1198 King Alexander II of Scotland, was born (d. 1249).
1349 Six thousand Jews were killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.
1391 Jews massacred in Palma de Mallorca.
1456 The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.
1511 Afonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquered Malacca, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca.
1591 Robert Herrick, English poet, was born (d. 1674).
1759 William Wilberforce, English abolitionist, was born (d. 1833).
1814 British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burned down the White House and several other buildings.
1815 The modern Constitution of the Netherlands was signed.
1821 The Treaty of Córdoba is signed Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence.
1857 The Panic of 1857 began.
1870 The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion.
1875 Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel.
1878 The Governor, the Marquess of Normanby, formally opened Wellington’s steam tram service, which was reportedly the first to operate in the Southern Hemisphere.
1891 Thomas Edison patented the motion picture camera.
1899 Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer, was born (d. 1986).
1924 Jimmy Gardner , British actor, was born (d. 2010).
1927 David Ireland, Australian author, was born.
1929 Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader, was born (d. 2004).
1929 Betty Dodson, American feminist and sex educator, was born.
1931 – Resignation of the United Kingdom’s Second Labour Government. Formation of the UK National Government.
1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
1936 A. S. Byatt, English novelist, was born.
1936 The Australian Antarctic Territory was created.
1937 In the Spanish Civil War, the Basque Army surrendered to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.
1938 – David Freiberg, American bassist (Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Starship), was born.
1942 : The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō was sunk and US carrier Enterprise heavily damaged.
1945 Ken Hensley, English musician (Uriah Heep), was born.
1949 The treaty creating NATO went into effect.
1950 Edith Sampson became the first black U.S. delegate to the UN.
1954 The Communist Control Act went into effect. The American Communist Party was outlawed.
1960 A temperature of −88°C (−127°F) was measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
1963 The 200-metre freestyle was swum in less than 2 minutes for the first time by Don Schollander (1:58).
1967 Aa group of hippies led by Abbie Hoffman temporarily disrupted trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing a cease in trading as the brokers scramble to grab them up.
1968 France exploded its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power.
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1991 Ukraine declared itself independent from the Soviet Union.
1992 – Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida as a Category 5 Hurricane.
1995 Computer software developer Microsoft released their Windows 95 operating system.
1998 – First RFID human implantation tested in the United Kingdom.
2001 – Air Transat Flight 236 ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean and made an emergency landing in the Azores.
2004 89 passengers died when two airliners exploded after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport. The explosions were caused by suicide bombers.
2010 – In San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 72 illegal immigrants were killed by Los Zetas.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia