- 338 BC Macedonian army led by Philip II defeats the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony over Greece and the Aegean Sea
- 216 BC Second Punic War, Battle of Cannae: Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under the command of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro
- 257 St Stephen I's death ends his reign as Catholic Pope
- 1057 Frederick of Lorraine elected as the first Belgian Pope Stephen IX [X]
- 1100 King William II of England (William Rufus) is killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest
- 1494 Renaissance humanist and physician Hieronymus Münzer sets off from Nuremburg on a journey through Europe to the Iberian Peninsula, fleeing the plague [1]
- 1542 French troops under Martin von Rossem leave Flanders
Discovery of Hudson Bay
1610 English explorer Henry Hudson enters the bay later named after him, the Hudson Bay
- 1665 Battle of Vågen: English warships attack a Dutch merchant and treasure fleet in neutral Bergen, Norway, but the English are forced to retreat after suffering 421 dead and wounded
- 1695 Daniel Quare receives a British patent for his portable barometer
- 1718 Austria joins Triple Alliance of Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, forming the Quadruple Alliance, to fight against Spain
France Offers to Mediate
1738 France offers Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI mediation in his war against Turkey
United States Declaration of Independence
1776 Formal signing of the US Declaration of Independence by 56 people (date most accepted by modern historians)
Battle of the Nile
1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson further decimates the French fleet
Consul for Life
1802 Napoleon Bonaparte is declared "Consul for Life" after winning a national referendum
- 1819 First parachute jump in US by Frenchman Louis-Charles Guille over Jersey City
- 1831 Ten-Day Campaign begins; Dutch army occupies Belgium
- 1832 Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin: 1,300 Illinois militia defeat Sauk and Fox Native Americans, ending the Black Hawk War
- 1858 First mailboxes installed in Boston and New York City streets
- 1858 The Government of India is transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown
- 1861 Skirmish at Dug Springs, Missouri results in Union victory
- 1864 Saratoga Racecourse, America's oldest thoroughbred racetrack, opens its inaugural meet with four days of racing
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1865 Lewis Carroll publishes the children's novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
- 1865 Trans Atlantic Cable laid by SS Great Eastern between Great Britain and America snaps and is lost
- 1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London
- 1873 First trial run of San Francisco cable car in Clay Street between Kearny and Jones
- 1877 San Francisco Public Library opens with 5,000 volumes
- 1880 British Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
- 1887 Chester A. Hodge of Beloit, Wisconsin, patents "spur" barbed wire
- 1892 George A. Wheeler is granted a US patent for a prototype of the escalator
- 1894 Death duties are first introduced in Britain
- 1894 Dutch Society for Women's Suffrage receives royal charter
- 1903 Unsuccessful uprising of Macedonians against the Ottoman Empire
- 1906 Chicago White Sox beat Boston Americans 3-0 to start an AL record 19-game MLB win streak
Walter Johnson's First Game
1907 Legendary pitcher Walter Johnson, at 19, begins his 21-year Baseball Hall of Fame playing career with Washington with a 3-2 loss against Detroit
- 1909 Army Air Corps formed as Army takes first delivery from Wright Brothers
Lincoln Penny
1909 US issues the first Lincoln penny, featuring a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the front and wheat stalks on the reverse
- 1911 President of Haiti Antoine Simon is ousted in a coup d'état by General Cincinnatus Leconte and flees Port-au-Prince aboard the Haitian warship 17 Décembre, bound for the United States [1]
- 1914 Belgian government receives German ultimatum
- 1914 German and Ottoman empires sign a secret treaty of alliance after the outbreak of WWI
- 1914 German press falsely reports that French have bombed Nuremberg
- 1914 German troops overthrow Luxembourg
- 1914 World War I: Russian troops invade East Prussia
- 1916 World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto, Italy
- 1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I
Back To Africa
1920 Marcus Garvey presents his "Back to Africa" program in NYC
- 1921 After three hours of deliberation, a Chicago jury acquits eight Chicago White Sox players accused in the Black Sox scandal; the next day, they are banned from organized baseball for life
- 1922 China is hit by a typhoon, killing about 60,000 people
- 1924 A's first baseman Joe Hauser sets an AL record of 14 total bases in a game with three home runs and a double as Philadelphia beats the Cleveland Indians 12-4 at Dunn Field
Italo-Ethiopian Treaty
1928 Benito Mussolini signs peace treaty with Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
Discovery of the Positron
1932 Carl David Anderson discovers and photographs a positron, the first known anti-particle
Hitler Commander-in-chief
1934 Adolf Hitler becomes commander-in-chief of German armed forces
- 1934 Adolf Hitler merges the offices of German Chancellor and President, declaring himself "Führer" (leader)
- 1934 First airplane train: airplane tows three mail gliders behind it
- 1934 William Franks twirls an Indian club overhead 17,280 times in 1 hour
- 1936 Americans Cornelius Johnson, Dave Albritton, and Delos Thurber sweep the high jump medals at the Berlin Olympics
- 1936 Finnish trifecta in the 10,000 m final at the Berlin Olympics as Ilmari Salminen beats teammates Arvo Askola and Volmari Iso-Hollo
- 1937 Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 passes in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal
- 1938 MLB conducts the first test of bright yellow baseballs during Brooklyn Dodgers vs. St. Louis Cardinals doubleheader
Einstein's Letter to FDR
1939 Albert Einstein writes to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, informing him of recent research on fission chain reactions, making possible the construction of "extremely powerful bombs" [1]
- 1939 US Hatch Act prohibits political activity by federal workers
De Gaulle Sentenced to Death
1940 Clermont-Ferrand sentences General Charles de Gaulle to death in absentia
Film & TV History
1943 "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry pilots B-17 "Yankee Doodle," which crashes on takeoff, killing two people
- 1943 Armed revolt by 800 prisoners at Treblinka Extermination Camp: crematorium is destroyed and about 200 people escape the compound, but only 100 survive
- 1943 Race riot in Harlem, New York City, continues; at least six people die, about 400 are injured, 600 arrested, and property damage nears $5 million [1]
- 1943 Sunderland seaplanes sink U-706 and U-106
JFK Boat Sinks
1943 WWII: US Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy's PT boat 109 sinks in the Solomon Islands
- 1944 Jewish survivors of Kovno Ghetto emerge from their bunkers
- 1944 Turkey breaks diplomatic relationship with Nazi Germany
Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
1945 After 3½ days suffering exhaustion, lack of water, and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS Indianapolis are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, a PV-1 Ventura pilot on a routine sector search; 316 survive
Potsdam Conference
1945 Potsdam Conference between Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill (replaced by Clement Attlee after losing the 1945 general election) ends
Music History
1947 Greek-American soprano Maria Callas makes her Italian debut in the title role of Amilcare Ponchielli's "La Gioconda" at the Verona Arena
- 1948 Danish swimmer Greta Andersen (1:06.3) touches out American Ann Curtis by 0.2 seconds in the women's 100 m freestyle at the London Olympics
- 1948 Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands wins the 100 m in 11.9 at the London Olympics, her first of unprecedented three individual track and field gold medals
- 1948 Italians Adolfo Consolini and Giuseppe Tosi go 1-2 in the men's discus final at the London Olympics
Patterson Wins Gold
1952 17-year-old future world champion Floyd Patterson wins the gold medal in the middleweight division at the Helsinki Olympic Games with a first-round KO of Romanian Vasile Tita
- 1952 Hungarian boxer László Papp wins his second consecutive Olympic gold medal
- 1953 KCPQ TV channel 13 in Tacoma-Seattle, Washington (IND) begins broadcasting
- 1953 WANC-TV channel 21 in Asheville, North Carolina (IND) begins broadcasting
- 1954 Tahar Ben Ammar is appointed premier of Tunisia
- 1955 USSR performs a nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan
- 1957 Lovell Telescope's first light (first astronomical image) by what was then the world's largest steerable telescope at Jodrell Bank, England [1]
- 1958 American pilots Jim Heth and Bill Burkhart take off from Dallas, Texas, in "The Old Scotchman," their modified Cessna 172, in an effort to break the airplane flight endurance record; they fly for slightly over 50 days, eclipsing the existing record by more than three days
- 1958 Jordan and Iraq dissolve their Arab Federation after three months
Willie McCovey's 1st HR
1959 Future Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey hits the first of his 521 MLB home runs in the SF Giants' 5-3 win against the Pittsburgh Pirates
- 1959 Milwaukee Braves outfielder Bill Bruton hits three triples in an 11-5 win against the St. Louis Cardinals; two of them with bases loaded, the first time in the 20th century
- 1960 Baseball's new Continental League formally disbands without ever having played a game after established MLB promises of expansion, including New York City, achieve the owners' desired effect
- 1961 Cyrille Adoula becomes Prime Minister of Congo
- 1961 St. Louis Cardinals (NFL) beat Toronto Argonauts (CFL) 36-7 in an exhibition game in Toronto, Canada
- 1961 The Beatles perform their first gig as the house band at Liverpool's Cavern Club
- 1963 30th Chicago College All-Star Game at Soldier Field: All-Stars 20, Green Bay 17 (65,000 attendees)
- 1963 Second Gilson Act, language laws in Belgium goes into effect causing a riot
- 1964 North Vietnam fires at the US Navy destroyer USS Maddox in what becomes known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, eventually escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War
- 1964 Race riot in Jersey City, New Jersey, sparked by the arrest of a Black woman, Delores Shannon, and a resident who tried to help her, Walter Mays
- 1965 Morley Safer sends first Vietnam report, indicating the US is losing
- 1966 Radio Vila in the New Hebrides begins broadcasting
- 1967 NFL New Orleans Saints play their first-ever preseason game, losing to the Los Angeles Rams 16-7 at Anaheim Stadium in California
- 1967 NYC's recently established Landmarks Preservation Commission designates Grand Central Terminal train station as a landmark, thereby protecting its facade and interior architectural features [1]
In the Heat of the Night
1967 The film "In the Heat of the Night," based on John Ball's novel of the same name, directed by Norman Jewison, and starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, premieres in New York and wins five Academy Awards in 1968, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Steiger
- 1967 The second Blackwall Tunnel opens to traffic under the River Thames in Greenwich, London
- 1967 US Lunar Orbiter 5 is launched and enters lunar orbit on August 5
- 1968 35th Chicago College All-Star Game at Soldier Field: Green Bay 34, All-Stars 17 (69,917 attendees)
- 1968 Ron Hansen (Washington Senators) and Tim Cullen (Chicago White Sox) become the first MLB players to be traded for each other twice in the same season; they had been traded in February in opposite directions
Nixon in Romania
1969 US President Richard Nixon visits Romania
American Graffiti
1973 "American Graffiti," directed by George Lucas and starring Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard, premieres at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland
George Brett Debuts
1973 Future Baseball Hall of Fame third baseman George Brett gets his first MLB hit on debut for the Kansas City Royals in a 3-1 win over the Chicago White Sox
- 1975 104°F (40°C) in Providence, Rhode Island (state record)
- 1975 107°F (42°C) in Chester/New Bedford, Massachusetts (state record)
- 1977 In his comeback Test, England cricket batsman Geoff Boycott is unbeaten on 80 after a first innings 107 as England beats Australia by seven wickets in the third Test at Trent Bridge
- 1979 MLB New York Mets purchase contract of outfielder José Cardenal from Philadelphia Phillies between games of a double-header between the two teams
Paul Volcker
1979 Paul Volcker is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
- 1979 Washington, D.C. trial attorney Edward Bennett Williams buys MLB's Baltimore Orioles from Jerold Hoffberger for a reported $12.3 million
- 1980 Cuban super-heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson becomes the first fighter to win three Olympic gold medals in the same division, scoring a 4-1 points decision over Pyotr Zayev (Soviet Union) in Moscow
- 1980 Fascist bomb attack on Bologna Centrale railway station in Italy kills 85 people and injures 200
Baseball Record
1982 Oakland A's outfielder Rickey Henderson steals his 100th MLB base of the season in a 6-5 win against Seattle, becoming the first to steal 100 bases twice in the modern era
- 1982 Roger Ebert's "Movie News" premieres on ABC FM network
- 1983 STS-8 vehicle moves to Launch Complex 39A
- 1983 US District Court begins trial against Yonkers for alleged race discrimination
- 1984 Jeff Blatnick becomes the first American to win a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the Los Angeles Olympics while in remission for Hodgkin’s disease
- 1984 US performs nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site
- 1985 Delta Air Lines Flight 191, operated by a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes on approach to Dallas Fort Worth Airport during a thunderstorm, killing 136 people, injuring 25, and leaving 27 survivors
- 1985 Five people die in a train crash in Westminster, Colorado
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1986 American athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee beats her own world heptathlon record by 13 points (7,161) in Houston
Iraq Offers Peace
1986 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein offers peace in open letter to Iran
- 1986 Lee Elder fires a record 11-under-par 61 on his way to winning the Senior PGA Merrill Lynch/Golf Digest Commemorative at Sleepy Hollow CC; the record stands for 11 years
- 1987 Cincinnati outfielder Eric Davis is seventh to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in one season as he homers in Reds 5-4 win against the Giants
- 1987 Don Brown sets a flight record for a handbow (1,336 yards, 1 foot, and 3 inches)
- 1987 IBM launches its PS/2, the company's second generation line of personal computers
- 1987 Michael Andretti runs the fastest Indy car race in history (171.49 mph) to win the Marlboro 500 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan
- 1988 Raymond Acevedo (16) retires from pop singing boy band Menudo
- 1988 System Enhancement Association settles case with PKware (ARC vs. PKARC)
Voyager 2 Spacecraft
1989 NASA confirms Voyager 2's discovery of three more moons of Neptune, designated temporarily as 1989 N2, 1989 N3, and 1989 N24
- 1990 Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait, and the Emir flees to Saudi Arabia
Bush Orders Troops to Saudi Arabia
1990 US President George H. W. Bush orders troops to Saudi Arabia
- 1990 Yankees rookie first baseman Kevin Maas hits his 10th MLB homer in a 6-5 loss against Detroit, becoming the fastest to reach that milestone in just 77 at-bats
Rick James Arrested
1991 Funk singer Rick James is arrested on charges of sexual assault and torture; later found guilty by jury
- 1991 Pan Am games open in Havana
- 1991 Space Shuttle STS-43 (Atlantis 9) launches
- 1992 American Jacki Joyner-Kersee becomes first athlete to win consecutive gold medals in the gruelling heptathlon with a 199 point win over Irina Belova (Soviet Union) at the Barcelona Olympics
Baseball Hall of Fame
1992 Tom Seaver, Rollie Fingers, Hal Newhouser, and Bill McGowan are inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame
- 1992 Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus becomes the first gymnast to win six gold medals at one Olympics in Barcelona and the first to win four golds in one day's competition (pommel horse, vault, rings, and parallel bars)
- 1993 Maryland investors, led by Baltimore attorney Peter Angelos, buy the MLB Baltimore Orioles team at auction in New York for $173 million, nearly $50 million more than ever paid for a baseball team
- 1993 NYC radio (WFAN) personality Don Imus' lung collapses
- 1993 Shamrock Broadcasting, a Disney company, officially takes ownership of Cleveland's WMMS-FM 100.7 and WHK-AM 1420
- 1993 Train crash in a tunnel in Vega de Anzo, Spain, kills 12 people
- 1994 Explosion in lead/zinc mine in Guangxi, China, kills over 120 people
Howard Stern Disclosure
1994 New York Supreme Court refuses Howard Stern's non-financial disclosure
- 1994 Noureddine Morceli runs a world record in the 3000 m (7:25.11)
- 1994 Whitewater Congressional hearings begin
- 1995 Saudi Arabia's King Fahd issues a decree replacing all members of the Council of Ministers who do not have blood ties to the royal Family
Dream Team III
1996 The star-studded United States men's basketball team, Dream Team III, beat Yugoslavia 95-69 to win the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics
The Sixth Sense
1999 "The Sixth Sense," starring Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, and Haley Joel Osment, premieres at Prince Music Theater
Event of Interest
2001 Robert Mueller is unanimously approved for position of FBI Director by the US Senate, in 98-0 vote
Film & TV History
2002 American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan's sci-fi horror thriller "Signs," starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, premieres
- 2003 South African cricket batsman Graeme Smith blazes 259, and fast bowler Makhaya Ntini takes five wickets in each England innings as Proteas win the second Test by an innings and 92 runs at Lord's
- 2005 MESSENGER spacecraft performs an Earth flyby
- 2005 The largest trade in NBA history is completed as five teams combine to swap 13 players; the deal brings Antoine Walker and Jason Williams to Miami and leads to the Heat's first-ever championship that season
- 2007 British actor Chris Langham is found guilty on 15 charges of possessing child pornography [1]
Breaking Dawn
2008 "Breaking Dawn," the fourth book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga, is published by Little, Brown at midnight with a print run of 3.7 million copies
World Records Galore
2009 Michael Phelps ends the World Swimming Championships in Rome with his fifth gold medal as part of the US 4 x 100 m medley relay team, which records the 43rd world record of the controversial meet
- 2012 23 people are killed after two blasts in a fruit market in Lahore, Pakistan
- 2012 American swimmer Michael Phelps wins an unprecedented third consecutive gold medal in the 200 m individual medley in 1:54.27 at the London Olympics
- 2012 American swimmer Rebecca Soni becomes the first woman to win the 200 m breaststroke twice with a world record of 2:19.59 at the London Olympics
- 2013 40 people are killed after an ammunition depot explodes in Homs, Syria
Carl Icahn Sues Dell
2013 Carl Icahn sues computer giant Dell in an attempt to derail a buyout bid by the CEO, Michael Dell
- 2013 Naresh Sohal's orchestral work "The Cosmic Dance" first performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Peter Oundjian, at the Royal Albert Hall, London
- 2014 Super Rugby Final, ANZ Stadium, Sydney: NSW Waratahs win their first SR title in a nail-biting 33-32 home effort against New Zealand's Canterbury Crusaders
- 2017 First footage of white giraffes is posted by the Hirola Conservation Program in northeastern Kenya
- 2017 First successful gene editing in human embryos to repair disease-causing mutation reported by scientists in "Nature"
Prince Philip Retires
2017 Great Britain's Prince Philip, aged 96, makes his final solo public appearance before retiring from public engagements
- 2017 More than one billion people around the world need glasses and 36 million are blind, according to a new study published in "The Lancet"
- 2017 New cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash is created via a hard fork of Bitcoin's blockchain technology and brand
Trump Sanctions Russia
2017 US President Donald Trump signs legislation imposing sanctions on Russia, limiting his ability to ever lift them
- 2018 Apple becomes the first American publicly listed company to reach $1 trillion in value
- 2018 Fields Medal for mathematics is awarded to Caucher Birkar (his is stolen minutes later), Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze, and Akshay Venkatesh
- 2018 Japanese newspaper "Yomiuri Shimbun" reveals Tokyo Medical University is tampering with female entrance exams to ensure fewer than 30% are accepted
- 2018 Oldest library in Germany confirmed unearthed in Cologne dating to 2 AD, possibly holding 20,000 scrolls
- 2018 Pope Frances declares the death penalty unacceptable in all cases, reversing church teachings and adding to Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church
- 2018 TikTok, the video-sharing social network, becomes available worldwide after merging with Musical.ly
- 2019 Pedro Pierluisi is sworn in as the new Governor of Puerto Rico, replacing Ricardo A. Rosselló
- 2019 Saudi Arabia announces new rules for women, including allowing them to travel independently abroad without a male guardian's permission
- 2019 Seven-year-old boy undergoes surgery after 526 teeth are found inside his mouth in Chennai, India
Ed Sheeran's Divide Tour
2019 Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran's Divide tour becomes the most attended and highest-grossing tour of all time, overtaking U2 after 893 days on the road
- 2020 Australian state of Victoria announces state of disaster and imposes further lockdown measures after spike in COVID-19 cases
- 2020 Islamic State stages a jailbreak at a prison in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, placing bombs at its entrance, resulting in a 20-hour gunfight, 29 deaths, and over 300 prisoners at large
- 2020 Mary Prince Day is established in Bermuda, recognizing Mary Prince, the first known Black woman to relate the story of her life, which helps hasten the abolition of slavery in the British Empire [1]
- 2020 South Africa confirms over 500,000 cases of COVID-19 with 10,107 deaths, highest total on the African continent
- 2020 United Arab Emirates starts up the Arab world's first nuclear power station at the Barakah plant
US Meets Vaccination Target
2021 70% of American have had at least one COVID-19 vaccination shot, a target President Joe Biden had hoped to meet by 4 July
Pelosi Visits Taiwan
2022 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the first speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years, prompting condemnation from the Chinese Communist Party [1]
- 2023 Beijing records its heaviest rainfall in 140 years, registering 744.8 millimeters (29.3 inches) between July 29th and August 2nd as Typhoon Doksuri passes through [1]
- 2023 Fossils from the Ica Desert, Peru, may belong to the heaviest creature that ever lived, surpassing the blue whale; named Perucetus colossus, its heavier bones suggest it could have weighed 85 to 340 tonnes [1]
Aerosmith Cancels Tour
2024 American rock band Aerosmith cancels their "Peace Out: The Farewell Tour" and retires from touring due to a vocal cord injury of singer Steven Tyler (76)
- 2024 Australian Kaylee McKeown joins Roland Matthes of Germany (1968, 72) as the only swimmers to achieve the Olympic 100/200 m backstroke double when McKeown wins the 200m event in Paris
- 2024 French swim sensation Léon Marchand wraps up his Paris Olympics individual program with gold in the 200 m individual medley, his fourth of the Games
- 2024 In a rare podium sweep, France wins the men's BMX with Joris Daudet, Sylvain André, and Romain Mahieu going 1-2-3 at the Paris Olympics
- 2024 MLB San Francisco Giants pitcher Blake Snell no-hits Cincinnati Reds 3-0 at Great American Ballpark, Cincinnati, Ohio
- 2025 MLB Speedway Classic: regular season record crowd of 91,032 gathers for a baseball game at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, but game gets rained out in bottom of first inning
