1419 – Hundred Years’ War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England, completing his reconquest of Normandy.
1661 – Thomas Venner is hanged, drawn and quartered in London.
1764 – John Wilkes is expelled from the British House of Commons for seditious libel.
1788 – The second group of ships of the First Fleet arrive at Botany Bay.
1807 – Robert E. Lee, American general (d. 1870) was born.
1809 – Edgar Allan Poe, American author and poet (d. 1849) was born.
1861 – American Civil War: Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in seceding from the United States.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Mill Springs – The Confederacy suffers its first significant defeat in the conflict.
1883 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.
1915 – Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
1915 – World War I: German zeppelins bomb the towns of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in the United Kingdom killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.
1917 – Silvertown explosion: Seventy-three are killed and 400 injured in an explosion in a munitions plant in London.
1920 – The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.
1920 – 4,000 individuals are rounded up in a single night mostly members of the Industrial Workers of the World union who were suspected of being suspected radical leftists who were either deported or jailed as part of the Palmer Raids. The Palmer Raids ( named for Alexander Mitchell Palmer, United States Attorney General ) were a series of controversial raids by the U.S. Justice and Immigration Departments from 1919 to 1921 on suspected radical leftists in the United States . These arrests were made under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918
1920 – A group of 600 volunteer nurses were on task to help fight against the flu epidemic. It was reported that about 1,200 cases of this sickness had affected people within a 24 hour period of this date in Chicago.
1923 – Markus Wolf, German spy (d. 2006) was born.
1935 – Coopers Inc. sells the world’s first briefs.
1936 – Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, American singer, harmonica player, and drummer (d. 2011) was born.
1937 – Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in seven hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.
1939 – Phil Everly, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Everly Brothers) (d. 2014) was born.
1942 – In the midst of World War II, U Saw the Premier of Burma (Present-Day Myanmar) was arrested by the British for conspiring with the Japanese. This arrest was in reaction to an attempted coup (takeover) of the “Kipling Country” of 14,000,000 people, which U Saw attempted to hand over to the Japanese. A year prior, U Saw had made a trip to London, England to speak with Winston Churchill regarding Burma’s status after World War II. U Saw wanted Burma to be regarded as one of a dominion status after the Second World War was completed.
1943 – Janis Joplin, American singer-songwriter (Big Brother and the Holding Company) (d. 1970) was born.
1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.
1946 – Dolly Parton, American singer-songwriter and actress was born.
1947 – Rod Evans, English singer-songwriter (Deep Purple and Captain Beyond) was born.
1949 – Cuba recognizes Israel.
1949 – Robert Palmer, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (Power Station) (d. 2003) was born.
1953 – Almost 72% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.
1954 – Katey Sagal, American actress was born.
1959 – Jeff Pilson, American bass player, songwriter, and actor (Dokken, Dio, and Foreigner) was born.
1960 – Japan and the United States sign the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty
1968 – Whitfield Crane, American singer-songwriter (Ugly Kid Joe, Medication, Another Animal, and Life of Agony) was born.
1971 – John Wozniak, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Marcy Playground) was born.
1972 – R-Truth, American wrestler was born.
1977 – President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino (a.k.a. “Tokyo Rose”).
1977 – Snow falls in Miami. This is the only time in the history of the city that snow has fallen. It also fell in The Bahamas.
1978 – The last Volkswagen Beetle made in Germany leaves VW’s plant in Emden. Beetle production in Latin America continues until 2003.
1981 – Iran hostage crisis: United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity.
1983 – Ham the Chimp, Cameroonian-American chimpanzee (b. 1956) died.
1983 – Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is arrested in Bolivia.
1983 – The Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple Inc. to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.
1986 – The first IBM PC computer virus is released into the wild. A boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain, it was created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written.
1991 – Gulf War: Iraq fires a second Scud missile into Israel, causing 15 injuries.
1997 – Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.
2007 – Denny Doherty, Canadian singer-songwriter (The Mamas & the Papas and The Halifax III) (b. 1940) died.
2012 – The Hong Kong-based file-sharing website Megaupload is shut down by the FBI.
2013 – A failed attempt to assassinate Ahmed Dogan, chairman of the Bulgarian political party Movement for Rights and Freedoms, on live television is foiled by security guards.
2013 – James Hood, one of two of the first African-American students to enter the University of Alabama, died at the age of seventy. Hood was a well known civil rights activist who did much to fight against racial segregation in Alabama during the 1960’s.