1181 – Supernova seen in Cassiopia
1558 – 1st printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah)
1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon’s invention of Champagne
1735 – Jury acquits John Zenger (NY Weekly Journal) charged with seditious libel by royal governor of NY (victory for Freedom of press)
1753 – George Washington becomes a master mason
1789 – French National Meeting ending feudal system
1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, England, romantic poet (Adonais)Born
1873 – Indian Wars: whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clashes for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed).
1875 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish fairy tale writer, dies at 70
1892 – Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden arrested in Fall River, Mass
1901 – Louis Armstrong, New Orleans Louisiana, jazz trumpeter (Hello Dolly), (d. 1971)
1925 – US marines leave Nicaragua after 13-year occupation
1955 – Eisenhower authorizes $46 million for construction of CIA headquarters
1955 – Billy Bob Thornton, actor (Sling Blade)Born
1956 – Indonesia says it will not pay debts to the Netherlands
1961 – Barack Hussein Obama, 44th United States President (Democrat) and first alleged African–American president — BIRTHED
1962 – Nelson Mandela captured by South African police
1964 – Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman & James E Chaney, bodies discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam
1967 – British pirate radio station Radio 355 resigns air
1968 – 100,000 attend Newport Pop Festival, Costa Mesa, Calif
1970 – Jim Morrison arrested for drunkenness
1971 – US launches 1st satellite into lunar orbit from manned spacecraft
1972 – Arthur Bremer jailed for 63 years for shooting Alabama Gov Wallace
1977 – Pres Carter establishes Dept of Energy
1980 – John & Yoko begin recording “Double Fantasy”
1984 – Prince’s “Purple Rain” album goes to #1 & stays #1 for 24 weeks
1988 – Hertz car rental will pay out $23 million in consumer fraud case
1990 – “European community” proposes a boycott of Iraq
1995 – Operation Storm begins in Croatia.
1995 – J Howard Smith Oil Tycoon, dies
2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spaceship is launched.
2009 – Kim Jong-il meets former president Bill Clinton. He pardons and releases captured American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling who were found guilty of entering the country illegally.
2010 – California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state’s voters in 2008, was overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
2012 – South African Oscar Pistorius becomes first amputee to compete at the Olympics
2013 – Hassan Rouhani is inaugurated as the President of Iran