1745 – British troops take Cape Breton Island, which is now part of Nova Scotia, Canada.
1779 – Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.
1816 – Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
1829 – Geronimo, American tribal leader (d. 1909) was born.
1836 – The formation of the London Working Men’s Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement.
1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 concludes. Pope Pius IX is elected Pope beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy.
1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
1858 – The Battle of Morar takes place during the Indian Mutiny.
1871 – The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).
1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England kills 183 children.
1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway”, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.
1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.
1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.
1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”.
1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.
1911 – A 772 gram stony meteorite strikes the earth near Kilbourn, Wisconsin damaging a barn.
1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed.
1934 – Jane Henson, American puppeteer (d. 2013) was born.
1944 – At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. On December 17, 2014, his conviction was posthumously vacated 70 years after his execution
1947 – Tom Malone, American trombonist, composer, and producer (The Blues Brothers and CBS Orchestra) was born.
1971 – Tupac Shakur, American rapper, producer, and actor (Digital Underground, Outlawz, and Thug Life) (d. 1996) was born.
1972 – The largest single-site hydroelectric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls Generating Station.
1976 – Soweto uprising: A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd.
1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.
1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor.
2000 – Israel complies with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 22 years after its issuance, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel does so, except the disputed Shebaa farms.