 – The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in Pretoria, South Africa.
- 1941 – The United Kingdom completed its re-occupation of Iraq, returning 'Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.
- 2005 – A Vanity Fair article revealed that the secret informant known as "Deep Throat", who had provided information about the Watergate scandal, was former FBI associate director Mark Felt (pictured).
- Géza II of Hungary (d. 1162)
- Walter Sickert (b. 1860)
- Jørgen Jensen (d. 1922)
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Selected anniversaries for June[edit]
Mary Dyer being led to the gallows
- 1660 – Mary Dyer (pictured) was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
- 1676 – Scanian War: The Swedish warship Kronan, one of the largest ships in the world at the time, sank at the Battle of Öland with the loss of around 800 men.
- 1861 – The first land battle of the American Civil War after Fort Sumter took place in the village of Fairfax, Virginia.
- 1942 – World War II: The crews of three Japanese submarines scuttled their vessels and committed suicide after entering Sydney Harbour and launching a failed attack.
- 2015 – The river cruise ship Dongfang zhi Xing capsized in the Yangtze, resulting in 442 deaths in China's worst peacetime maritime disaster.
- Marguerite Porete (d. 1310)
- Lady Clementina Hawarden (b. 1822)
- Parveen Kumar (b. 1942)
June 2: Festa della Repubblica in Italy (1946)
Luigi Galleani
- 455 – After having removed Petronius Maximus from the imperial throne, Vandals led by Genseric entered Rome and began sacking the city for two weeks.
- 1802 – Henry Hacking killed the Aboriginal Australian resistance fighter Pemulwuy after Philip Gidley King ordered that he be brought in dead or alive.
- 1919 – First Red Scare: The anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani (pictured) set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States.
- 1967 – Benno Ohnesorg, a German university student, was killed in West Berlin while protesting against the visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, sparking the formation of the militant 2 June Movement.
- 1994 – The Royal Air Force suffered its worst peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, killing all 29 people on board.
- Ogata Kōrin (d. 1716)
- Adelaide Casely-Hayford (b. 1868)
- Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry (d. 1982)
June 3: Anniversary of Khomeini's Death in Iran (1989); Martyrs Day in Uganda
Anfield, home of Liverpool F.C.
- 1770 – Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, a historic Catholic mission church in present-day Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and the site of the first Christian confirmation in Alta California, was established.
- 1892 – Liverpool F.C. (stadium pictured), one of England's most successful football clubs, was founded.
- 1940 – Franz Rademacher, a Nazi official, proposed that the island of Madagascar be made available as a destination for the resettlement of the Jewish population of Europe.
- 1963 – Buddhist crisis: South Vietnamese Army soldiers attacked protesting Buddhists in Huế, with liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades, causing 67 people to be hospitalised.
- 1982 – A failed assassination attempt was made on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom; this was later used as justification for the First Lebanon War.
- Staurakios (d. 800)
- Georges Bizet (d. 1875)
- Susannah Constantine (b. 1962)
June 4: Trianon Treaty Day in Romania (1920)
Engraving of Old St Paul's Cathedral before the fire
- 1561 – The spire of Old St Paul's Cathedral (depicted) in London was destroyed by fire, probably caused by lightning.
- 1784 – Élisabeth Thible became the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon, covering 4 km (2.5 mi) and reaching an estimated 1,500 m (4,900 ft) altitude.
- 1920 – The Kingdom of Hungary lost 72 percent of its territory and 64 percent of its population with the signing of the Treaty of Trianon in Paris.
- 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway, a major battle of the Pacific War, began with a massive Japanese offensive on American forces on Midway Atoll.
- 1989 – Following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, the Assembly of Experts elected Ali Khamenei to be Supreme Leader of Iran.
- Johan Rudolph Thorbecke (d. 1872)
- W. H. R. Rivers (d. 1922)
- Rodolfo Quezada Toruño (d. 2012)
June 5: First day of Shavuot (Judaism, 2022); Constitution Day in Denmark
John Profumo
- 663 – The Daming Palace in Chang'an became the seat of government and the royal residence of the Tang dynasty during the reign of Emperor Gaozong.
- 1305 – Raymond Bertrand de Got was elected Pope Clement V, succeeding Benedict XI, who died the previous year.
- 1862 – Vietnamese guerrilla leader Trương Định chose to fight on against European forces, defying Emperor Tự Đức and the Treaty of Saigon.
- 1963 – British politician John Profumo (pictured) admitted that he had lied to the House of Commons about his involvement in a sex scandal with Christine Keeler, and resigned from government.
- 1997 – Anticipating a coup attempt, President Pascal Lissouba of the Republic of the Congo ordered the detainment of his rival Denis Sassou Nguesso, initiating a second civil war.
- Johann Kuhnau (d. 1722)
- Theippan Maung Wa (b. 1899)
- Elizabeth Gloster (b. 1949)
June 6: Queen's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2022); National Day of Sweden; Western Australia Day (2022)
Syrian soldiers in Raqqa
- 1749 – A plot by Muslim slaves in Malta to assassinate Manuel Pinto da Fonseca of the Knights Hospitaller was uncovered.
- 1822 – Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian voyageur, was accidentally shot in the stomach; medical investigations of his injury led to a greater understanding of the processes of digestion.
- 1894 – Governor Davis Hanson Waite ordered the Colorado state militia to protect and support miners engaged in a five-month strike in Cripple Creek.
- 1982 – Falklands War: The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Cardiff engaged and destroyed a British Army helicopter in a friendly-fire incident.
- 2017 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (soldiers pictured) opened the Second Battle of Raqqa, the final phase of the Raqqa campaign, capturing the de facto capital of the Islamic State four months later.
- Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832)
- Lillian Russell (d. 1922)
- David Scott (b. 1932)
June 7: Journalist's Day in Argentina (1810)
Mariano Moreno
- 1692 – An earthquake registering approximately 7.5 Mw caused Port Royal, Jamaica, to sink below sea level and killed approximately 5,000 people.
- 1810 – Journalist Mariano Moreno (pictured) published Argentina's first newspaper, the Gazeta de Buenos-Ayres.
- 1917 – First World War: The British Army detonated 19 ammonal mines under German lines, killing 10,000 in the deadliest non-nuclear man-made explosion in history.
- 1948 – Anti-Jewish riots broke out in the French protectorate in Morocco, during which 44 people were killed and 150 injured.
- 1969 – The rock supergroup Blind Faith, featuring Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and Ginger Baker, played their only UK show in London's Hyde Park in front of 100,000 fans.
- Roderigo Lopes (d. 1594)
- Joseph von Fraunhofer (d. 1826)
- Allen Iverson (b. 1975)
Margaret Bondfield
- 218 – Led by the inexperienced Gannys, Elagabalus's legions defeated the forces of Roman emperor Macrinus at the Battle of Antioch.
- 1826 – In York, Upper Canada, members of the Family Compact destroyed William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press in the Types Riot after Mackenzie accused them of corruption.
- 1929 – Margaret Bondfield (pictured) became the first female member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom when she was named Minister of Labour by Ramsay MacDonald.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut took a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing after being burned by napalm.
- 1982 – Falklands War: The Argentine Air Force attacked British transport ships while unloading supplies off Bluff Cove in the Falkland Islands, killing 56 British servicemen and wounding 150 others.
- Harthacnut (d. 1042)
- Lucy Arbell (b. 1878)
- Irina Lăzăreanu (b. 1982)
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Burning of Gaspee
- 1523 – Parisian printer Simon de Colines was fined for printing biblical commentary by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples without obtaining prior approval from theologians.
- 1772 – In an act of defiance against the Navigation Acts, American colonists led by Abraham Whipple attacked and burned the British schooner Gaspee (depicted).
- 1856 – The first company of Mormon handcart pioneers left Iowa City for Salt Lake City, Utah.
- 1965 – Fighting began between the Viet Cong and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the Battle of Đồng Xoài, one of the largest battles in the Vietnam War.
- 2010 – A child suicide bomber attacked a wedding in Nadahan, Afghanistan, killing at least 40 people and injuring at least 70 others.
- William Feiner (d. 1829)
- Emma Louisa Turner (b. 1867)
- Hein Eersel (b. 1922)
Frederick Barbarossa
- 1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick Barbarossa (pictured), Holy Roman Emperor, drowned in the Saleph River in Anatolia.
- 1692 – Bridget Bishop became the first person to be executed for witchcraft in the Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts.
- 1878 – The League of Prizren was officially founded to "struggle in arms to defend the wholeness of the territories of Albania".
- 1925 – The United Church of Canada, the country's largest Protestant denomination, held its inaugural service at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto.
- 2008 – Sudan Airways Flight 109 crashed on landing at Khartoum International Airport, killing 30 of the 214 occupants on board.
- Theodor Philipsen (b. 1840)
- Margarito Bautista (b. 1878)
- Margaret Abbott (d. 1955)
June 11: Queen's Official Birthday in Tuvalu and the United Kingdom (2022)
Afonso of Brazil
- 1345 – Inspecting a new prison without being escorted by his bodyguard, the megas doux Alexios Apokaukos, chief minister of the Byzantine Empire, was lynched by the prisoners.
- 1847 – Prince Afonso (pictured) died at the age of two, leaving his father Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil, without a male heir.
- 1962 – American criminals Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris escaped from Alcatraz Island, one of the United States' most famous prisons.
- 1982 – Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released, and went on to set the record for the highest-grossing film of all time, which it held for 11 years.
- 2012 – Two earthquakes struck northern Afghanistan, triggering a massive landslide that buried a village and killed 75 people.
- Millicent Fawcett (b. 1847)
- Julius Evola (d. 1974)
- Taha Karaan (d. 2021)
June 12: Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Independence Day in the Philippines (1898); Loving Day in the United States (1967)
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Anne Frank
- 1798 – Following the successful French invasion of Malta, the Knights Hospitaller surrendered Malta to Napoleon, initiating two years of occupation.
- 1899 – The New Richmond tornado killed 117 people and injured 125 others in the Upper Midwest region of the United States.
- 1942 – On her thirteenth birthday, Anne Frank (pictured) began keeping a diary during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
- 1991 – More than 150 Sri Lankan Tamil civilians were massacred by members of the military in the village of Kokkadichcholai.
- Thomas Farnaby (d. 1647)
- Egwale Seyon (d. 1818)
- Javed Miandad (b. 1957)
USS Jeannette
- 1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, beginning the practice of clerical marriage in Protestantism.
- 1881 – The Jeannette expedition to reach the North Pole from the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait came to an end when the USS Jeannette (pictured) was finally crushed and sank after having been trapped in ice for almost two years.
- 1935 – In one of the biggest upsets in championship boxing, the underdog James J. Braddock defeated Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
- 1952 – Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed three days later by the shootdown of a second plane searching for the first one.
- 1983 – Pioneer 10 passed the orbit of Neptune, becoming the first man-made object to leave the proximity of the major planets of the Solar System.
- Mansur I (d. 976)
- Charles Algernon Parsons (b. 1854)
- Christo and Jeanne-Claude (b. 1935)
Babbage's difference engine
- 1777 – The Second Continental Congress adopted the stars and stripes design for the flag of the United States.
- 1822 – In a paper presented to the Royal Astronomical Society, English mathematician Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine (pictured), an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.
- 1900 – The second of the German Naval Laws was passed, authorising the doubling in size of the Imperial German Navy.
- 1944 – Second World War: The British Army abandoned its attempt to capture the German-occupied city of Caen.
- 1966 – The Vatican formally abolished its 427-year-old list of prohibited books.
- Henry Vane the Younger (d. 1662)
- Karl Landsteiner (b. 1868)
- Mimi Parent (d. 2005)
Queen Noor of Jordan
- 763 BC – The Bur-Sagale eclipse was observed in Assyria, the earliest solar eclipse mentioned in historical sources that has been successfully identified.
- 1896 – An earthquake registering 8.5 Mw and subsequent tsunami struck Japan, killing at least 22,000 people and destroying about 9,000 homes.
- 1920 – Three African-American circus workers were lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota, a crime that shocked the country for having taken place in the Northern United States.
- 1978 – King Hussein of Jordan married American Lisa Halaby, who became known as Queen Noor of Jordan (pictured).
- 2012 – American acrobat Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.
- Eadburh of Winchester (d. 960)
- Antoine-François de Fourcroy (b. 1755)
- Choi Hong-hi (d. 2002)
June 16: Feast of Corpus Christi (Western Christianity, 2022)
Liu Yang
- 632 – The final king of the Sasanian Empire of Iran, Yazdegerd III, ascended the throne at the age of eight.
- 1819 – A strong earthquake in the Kutch district of Gujarat, India, caused a local zone of uplift that dammed the Nara River, which was later named the Allah Bund ('Dam of God').
- 1904 – Irish author James Joyce began a relationship with Nora Barnacle, and subsequently used the date to set the actions for his 1922 novel Ulysses, commemorated as Bloomsday.
- 1972 – English musician David Bowie released his breakthrough album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
- 2012 – Liu Yang (pictured), a member of the Shenzhou 9 crew, became the first Chinese woman in space.
- Yang Jisheng (b. 1516)
- Mohammad Mosaddegh (b. 1882)
- Mel Allen (d. 1996)
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William Cornwallis
- 1397 – The kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway formed the Kalmar Union, a personal union under Eric of Pomerania.
- 1579 – Explorer Francis Drake landed in a region of present-day California, naming it New Albion and claiming it for England.
- 1795 – French Revolutionary Wars: Off the coast of Brittany, a Royal Navy squadron commanded by William Cornwallis (pictured) fended off a numerically superior French Navy fleet.
- 1952 – Guatemalan Revolution: The Guatemalan Congress passed Decree 900, redistributing unused land greater than 224 acres (0.91 km2) in area to local peasants.
- 2015 – A white supremacist committed a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people during a prayer service.
- M. C. Escher (b. 1898)
- Annie S. Swan (d. 1943)
- Grace Towns Hamilton (d. 1992)
Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo
- 1757 – Third Silesian War: The Austrian victory at the Battle of Kolín forced Prussian leader Frederick the Great to give up the Siege of Prague and retreat to Saxony.
- 1815 – War of the Seventh Coalition: Napoleon fought and lost his final battle, the Battle of Waterloo (depicted), in present-day Belgium.
- 1972 – British European Airways Flight 548 crashed near Staines-upon-Thames less than three minutes after departing from Heathrow Airport in London, killing all 118 people aboard in the worst air accident in the UK.
- 1982 – The body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, nicknamed "God's Banker" due to his close association with the Holy See, was found hanging from scaffolding beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge.
- 2012 – Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was appointed the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
- Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464)
- Isabella Rossellini (b. 1952)
- Kofoworola Abeni Pratt (d. 1992)
June 19: Juneteenth in the United States (1865)
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Julian Assange
- 1846 – The first officially recorded baseball game in U.S. history using modern rules was played in Hoboken, New Jersey, with the "New York Nine" defeating the New York Knickerbockers 23–1.
- 1867 – Second French intervention in Mexico: Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was executed by firing squad in Querétaro City.
- 1965 – Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, the head of the South Vietnam Air Force, was appointed prime minister at the head of a military regime, ending two years of short-lived military juntas.
- 1970 – The international Patent Cooperation Treaty was signed, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states.
- 2012 – Facing allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, Julian Assange (pictured), the founder of WikiLeaks, requested asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
- Guru Hargobind (b. 1595)
- Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (d. 1864)
- Aage Bohr (b. 1922)
Queen Victoria
- 1837 – Queen Victoria (pictured) acceded to the British throne, beginning a 63-year reign.
- 1926 – Approximately 250,000 spectators attended the opening procession of the 28th International Eucharistic Congress in Chicago, United States.
- 1959 – The extratropical remnants of an Atlantic hurricane reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada, causing 22 fishing boats to capsize and killing 35 people.
- 1960 – The Mali Federation gained independence from France, but dissolved into Mali and Senegal two months later.
- 1982 – The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, the first major conference in genocide studies, opened despite Turkish attempts to cancel it due to the inclusion of presentations on the Armenian genocide.
- Anna Laetitia Barbauld (b. 1743)
- Juan Larrea (d. 1847)
- Olympia Dukakis (b. 1931)
June 21: June solstice (14:54 UTC, 2023); Fête de la Musique; International Day of Yoga; National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada
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Knockcroghery clay pipe
- 1529 – War of the League of Cognac: The French army under Francis de Bourbon was destroyed in Lombardy, Italy, by the Spanish army.
- 1788 – New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution and was admitted as the ninth U.S. state.
- 1921 – Irish War of Independence: The village of Knockcroghery, Ireland, was burned by British forces.
- Pope Leo IX (b. 1002)
- Joko Widodo (b. 1961)
- Soad Hosny (d. 2001)
Laura Secord warning James FitzGibbon
- 1813 – War of 1812: After learning of a forthcoming American attack, Laura Secord walked 20 mi (32 km) from Queenston, Upper Canada, to warn British lieutenant James FitzGibbon (depicted).
- 1911 – King George V and Queen Mary of Teck were crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
- 1966 – Vietnamese Buddhist activist leader Thích Trí Quang was arrested as the military junta of Nguyễn Cao Kỳ crushed the Buddhist Uprising.
- 2002 – An earthquake registering 6.5 Mw struck northwestern Iran, killing at least 230 people and injuring 1,300 others, and later causing widespread public anger at the slow official response.
- 2009 – Two Metro trains collided in Washington, D.C., killing nine people and injuring eighty others.
- Sayf al-Dawla (b. 916)
- Maximilian von Spee (b. 1861)
- Elizabeth Warren (b. 1949)
June 23: Grand Duke's Official Birthday in Luxembourg
Patsy Mink
- 1280 – Reconquista: Troops of the Emirate of Granada defeated those of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of León in the Battle of Moclín.
- 1594 – Anglo-Spanish War: During the Action of Faial, an English attempt to capture a Portuguese carrack, reputedly one of the richest ever to set sail from the Indies, caused it to explode with all the treasure lost.
- 1972 – President Richard Nixon signed Title IX (co-author Patsy Mink pictured) into law as part of the Education Amendments, prohibiting gender discrimination in any educational program receiving U.S. federal funds.
- 1982 – Chinese American Vincent Chin died after being beaten into a coma in Highland Park, Michigan, U.S., by two automotive workers who were angry about the success of Japanese auto companies.
- Frances McDormand (b. 1957)
- Sanjay Gandhi (d. 1980)
- Betty Shabazz (d. 1997)
Julia Gillard
- 474 – Western Roman emperor Glycerius, who was not recognized by his Eastern counterpart Leo I, was forced to abdicate.
- 1340 – Hundred Years' War: The English fleet commanded by Edward III almost completely destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys.
- 1932 – A group of military officers and civilians engineered a bloodless coup in Siam, ending the absolute rule of the Chakri dynasty.
- 1937 – The U.S. Navy's first two fast battleships, North Carolina and Washington, of the North Carolina class, were respectively ordered from the New York and Philadelphia Naval Shipyards.
- 2010 – Julia Gillard (pictured) was sworn in as the first female prime minister of Australia after incumbent Kevin Rudd declined to contest a leadership spill in the Labor Party.
- John Hampden (d. 1643)
- Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens (b. 1704)
- Minor White (d. 1976)
Michael Jackson in 1993
- 1658 – Anglo-Spanish War: The largest battle ever fought on Jamaica, the three-day Battle of Rio Nuevo, began.
- 1910 – The United States Congress passed the Mann Act, which prohibited the interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes".
- 1950 – The Korean War began with North Korean forces launching a pre-dawn raid over the 38th parallel into South Korea.
- 1967 – More than an estimated 400 million people viewed Our World, the first live international satellite television production.
- 2009 – Singer Michael Jackson (pictured) died as a result of the combination of drugs in his body.
- David Douglas (b. 1799)
- George Orwell (b. 1903)
- Hillel Slovak (d. 1988)
Liquid fluorine
- 1243 – Mongol invasions of Anatolia: Mongols achieved a decisive victory over the Seljuq Turks, leading to the decline and disintegration of the Seljuk state.
- 1886 – French chemist Henri Moissan successfully isolated elemental fluorine (pictured in liquid state), for which he later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- 1907 – Organized by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, among others, Bolshevik revolutionaries robbed a bank stagecoach in Tiflis, present-day Georgia.
- 1997 – J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter fantasy novel series, is released.
- Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (b. 1699)
- Ebenezer Pemberton (d. 1835)
- David Goldblatt (d. 2018)
Artist's impression of Hayabusa2
- 1869 – One day after surrendering at the Battle of Hakodate, Enomoto Takeaki turned the fort of Goryōkaku over to Japanese forces, signaling the collapse of the Republic of Ezo.
- 1899 – A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest recorded score in cricket until being surpassed in 2016.
- 1976 – The first identifiable case of Ebola occurred in Sudan.
- 1994 – Members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas in Matsumoto, Nagano, killing eight people and injuring more than five hundred others.
- 2018 – The Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 (artist's impression pictured) arrived at the asteroid Ryugu to collect samples for return to Earth.
- Ranjit Singh (d. 1839)
- Guilhermina Suggia (b. 1885)
- Wanda Gág (d. 1946)
Anna Pavlova as Giselle
- 572 – Alboin, the king of the Lombards, was assassinated in Verona in a coup d'état instigated by the Byzantines.
- 1841 – Giselle (title role pictured), a ballet by the French composer Adolphe Adam, was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
- 1904 – In the worst maritime disaster involving a Danish merchant ship, SS Norge ran aground on Hasselwood Rock and sank in the North Atlantic, resulting in more than 635 deaths.
- 1942 – World War II: The Wehrmacht launched Case Blue, a strategic German offensive to capture oil fields in the south of the Soviet Union.
- 1978 – In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the U.S. Supreme Court barred quota systems in college admissions but held that affirmative-action programs advantaging minorities were constitutional.
- James Tuchet, 7th Baron Audley (d. 1497)
- William Hooper (b. 1742)
- Franz Stangl (d. 1971)
June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Western Christianity)
Wreckage of the St-Hilaire train disaster
- 1613 – The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of Henry VIII and ignited the roof.
- 1864 – A passenger train fell through an open swing bridge into the Richelieu River near present-day Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, killing as many as 99 people and injuring 100 others in Canada's worst railway accident (wreckage pictured).
- 1967 – Actress Jayne Mansfield, her boyfriend Sam Brody, and their driver were killed in a car accident outside of New Orleans, while her children Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay escaped with only minor injuries.
- 1995 – Atlantis became the first U.S. Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle–Mir program.
- Ludwig Beck (b. 1880)
- Charles Lyon Chandler (d. 1962)
- Jane Birdwood, Baroness Birdwood (d. 2000)
Coronation of Pope Paul VI
- 1860 – Seven months after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, prominent British scientists and philosophers participated in an evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
- 1894 – London's Tower Bridge, a combined bascule and suspension bridge over the River Thames, was inaugurated.
- 1922 – An agreement was signed to end the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic.
- 1963 – The coronation of Pope Paul VI took place, the last such ceremony before its abandonment by later popes.
- 2015 – An Indonesian Air Force military transport aircraft crashed near a residential neighborhood in Medan, killing 139 people.
- William Oughtred (d. 1660)
- Eleanor Sophia Smith (d. 1942)
- Tony Fernández (b. 1962)
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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Selected anniversaries for July[edit]
July 1: Canada Day (1867); Republic Day in Ghana (1960); Independence Day in Rwanda (1962)
Striking railroad workers, 1922
- 1690 – Williamite forces defeated the Jacobites at the Battle of the Boyne near Drogheda, marking a turning point in the Williamite War in Ireland.
- 1922 – Seven of the sixteen American railroad labor organizations staged a nationwide strike (striking workers pictured) that lasted two months.
- 1979 – Sony introduced the Walkman, a portable audio player that changed listening habits by offering users the ability to play one's own choice of music.
- 2002 – Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 and DHL Flight 611 collided in mid-air over Überlingen, Germany, killing all 71 people aboard both aircraft.
- Alfonso VI of León and Castile (d. 1109)
- Nguyễn Đình Chiểu (b. 1822)
- Julia Higgins (b. 1942)
July 2: Feast day of Saints Martinian and Processus (Catholicism)
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The Raft of the Medusa
- 626 – During the Xuanwu Gate Incident, Prince Li Shimin led his forces to assassinate his rival brothers in a coup for the imperial throne of the Tang dynasty.
- 1816 – The French frigate Méduse ran aground off the coast of present-day Mauritania, with the survivors escaping on a makeshift raft, depicted in Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa (pictured).
- 1890 – The U.S. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first United States government action to limit monopolies.
- 1917 – Amidst weeks of race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, white residents burned sections of the city and shot black inhabitants as they escaped the flames.
- 2013 – A Mw 6.1 strike-slip earthquake killed at least 35 people and injured 276 others in the Indonesian province of Aceh on the northern end of Sumatra.
- Theodoor Rombouts (b. 1597)
- Denmark Vesey (d. 1822)
- Maria Lourdes Sereno (b. 1960)
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