1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel’s Water Music is premiered.
1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.
1763 – John Jacob Astor, German-American businessman (d. 1848) was born.
1771 – Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
1791 – Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
1794 – The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.
1917 – King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.
1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives are lost.
1932 – Altona Bloody Sunday: A riot between the Nazi Party paramilitary forces, the SS and SA, and the German Communist Party ensues.
1933 – After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.
1936 – Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.
1938 – Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becomes known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
1944 – Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.
1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.
1945 – World War II: the main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.
1948 – Ron Asheton, American guitarist, songwriter, and actor (The Stooges, Destroy All Monsters, The New Order, and New Race) (d. 2009) was born.
1949 – Geezer Butler, English bass player and songwriter (Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler Band, GZR, and Heaven & Hell) was born.
1953 – The largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event results from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44.
1954 – Angela Merkel, German politician, 8th Chancellor of Germany was born.
1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California
1959 – Billie Holiday, American singer-songwriter and actress (b. 1915) died.
1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.
1968 – A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba’ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
1976 – East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.
1976 – The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team.
1981 – The opening of the Humber Bridge by Queen Elizabeth II in England, United Kingdom.
1985 – Founding of the EUREKA Network by former head of states François Mitterrand (France) and Helmut Kohl (Germany).
1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
1998 – Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.
2003 – David Kelly, Welsh scientist (b. 1944) died.
2009 – Walter Cronkite, American journalist (b. 1916) died.
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