322 BC – Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great.
461 – Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer.
1409 – Council of Pisa closes (unrecognized ecumenical council of the Catholic Church.)
1679 – The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
1789 – The United States Department of War is established.
1791 – American troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in the Northwest Indian War.
1794 – U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
1802 – Napoleon orders re-instatement of slavery on St Domingue (Haiti)
1876 – Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (d. 1917) was born.
1882 – Hatfields of south WV & McCoys of east Ky feud, 100 wounded or die
1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, American activist (d. 1964) was born.
1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
1912 – Progressive (Bull Moose) Party nominates Theodore Roosevelt for pres. (Banker backed ‘Progressive” Woodrow Wilson Wins the “election”)
1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
1930 – The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States(A large mob estimated at 2,000 lynch two young black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana)
1933 – The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.
1934 – US Court of Appeals upheld lower court ruling striking down government’s attempt to ban controversial James Joyce novel “Ulysses”
1935 – 60% of voters agrees to nazism in Danzig (Gdansk, Poland)
1941 – Rabindranath Tagore, Indian philosopher/poet/writer, dies at 80
1942 – World War II: the Battle of Guadalcanal begins – United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
1946 – 1st coin bearing portrait of “Negro” authorized
1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
1956 – Boston Red Sox fine Ted Williams $5,000 ($75K today) for spitting at Boston fans
1957 – Oliver Hardy, comedian of Laurel & Hardy, dies at 65
1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the “sheaves of wheat” design, and was minted until 2008.
1959 – Explorer 6 transmits 1st TV photo of Earth from space
1964 (50th Anny) – Vietnam War: the U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody. (4, including presiding Haley, killed in courthouse shootout in San Rafael, California- Police charge Angela Davis provided weapons)
1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.
(Scientists in Pasadena, California, announce Viking I found strongest indications to date of possible life on Mars)
1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been negligently disposed of.
1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
1985 – The White House Farm murders took place near the English village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, England.
1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
1991 – Court rules Manuel Noriega, may access some secret US documents (Ties to Iran / Contra, Bush Sr, Oliver North, CIA Cocaine…)
2005 – Peter Jennings, Canadian-born news anchor (b. 1938)Dies of cancer
2008 – Georgia launches a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia, in an attempt to reclaim the territory from Russia, starting the 2008 South Ossetia war.