456 BC Herodotus begins the reading his 'Histories' at Athens (The 12th of Hekatombaion that year)

526 Consecration of Pope St. Felix IV [III] (526-530)

1298 Battle of the Black Ironside: William Wallace routs the English

1340 Naval Battle of Sluys: English defeat the French off Flanders

1365 King Edward III bans football, to ensure Englishmen get their archery practice

1442 King Alfonso V "the Magnanimous" of Aragon, who is also Alfonso III of Valencia, II of Majorca, Sardinia, and Corsica, and IV of Sicily, is crowned Alfonso I of Naples (1442-1458)

1493 Lucrezia Borgia (12) marries Giovanni Sforza (23), annulled 1497

1665 Nieuw Amsterdam is incorporated under English law as "New York"

1667 The Dutch fleet burns a major portion of the Royal Navy in the Medway

1701 Act of Settlement: Parliament limits the succession of the English crown to Protestant members of the House of Hanover

1775 USS 'Unity' takes British 'Margaretta': 1st naval victory of the Revolutionary War

1839 Abner Doubleday invents baseball, in bogus tradition

1859 Liberal insurrection in the Papal Legations

1867 Union of Austria and Hungary is proclaimed

1897 Carl Elsener patents the "Swiss Army Knife"

1916 At Verdun, German shells inter the 3rd Co, French 137th Infantry, creating "Bayonet Trench"

1918 First air raid by an American aviation unit, France

1921 Pres Warren Harding urges all young men to voluntarily take military training

1924 Turret explosion in USS 'Mississippi' (BB 41), 48 die

1935 Three-year-long Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay ends

1937 The Purges: Stalin initiates mass executions of senior military personnel

1942 Anne Frank begins her diary, on her 13th birthday

1942 Hitler orders use of Slavic forced laborers in German industry

1943 Guadalcanal: air battle, Allies lose 6, Japanese 31 a/c

1943 Himmler orders extermination of all Polish ghettos

1944 First V-1 cruise missile attack on London

1944 Mao Tse-tung says Communists will support Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek against Japan

1944 US troops liberate Carentan and Chaumont, Normandy

1945 Okinawa: 7th Inf Div breaks the SE end of Japanese front, as the 7th Marines attack Kunishi Ridge

1962 USAF Maj Robert M White takes X-15 to 56,270 m

1982 750,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators rally in Central Park

1987 Ronald Reagan says, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall."

1991 Leningrad becomes St. Petersburg again

1999 NATO peacekeeping forces begin operating in Kosovo, Yugoslavia