• 694 - Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.
• 1282 - Pope Martin IV excommunicates King Peter III of Aragon.
• 1313 - Louis the Bavarian defeats his cousin Frederick I of Austria at the Battle of Gamelsdorf.
• 1330 - Battle of Posada, Wallachian Voievode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army in an ambush
• 1492 - Peace of Etaples between Henry VII and Charles VIII.
• 1494 - Family de' Medici become rulers of Florence.
• 1620 - Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• 1688 - The Glorious Revolution: William of Orange captures Exeter.
• 1697 - Pope Innocent XII founds the city of Cervia.
• 1729 - Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.
• 1764 - Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
• 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).
• 1848 - Robert Blum, a German revolutionary, is executed in Vienna.
• 1851 - Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
• 1861 - The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto.
• 1862 - American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.
• 1867 - Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
• 1872 - The Great Boston Fire of 1872.
• 1887 - The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
• 1888 - Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.
• 1906 - Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
• 1907 - The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.
• 1917 - Joseph Stalin enters the provisional government of the USSR.
• 1918 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
• 1921 - Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect.
• 1923 - In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
• 1932 - Riots between conservative and socialist supporters in Switzerland kill 12 and injure 60.
• 1935 - The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.
• 1937 - Japanese troops take control of Shanghai, China.
• 1938 - Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany's first large-scale physical act of anti-Jewish violence, begins.
• 1953 - Cambodia becomes independent from France.
• 1960 - Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he quit to join the newly-elected John F. Kennedy administration.
• 1963 - At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, in Japan, a three-train disaster occurs in Yokohama, kills more than 160 people.
• 1965 - Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
• 1965 - Catholic Worker member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.
• 1965 - Northeast Blackout of 1965, The power lines from Niagara Falls to New York City were operating near their maximum capacity. At about 5:15 a transmission line relay failed.
• 1967 - Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
• 1967 - First issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.
• 1968 - Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson is killed in a car crash on his way to a concert in a church in Jönköping, Sweden.
• 1970 - Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
• 1971 - John List, an accountant from Westfield, New Jersey murders his mother, wife and three children. He then hides under a new identity for 18 years.
• 1985 - Garry Kasparov 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.
• 1989 - Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Germany. People start demolishing the Berlin Wall.
• 1990 - New democratic constitution is issued in Nepal.
• 1990 - Mary Robinson was elected Ireland's first female President and the first from the Labour Party.
• 1993 - Stari most, the "old bridge" in Bosnian Mostar built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing.
• 1994 - Discovery of the chemical element, Darmstadtium.
• 1998 - Brokerage houses are ordered to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for their price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement in United States history.
• 1998 - Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.
• 1999 - TAESA Flight 725, crashes a few minutes after leaving the Uruapan airport en-route to Mexico City. 18 people were killed in the accident.
• 2003 - During the holy month of Ramadan, a suicide-terrorist attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, kills 17 people.
• 2005 - The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
• 2005 - Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.

Births