222 – Pope Callixtus I is killed by a mob in Rome’s Trastevere after a 5-year reign in which he had stabilized the Saturday fast three times per year, with no food, oil, or wine to be consumed on those days. Callixtus is succeeded by cardinal Urban I.
1066 – Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings – In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.
1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1656 – Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.
1773 – Just before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company’s tea ships are set ablaze at the old seaport of Annapolis, Maryland.
1843 – The British arrest the Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell for conspiracy to commit crimes.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Bristoe Station – Confederate troops under the command of General Robert E. Lee fail to drive the American Union Army completely out of Virginia.
1879 – Thomas Alva Edison filed his first patent application for “Improvement In Electric Lights” on October 14, 1878 (U.S. Patent 0,214,636) The first successful test was on October 22, 1879, and lasted 13.5 hours.
1884 – The American inventor, George Eastman, receives a U.S. Government patent on his new paper-strip photographic film.
1888 – Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene.
1890 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, American general and politician, 34th President of the United States (d. 1969) was born.
1908 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2-0, clinching the World Series. It would be their last one to date.
1912 – While campaigning in Milwaukee, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech.
1926 – The children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, is first published.
1928 – The small town of Lakehurst NJ is preparing for the arrival tomorrow of the largest dirigible ever made the “Graf Zeppelin” which will complete it’s transatlantic flight from Europe to America, this airship will change travel across the Atlantic with it’s massive size of 770 ft and it’s cruising speed of 60 MPH , this ship is owned by the German People .
1933 – Nazi Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
1938 – Adolf Hitler’s deputy has attacked the catholic clergy during a massive Nazi rally in Austria telling the cheering crowd of 100,000 that the clergy are seeking to instigate people against the state. Hitler or Christ is not the question, Hitler has never taken a stand against the Church and there is only one Fuhrer and his name is Adolf Hitler, and the clergy should not take orders from Rome but from the Fuhrer.
1939 – Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer, founded the Ralph Lauren Corporation was born.
1940 – Balham underground station disaster in London, England, occurs during the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids on Great Britain.
1943 – Prisoners at the Nazi German Sobibór extermination camp in Poland revolt against the Germans, killing eleven SS guards, and wounding many more. About 300 of the Sobibor Camp’s 600 prisoners escape, and about 50 of these survive the end of the war.
1943 – The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers in aerial combat during the second mass-daylight air raid on the Schweinfurt ball bearing factories in western Nazi Germany.
1944 – German General Erwin Rommel or “the Desert Fox,” is given the option of facing a public trial for treason, as a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, or taking cyanide. He chooses suicide by cyanide .
1945 – Colin Hodgkinson, English bass player (Whitesnake and The Spencer Davis Group) was born.
1946 – Justin Hayward, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Moody Blues) was born
1946 – Dan McCafferty, Scottish singer-songwriter (Nazareth) was born.
1947 – Nikolai Volkoff, Croatian-American wrestler was born.
1948 – Marcia Barrett, Jamaican-English singer (Boney M) was born.
1949 – Eleven leaders of the American Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial in a Federal District Court, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. Federal Government.
1952 – As the number of radar speed traps is increased complaints that small towns adjoining main highways are using the traps to provide additional revenue by targeting motorists could become even worse as they install the latest radar traps which take photographs of the cars number plate meaning the local Police do not even need to witness the offence for the town to issue a speeding ticket. A test case is currently underway in New York on the legality of these new radar traps.
1952 – Korean War: United Nations and South Korean forces launch Operation Showdown against Chinese strongholds at the Iron Triangle. The resulting Battle of Triangle Hill is the biggest and bloodiest battle of 1952.
1957 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian Monarch to open up an annual session of the Canadian Parliament, presenting her Speech from the throne in Ottawa, Canada.
1958 – The American Atomic Energy Commission, with supporting military units, carries out an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site, just north of Las Vegas.
1958 – The District of Columbia’s Bar Association votes to accept African-Americans as member attorneys.
1959 – A. J. Pero, American drummer (Twisted Sister and Adrenaline Mob) was born.
1961 – Harriet Shaw Weaver, English journalist and activist (b. 1876) died.
1962 – The Cuban missile crisis begins: A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot fly over the island of Cuba and take photographs of Soviet missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads being installed and erected in Cuba.
1964 – Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence.
1966 – The city of Montreal begins the operation of its underground Montreal Metro rapid-transit system.
1967 – The Vietnam War: The folk singer Joan Baez is arrested concerning a physical blockade of the U.S. Army’s induction center in Oakland, California.
1968 – Jay Ferguson, Canadian guitarist (Sloan) was born.
1968 – Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio of San Francisco in California for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.
1968 – Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps will send about 24,000 soldiers and Marines back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours of duty in the combat zone there.
1968 – Jim Hines of the United States of America becomes the first man ever to break the so-called “ten-second barrier” in the 100-meter sprint in the Summer Olympic Games held in Mexico City with a time of 9.95 seconds.
1969 – The United Kingdom introduces the British fifty-pence coin, which replaces, over the following years, the British ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalization of the British currency in 1971, and the abolition of the shilling as a unit of currency anywhere in the world.
1973 – In the Thammasat student uprising over 100,000 people protest in Thailand against the Thanom military government; 77 are killed and 857 are injured by soldiers.
1974 – Natalie Maines, American singer-songwriter (Dixie Chicks) was born.
1974 – Joseph Utsler, American rapper, producer, wrestler, and actor (Insane Clown Posse, Psychopathic Rydas, and Dark Lotus) was born.
1979 – The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C., the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, demands “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people”, and draws 200,000 people.
1981 – Citing official misconduct in the investigation and trial, Amnesty International charges the U.S. Federal Government with holding Richard Marshall[disambiguation needed] of the American Indian Movement as a political prisoner.
1981 – Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected as the President of Egypt one week after the assassination of the President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.
1982 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.
1984 – Baby Fae, American baby who received a baboon heart transplant (d. 1984) was born.
1994 – The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of the future Palestinian Self Government.
1998 – Eric Rudolph is charged with six bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia.
2006 – A new study by scientists in the US analysed the health and eating pattern of 2,258 study participants and found a link between a Mediterranean diet and a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia.
2011 – The founder and leader of Cuba’s “Ladies in White” protest group, Laura Pollan, died of Dengue fever at the age of sixty-three. Pollan had founded the group after her husband was imprisoned. The group had protested in Havana asking for the freedom of seventy-five men who had been jailed during a 2003 government repression.
2012 – Former US Senator for Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, died at the age of eighty-two. Specter was known for spending the first three decades of his career as a Republican before becoming a Democrat in 2009 and losing his election.