235 – Maximinus Thrax is proclaimed emperor. He is the first foreigner to hold the Roman throne.
1602 – The Dutch East India Company is established.
1616 – Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment.
1760 – The “Great Fire” of Boston, Massachusetts, destroys 349 buildings.
1815 – After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.
1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.
1854 – The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
1922 – The USS Langley (CV-1) is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier.
1922 – Carl Reiner, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter was born.
1928 – Fred Rogers, American television host (d. 2003) was born.
1933 – Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida’s electric chair for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1933 – Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of Dachau Concentration Camp as Chief of Police of Munich and appointed Theodor Eicke as the camp commandant.
1942 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: “I came out of Bataan and I shall return”.
1948 – Bobby Orr, Canadian ice hockey player was born.
1948 – With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.
1951 – Jimmie Vaughan, American guitarist (The Fabulous Thunderbirds) was born.
1952 – The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.
1956 – Tunisia gains independence from France.
1964 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
1972 – The Troubles: The first Provisional IRA car bombing in Belfast kills seven people and injures 148 others in Northern Ireland.
1974 – An unsuccessful attempt is made by a lone perpetrator to kidnap Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London.
1976 – Chester Bennington, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (Linkin Park and Dead by Sunrise) was born.
1980 – The Radio Caroline ship, Mi Amigo founders in a gale off the English coast.
1987 – The Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-AIDS drug, AZT.
1993 – The Troubles: A Provisional IRA bomb kills two children in Warrington, England. It leads to mass protests in both Britain and Ireland.
1995 – A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway kills 13 and wounds 1,300 people.
2000 – Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black Panther once known as H. Rap Brown, is captured after murdering Georgia sheriff’s deputy Ricky Kinchen and critically wounding Deputy Aldranon English.
2003 – Invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries (the UK, Australia and Poland) begin military operations in Iraq.
2012 – At least 52 people are killed and more than 250 injured in a wave of terror attacks across ten cities in Iraq.
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