1318 – Berwick-upon-Tweed is captured by the Scottish from the English.
1693 – Cotton Mather’s four-day-old son dies, and witchcraft is blamed
1748 – Ruins of Pompeii found
1778 – New Orleans businessman Oliver Pollock creates “$” symbol
1789 – In New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.
1793 – Volcano Unsen on Japan erupts killing about 53,000
1815 – Otto von Bismarck, German politician, 1st Chancellor of the German Empire (d. 1898) was born.
1826 – Samuel Morey is issued the first U.S. patent for an internal-combustion engine, which he calls a “Gas or Vapour Engine”
1832 – Robert the Hermit, US ex-slave/hermit in Massachusetts, dies
1833 – The Convention of 1833, a political gathering of settlers in Mexican Texas to help draft a series of petitions to the Mexican government, begins in San Felipe de Austin
1854 – Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times begins serialisation in his magazine, Household Words.
1857 – Herman Melville publishes The Confidence-Man.
1865 – American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks. Union Army led by Philip Sheridan decisively defeated Confederate States Army led by George Pickett, leading to Breakthrough at Petersburg and Appomattox Campaign.
1866 – US Congress rejects presidential veto giving all equal rights in US
1873 – The White Star steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547 in the worst marine disaster of the 19th century.
1881 – Anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem
1883 – Lon Chaney, CO, man of 1000 faces, actor (High Noon, Phantom of Opera) Born
1891 – The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois.
1893 – The rank of Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy is established.
1908 – The Territorial Force (renamed Territorial Army in 1920) is formed as a volunteer reserve component of the British Army.
1917 – Scott Joplin, ragtime composer (The Entertainer), dies at 48
1918 – Henry Miller’s Theater opens at 124 W 43rd St NYC
1918 – The Royal Air Force is created by the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
1922 – Six Irish Catholic civilians are shot and beaten to death by a gang of policemen in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1924 – Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
1924 – The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed.
1930 – “Blue Angel” starring unknown Marlene Dietrich premieres in America
1930 – Cosima Liszt, wife of Austrian composer Richard Wagner, dies at 92
1931 – Jackie Mitchell became 1st female in professional baseball
1933 – The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organize a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic acts.
1934 – Clyde Barrow kills two young highway patrolmen, H. D. Murphy and Edward Bryant Wheeler, at the intersection of Route 114 and Dove Road near Grapevine, Texas. Bonnie Parker’s role in the murders was greatly exaggerated, but helped turn public perception against the gang for good
1936 – Charles “Lucky” Luciano” is arrested in Arkansas on a criminal warrant from New York
1937 – Spanish Civil War: Jaén, Spain is bombed by Nazi forces.
1939 – Spanish Civil War: Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1939 – Ali MacGraw, Pound Ridge NY, actress (Love Story, Goodbye Columbus) Born
1941 – Fântâna Albă massacre: between 200 and 2,000 Romanian civilians are killed by Soviet Border Guards.
1945 – John Barbata, American drummer (The Turtles, Jefferson Airplane, and The Sentinals) was born.
1945 – World War II: Operation Iceberg – United States troops land on Okinawa in the last major campaign of the war.
1946 – Ronnie “Plonk” Lane, rock bassist (Small Faces-Hey Girl), born in London, England
1948 – Jimmy Cliff, Reggae singer – Born
1948 – Simon Crowe, rock drummer (Boomtown Rats-Maxinguaye) Born
1949 – Gil Scott-Heron, US, writer/poet/singer (Whities on the Moon) Born
1949 – The Government of Canada repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years.
1949 – The 26 counties of the Irish Free State become Ireland.
1950 – Samuel Alito, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Birthed
1952 – Big Bang theory proposed in Physical Review by Alpher, Bethe & Gamow
1952 – Annette O’Toole, actress (Cat People, Superman III), born in Houston, Texas
1952 – Billy Currie, rock keyboardist/violinist (Ultravox-We Came to Dance) Born
1954 – Jeff Porcaro, American drummer, songwriter, and producer (Toto and Clover) (d. 1992) was born.
1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
1955 – Terry Nichols, Alleged OKC Bomber – was born.
1955 – Stan Ridgway, rocker (Wall Of Voodoo) Born
1957 – The BBC creates a hoax Panorama programme about spaghetti crops in Switzerland and showing women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry. It should be remembered in context that Spaghetti was not a widely-eaten food in the UK in 1957 and considered by many as an exotic delicacy
1958 – D. Boon, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Minutemen and The Reactionaries) (d. 1985) was born.
1960 – J. Christopher Stevens, American lawyer and diplomat, 10th United States Ambassador to Libya (d. 2012) was born.
1961 – Mark White, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (ABC) was born.
1966 – Loyalist led by Ian Paisley, a Protestant fundamentalist preacher, founded the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee to challenge the civil rights movement; it set up a paramilitary-style wing called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers
1967 – The United States Department of Transportation begins operation.
1970 – President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General’s warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States, starting on January 1, 1971.
1970 – John & Yoko release hoax they are having dual sex change operations
1972 – Jesse Tobias, American guitarist and songwriter (Red Hot Chili Peppers and Splendid) was born.
1973 – Project Tiger, a tiger conservation project, is launched in the Corbett National Park, India.
1973 – John & Yoko form a new country with no laws or boundaries, called Nutopia, its national anthem is silence
1974 – In the United Kingdom, the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties come into being.
1974 – Ayatollah Khomeini calls for an Islamic Republic in Iran
1976 – Apple Inc. is formed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.
1976 – Conrail takes over operations from six bankrupt railroads in the Northeastern U.S..
1976 – The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect, soon revealed as an April Fools’ Day hoax, is first reported by British astronomer Patrick Moore.
1976 – “Helter Skelter”, detailing Charles Manson’s cult “family”, their capture, trial, conviction and aftermath, premieres on CBS
1979 – Iran becomes an Islamic republic by a 99% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah.
1980 – Failed assassination attempt on Iraqi vice-premier Tariq Aziz
1980 – Bijou Phillips, American actress (Bully), Born
1983 – Anti-nuclear demonstrators link arms in 14-mile human chain in England
1984 - Marvin Gaye, singer (Sexual Healing), shot to death by his father Marvin Gaye Sr in LA at 44
1989 – Margaret Thatcher’s new local government tax, the Community Charge (commonly known as the “poll tax”), is introduced in Scotland.
1990 – It becomes illegal in Salem Oregon to be within 2 feet of nude dancers
1997 – Comet Hale-Bopp Perihelion (0.914 AU)
1997 – Shell Oil confirms it will declare force majeure at its Nigerian Bonny terminal due to local protests which disrupted 210 million barrels per day of the company’s oil production
1998 – Rozz Williams, American musician (Christian Death) (b. 1963) Dies of overdose
1999 – Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories.
2000 – The Enigma wartime coding machine used by the Germans to cipher messages during World War II is stolen from the Bletchley Park Museum in Buckinghamshire, south-east England. The Enigma code created by the machine was thought by the Germans to be unbreakable but British mathematicians, scientists and agents stationed at Bletchley Park succeeded in cracking the Enigma code – a cipher with 150 million million million possible combinations which the Germans thought was unbreakable.
2001 – Former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on war crimes charges.
2001 – Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands, the first contemporary country to allow it.
2002 – The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia, becoming the first nation in the world to do so.
2003 – Rooster Teeth is founded.
2003 – Jessica Lynch is rescued from a hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq, where she had been held prisoner since her unit was ambushed nine days earlier. This story has created a great deal of controversy over the years with conflicting reports of what happened during her time in captivity and her rescue, so only the basic facts are included here she was injured, captured by Iraq Forces and rescued.
2004 – Google announces Gmail to the public.
2006 – The Serious Organised Crime Agency, dubbed the “British FBI”, is created in the United Kingdom.
2011 – After protests against the burning of the Quran turn violent, a mob attacks a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of thirteen people, including eight foreign workers.
2013 – The world’s first smelling TV screen is unveiled in Japan
2014 – NATO suspends all practical civilian and military cooperation with Russia