1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, planned the Gunpowder Plot (d. 1606) was born.
1613 – Samuel Argall captures Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father. She is brought to Henricus as hostage.
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826) was born.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces are ambushed and defeated in the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
1796 – The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
1866 – Butch Cassidy, American criminal (d. 1908) was born.
1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1873 – The Colfax massacre, in which more than 60 African Americans are murdered, takes place.
1866 – Butch Cassidy [Robert LeRoy Parker], American desperado (Wild Bunch Passage)
1899 – Alfred Mosher Butts, American architect and game designer, created Scrabble (d. 1993) was born.
1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1902 – Philippe de Rothschild, Paris, manager (Bordeaux Vineyard) Birthed
1906 – Budd [Lawrence] Freeman, US jazz saxophonist (Eel) Born
1906 – Samuel Beckett, French playwright (Waiting for Godot, Nobel 1969) Born
1909 – The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
1919 – The establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.
1931 – 10 men killed in Chicago tunnel fire, the cause of the explosion was spontaneous combustion and is the worst underground disaster in Chicago History
1940 – Lester Chambers, American singer-songwriter (The Chambers Brothers) was born.
1941 – A Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson’s birth.
1944 – Jack Casady, American bass player (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and Jefferson Starship) was born.
1945 – Lowell George, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Little Feat and Mothers of Invention) (d. 1979) was born.
1946 – Al Green, Forest City Arkansas, singer (Lets Stay Together) Born
1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
1949 – The Nuremberg Trials ended with 19 top aids to Adolf Hitler receiving up to 25 years for their part in war crimes against humanity.
1949 – Christopher Hitchens, Portsmouth England, author and columnist (Vanity Fair, New Statesman) Born
1950 – Riff West, rock bassist (Molly Hatchet) Born
1950 – Ron Perlman, American actor (Hellboy,Sons of Anarchy) was born.
1951 – Max Weinberg, American drummer (E Street Band and Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band) was born.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKULTRA.
1954 – Jimmy Destri, American keyboard player and songwriter (Blondie) was born.
1955 – Steve Camp, American singer-songwriter and guitarist was born.
1957 – Amy Goodman, American journalist and author was born.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
1962 – Hillel Slovak, Israeli-American guitarist (Red Hot Chili Peppers and What Is This?) (d. 1988) was born.
1966 – Marc Ford, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (The Black Crowes and Burning Tree) was born.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
1972 – The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
1972 – Aaron Lewis, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Staind) was born.
1974 – Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the United States’ first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.
1975 – Bus massacre in Lebanon: An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson’s 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.
1987 – Portugal and the People’s Republic of China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.
1989 – Israeli soldiers carry out a raid on a West Bank village leaving at least six Palestinians dead, this is part of the continuing attempts to quell the Palestinian uprising.
1992 – The Great Chicago flood devastates much of central Chicago.
1997 – Bryant Bowles, American soldier and activist, founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (b. 1920) died.
1999 – Jack Kervorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk, 52 who was in the final stages of ALS ( Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s Disease ). The assisted suicide in 1998 was videotaped and shown on the November 23rd , 1998 broadcast of “60 Minutes”. Kevorkian served eight years of the prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on June 1, 2007, on parole due to good behavior
2001 – Robert Moon, American postal inspector, created the ZIP code (b. 1917) died.
2005 – Johnnie Johnson, American blues musician (b. 1924) Dies
2005 – Eric Rudolph ( also known as the Olympic Park Bomber ), pleads guilty to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in Atlanta Georgia. Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and the death penalty.
2009 – Mark Fidrych, American baseball player (b. 1954) Dies
2013 – Chi Cheng, American Bassist (Deftones), dies at 42
2014 – Three people were killed when a man went on a shooting spree at the Jewish Community Campus and a Jewish retirement home in Overland Park. Police took a suspect into custody, a white man in his seventies who had been reportedly yelling anti-Semitic things while in the police car. The suspect was later identified as Frazier Glenn Cross, a white supremacist (And FBI Informant) who had previous run-ins with the law and was associated with the Klu Klux Klan and other racist groups. All three victims were Christians.