1215 – The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.
1620 – The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.
1634 – Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery.
1675 – Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
1724 – Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman known for attacking “Thief-Taker General” (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, is hanged in London.
1813 – War of 1812: Battle of Crysler’s Farm – British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign.
1831 – In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
1839 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.
1865 – Treaty of Sinchula is signed by which Bhutan cedes the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.
1869 – The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people’s wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.
1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
1887 – Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.
1887 – Haymarket affair defendants hanged:
- George Engel, German-American businessman and activist (b. 1836)
- Adolph Fischer, German-American printer and activist (b. 1858)
- Albert Parsons, American journalist and activist (b. 1848)
- August Spies, American journalist and activist (b. 1855)
1889 – The State of Washington is admitted as the 42nd state of the United States.
1901 – Magda Goebbels, German wife of Joseph Goebbels (d. 1945) was born.
1917 – Liliuokalani of Hawaii (b. 1838) died.
1918 – World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) and this is commemorated annually with a two minute silence. The war officially ends on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.
1919 – The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World.
1926 – The United States Numbered Highway System, including U.S. Route 66, is established.
1938 – Typhoid Mary, Irish-American carrier of typhoid fever (b. 1869) died.
1942 – World War II: Nazi Germany completes its occupation of France.
1950 – Jim Peterik, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Survivor, Pride of Lions, and The Ides of March) was born.
1961 – Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force are massacred by a mob in the course of the Kindu atrocity.
1962 – Mic Michaeli, Swedish keyboard player (Europe, Brazen Abbot, and Last Autumn’s Dream) was born.
1963 – Billy Gunn, American wrestler was born.
1967 – Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to “new left” antiwar activist Tom Hayden.
1973 – Jason White, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Green Day, Pinhead Gunpowder, The Big Cats, The Influents, The Network, and Foxboro Hot Tubs) was born
1974 – Leonardo DiCaprio, American actor and producer was born.
1984 – Martin Luther King, Sr., American pastor, missionary, and activist (b. 1899) died.
1993 – A sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1999 – The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.
2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.