81 BC First Day of Sulla's Triumph, for the defeat of Mithridates

1136 Naval Battle of Yell Sound, Shetlands: Earl Paul defeats Earl Ragnvald

1684 Battle of Vaccia: Imperialists defeat the Turks

1693 First Naval Battle of Lagos: English and Dutch defeat the French

1709 Battle of Poltava: Boy Wonder King of Sweden Charles XII is beaten by Boy Wonder Tsar of Russia Peter the Great

1743 Battle of Dettingen: George II's Anglo-German army defeats the French -- last occasion on which a British monarch commands in battle

1787 Edward Gibbon completes "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

1795 Quiberon Bay: Anglo-French force-lands to support counter-revolutionaries

1806 Battle of Buenos Aires: The British capture the city from the Spanish

1848 Battle of Maida: Calabrese insurgents defeat Borbon troops

1861 Battle of Mathia's Point, VA: USN attacks Confederate batteries

1862 Day 3 of the Seven Days: Battle of Gaines' Mill

1864 Atlanta Campaign: Battle of Kenesaw Mountain/Big Shanty/Pine Mt/Pine Knob/Golgotha, GA

1869 Battle of Goryokaku: The "Boshin War" ends in Japan and with it the Tokugawa Shogunate

1874 Second Battle of Adobe Walls, Texas: Hunters beat off an Indian attack

1905 Mutiny in the Russian battleship 'Potemkin'

1918 First use of parachutes to escape an aircraft in combat: two German airmen jump

1923 Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pachitch survives assassination attempt

1926 Office of the Assistant SecNav for Aeronautics created

1927 The USMC adopts "Sgt Jiggs," an English bulldog, as its mascot

1940 Francisco Franco sacks Air Minister MajGen Juan Yagüe, for plotting a pro-Axis coup.

1941 The Germans capture Bialystok

1942 Convoy PQ-17 leaves Iceland for Archangelsk

1942 FBI captures 8 Nazi saboteurs, landed by u-boat on Long Island

1944 American troops liberate Cherbourg from the Germans

1945 Moscow: Victory parade ends with German battle flags and banners being thrown at the feet of newly promoted "Generalissimo of the Soviet Union" Joseph Stalin

1949 "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" debuts on Dumont-TV, runs for nearly six years

1950 North Korean troops reach Seoul, as the Security Council calls on UN members to aid South Korea and Truman orders USAF & USN into action

1950 US sends 35 military advisers to South Vietnam

1954 CIA-sponsored rebels overthrow government of Guatemala

1962 Joseph Walker takes the X-15 to 6,606 kph and 37,700 m

1976 First women cadets enter the Air Force Academy

1976 Palestinians hijack an Israeli airliner, and eventually take it to Entebbe, Uganda