1616 – Samuel de Champlain returns to Quebec.
1735 – Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979.
1750 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire.
1767 – John Quincy Adams, American politician, 6th President of the United States (d. 1848) was born.
1796 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.
1798 – The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.
1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
1895 – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists.
1899 – E. B. White, American author, Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. (d. 1985) was born.
1906 – Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.
1920 – James von Brunn, American murderer, committed the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting (d. 2010) was born.
1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.
1934 – Engelbert Zaschka of Germany flies his large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft, about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take off.
1943 – World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily – German and Italian troops launch a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily.
1959 – Richie Sambora, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Bon Jovi) was born.
1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.
1962 – Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.
1977 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1990 – Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada begins.
2006 – Mumbai train bombings: 209 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India.
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