12 BC – The Roman Emperor Augustus is named Pontifex Maximus, incorporating the position into that of the Emperor
1475 – Michelangelo, Italian painter and sculptor (d. 1564) was born.
1724 – Henry Laurens, American merchant and politician, 5th President of the Continental Congress (d. 1792) was born.
1820 – The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
1834 – York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto.
1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo – After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.
1857 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott’s request and in doing so, ruled an Act of Congress in this case—the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of the parallel 36°30′ north—to be unconstitutional for the second time in its history.
1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
1930 – International Unemployment Day demonstrations globally initiated by the Comintern
1936 – The sleek new prototype (K5054) for what would become the Spitfire Fighter Aircraft takes off on its maiden flight from Eastleigh now called Southampton Airport. The aircraft started life as the Supermarine Type 300 fighter featuring undercarriage retraction, an enclosed cockpit, oxygen breathing-apparatus and the newly-developed Rolls-Royce PV-XII engine ( later named the Merlin ).
1943 – Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in the The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.
1946 – Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
1946 – David Gilmour, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (Pink Floyd, Joker’s Wild, and Deep End) was born.
1947 – Dick Fosbury, American high jumper was born.
1947 – Rob Reiner, American actor, director, and producer was born
1951 – The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.
1964 – Nation of Islam’s Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
1967 – Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
1968 – The first of the East L.A. walkouts take place at several high schools.
1970 – An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.
1975 – For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.
1981 – After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
1988 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are killed by Special Air Service on the territory of Gibraltar in the conclusion of Operation Flavius.
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