Events Pre-1600 962 – Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor and Pope John XII co-sign the Diploma Ottonianum, recognising John as ruler of Rome. 1258 – Siege of Baghdad: Hulegu Khan, a prince of the Mongol Empire, orders his army to sack and plunder the city of Baghdad, which they had just captured. 1322 – The central tower of Ely Cathedral falls on the night of 12th–13th. 1352 – War of the Straits: The Battle of the Bosporus is fought in a stormy sea into the night between the Genoese, Venetian, Aragonese, and Byzantine fleets. 1462 – The Treaty of Westminster is finalised between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles. 1503 – Challenge of Barletta: Tournament between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.; 1542 – Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1601–1900 1633 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition. 1642 – The Clergy Act becomes law, excluding bishops of the Church of England from serving in the House of Lords. 1660 – With the accession of young Charles XI of Sweden, his regents begin negotiations to end the Second Northern War. 1689 – William III and Mary II are proclaimed co-rulers of England. 1692 – Massacre of Glencoe: Almost 80 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange. 1726 – Parliament of Negrete between Mapuche and Spanish authorities in Chile brings an end to the Mapuche uprising of 1723–26. 1755 – Treaty of Giyanti signed by VOC, Pakubuwono III and Prince Mangkubumi. The treaty divides the Javanese kingdom of Mataram into two: Sunanate of Surakarta and Sultanate of Yogyakarta. 1820 – The Assassination of the Duke of Berry takes place in Paris. The Duke of Berry, nephew of Louis XVIII, is stabbed to death while attending the Paris Opera.Price, Munro. The Perilous Crown: France Between Revolutions, 1814-1848. Pan Macmillan, 2010. p.107-8 1849 – The delegation headed by Metropolitan bishop Andrei Șaguna hands out to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria the General Petition of Romanian leaders in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, which demands that the Romanian nation be recognized. 1861 – Italian unification: The Siege of Gaeta ends with the capitulation of the defending fortress, effectively bringing an end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 1867 – Work begins on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards. 1880 – Thomas Edison observes thermionic emission.
1901–present 1913 – The 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibetan independence following a period of domination by Manchu Qing dynasty and initiates a period of almost four decades of independence. 1914 – Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members. 1920 – The Negro National League is formed. 1931 – The British Raj completes its transfer from Calcutta to New Delhi. 1935 – A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. 1945 – World War II: The siege of Budapest concludes with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army. 1945 – World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment. 1951 – Korean War: Battle of Chipyong-ni, which represented the "high-water mark" of the Chinese incursion into South Korea, commences. 1954 – Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game. 1955 – Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls. 1955 – Twenty-nine people are killed when Sabena Flight 503 crashes into Monte Terminillo near Rieti, Italy. 1960 – With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons. 1960 – Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. 1961 – An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug. 1967 – American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain. 1975 – Fire at One World Trade Center (North Tower) of the World Trade Center in New York. 1978 – Hilton bombing: A bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman. 1979 – An intense windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a long section of the Hood Canal Bridge. 1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky. 1983 – A cinema fire in Turin, Italy, kills 64 people. 1984 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1991 – Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed. 1996 – The Nepalese Civil War is initiated in the Kingdom of Nepal by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre). 2001 – A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 315. 2004 – The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". 2007 – Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. 2008 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations. 2010 – A bomb explodes in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India, killing 17 and injuring 60 more. 2011 – For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855. 2012 – The European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. 2017 – Kim Jong-nam, brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, is assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. 2021 – Former U.S. President Donald Trump is acquitted in his second impeachment trial. 2021 – A major winter storm causes blackouts and kills at least 82 people in Texas and northern Mexico.
Births Pre-1600 1440 – Hartmann Schedel, German physician (died 1514) 1457 – Mary of Burgundy, Sovereign Duchess regnant of Burgundy, married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (died 1482) 1469 – Elia Levita, Renaissance Hebrew grammarian (died 1549) 1480 – Girolamo Aleandro, Italian cardinal (died 1542) 1523 – Valentin Naboth, German astronomer and mathematician (died 1593) 1539 – Elisabeth of Hesse, Electress Palatine (died 1582) 1569 – Johann Reinhard I, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (died 1625) 1599 – Pope Alexander VII (died 1667)
1601–1900 1602 – William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (died 1637) 1672 – Étienne François Geoffroy, French physician and chemist (died 1731) 1683 – Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Italian painter (died 1754) 1719 – George Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney, English admiral and politician (died 1792) 1721 – John Reid, Scottish general (died 1807) 1728 – John Hunter, Scottish surgeon and anatomist (died 1793) 1766 – Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist and scholar (died 1834) 1768 – Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, French general and politician, 15th Prime Minister of France (died 1835) 1769 – Ivan Krylov, Russian author, poet, and playwright (died 1844) 1805 – Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, German mathematician and academic (died 1859) 1811 – François Achille Bazaine, French general (died 1888) 1815 – Rufus Wilmot Griswold, American anthologist, editor, poet and critic (died 1857) 1819 – Francis Smith, Haitian-Australian politician, 4th Premier of Tasmania (died 1909) 1831 – John Aaron Rawlins, American general and politician, 29th United States Secretary of War (died 1869) 1834 – Heinrich Caro, Sephardic Jewish Polish-German chemist and academic (died 1910) 1835 – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Indian religious leader (died 1908) 1849 – Lord Randolph Churchill, English lawyer and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (died 1895) 1855 – Paul Deschanel, Belgian-French politician, 11th President of France (died 1922) 1863 – Hugo Becker, German cellist and composer (died 1941) 1867 – Harold Mahony, Scottish-Irish tennis player (died 1905) 1870 – Leopold Godowsky, Polish-American pianist and composer (died 1938) 1871 – Joseph Devlin, Northern Irish political leader (Nationalist Party (Northern Ireland)) (died 1934)McMahon, Seán (2011). 'Wee Joe' : the life of Joseph Devlin. Belfast: Brehon Press. ISBN 978-1-905474-35-6 1873 – Feodor Chaliapin, Russian opera singer (died 1938) 1876 – Fritz Buelow, German-American baseball player and umpire (died 1933) 1879 – Sarojini Naidu, Indian poet and activist (died 1949) 1880 – Dimitrie Gusti, Romanian sociologist, ethnologist, historian, and philosopher (died 1955) 1881 – Eleanor Farjeon, English author, poet, and playwright (died 1965) 1883 – Hal Chase, American baseball player and manager (died 1947) 1883 – Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Russian-Armenian actor and director (died 1922) 1884 – Alfred Carlton Gilbert, American pole vaulter and businessman, founded the A. C. Gilbert Company (died 1961) 1885 – Bess Truman, 35th First Lady of the United States (died 1982) 1887 – Géza Csáth, Hungarian playwright and critic (died 1919) 1888 – Georgios Papandreou, Greek lawyer, economist, and politician, 162nd Prime Minister of Greece (died 1968) 1889 – Leontine Sagan, Austrian actress and director (died 1974) 1891 – Kate Roberts, Welsh author and activist (died 1985) 1891 – Grant Wood, American painter and academic (died 1942) 1892 – Robert H. Jackson, American politician, 57th United States Attorney General, Nuremberg prosecutor, and Supreme Court justice (died 1954) 1898 – Hubert Ashton, English cricketer and politician (died 1979) 1899 – Rolf Stenersen, Norwegian businessman (died 1978) 1900 – Barbara von Annenkoff, Russian-born German film and stage actress (died 1979)
1901–present 1901 – Paul Lazarsfeld, Austrian-American sociologist and academic (died 1976) 1902 – Harold Lasswell, American political scientist and theorist (died 1978) 1903 – Georgy Beriev, Georgian-Russian engineer, founded the Beriev Design Bureau (died 1979) 1903 – Georges Simenon, Belgian-Swiss author (died 1989) 1906 – Agostinho da Silva, Portuguese philosopher and author (died 1994) 1907 – Katy de la Cruz, Filipino-American singer and actress (died 2004) 1910 – William Shockley, English-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1989) 1911 – Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Indian-Pakistani poet and journalist (died 1984) 1911 – Jean Muir, American actress and educator (died 1996) 1912 – Harald Riipalu, Russian-Estonian commander (died 1961) 1912 – Margaretta Scott, English actress (died 2005) 1913 – Khalid of Saudi Arabia (died 1982) 1915 – Lyle Bettger, American actor (died 2003) 1915 – Aung San, Burmese general and politician, 5th Premier of British Crown Colony of Burma (died 1947) 1916 – Dorothy Bliss, American invertebrate zoologist (died 1987) 1918 – Patty Berg, golfer, Ladies Professional Golf Association tour founder 1919 – Tennessee Ernie Ford, American singer and actor (died 1991) 1919 – Eddie Robinson, American football player and coach (died 2007) 1920 – Boudleaux Bryant, American songwriter (died 1987)