1409 Battle of San Luri: The Aragonese defeat Arborea (Sardinia)

1422 Battle of Arbedo: The Milanese defeat the Swiss

1520 La Noche Triste: Cortez evacuates Tenochtitlan amid heavy losses

1596 The Earl of Essex sacks Cadiz

1651 Battle of Berestechko, Day 3: Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky's c. 200,000 Ukrainian Cossacks & Crimean Tatars are routed by Casimir II's c. 150,00 Polish-Lithuanian force

1689 Convention of Altoona: Peace between Denmark and Holstein-Gottorp

1690 Battle of Beachy Head: Torrington's Anglo-Dutch fleet defeats Tourville's French squadron

1794 Indians fail to capture Fort Recovery, Ohio Territory

1807 Battle of Lemnos: Russian squadron defeats the Turks

1815 USS 'Peacock' takes HMS 'Nautilus', 6 months after the War of 1812 has ended

1848 Battle of Rotonda: Calabrese insurgents defeat Borbon troops

1849 The Republic of Rome surrenders to the French

1859 Franco-Piedmontese fleet begins operating in the Gulf of Venice

1861 CSS 'Sumter' slips past USS 'Brooklyn', on blockade at the Head of Passes, Mississippi R.

1862 Day 6 of the Seven Days: White Oak Swamp/Frayser's Farm

1863 Chambersburg: Confederate troops destroy large stores of whiskey

1865 Eight are convicted in the assassination of Lincoln

1871 Peasant revolt in Guatemala overland reform

1894 Korea declares independence from China, asks for Japanese aid

1898 Manzanillo, Cuba: USN raids harbor, sinks several vessels

1898 Tayabacoa, Cuba: US landing party-driven off

1908 The Tunguska Event: Comet or asteroid impact in Siberia flattens thousands of square miles

1917 Greece declares war on the Central Powers

1934 "The Night of Long Knives": Hitler's "blood purge"

1936 Haile Selassie asks League of Nations sanctions on Italy

1936 Publication of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind"

1941 Leading German Protestant clergymen congratulate Hitler on the invasion of the Soviet Union

1941 Pro-Nazi group declares Ukraine independent of the USSR

1942 Congress votes $42 billion (c. $650 billion today) for defense.

1944 General strike in Copenhagen to protest continued Nazi occupation

1962 The French Foreign Legion leaves Algeria for the last time

1967 Maj Robert H Lawrence Jr named 1st black astronaut

1997 Hong Kong reverts to China, ending 150 years of British rule