Events

• 363 - Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death.
• 1046 - Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he'll later describe in his book Safarnama.
• 1496 - England King Henry VII issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands.
• 1689 - Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham is named Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
• 1766 - Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans.
• 1770 - Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including a black man named Crispus Attucks, and a boy are killed by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later.
• 1784 - Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney is named President of the Board of Trade.
• 1793 - French troops are defeated by Austrian forces and Liège is recaptured.
• 1824 - First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.
• 1836 - Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
• 1842 - Over 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas, briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande.
• 1848 - Louis Antoine Garnier-Pages is named French minister of Finance.
• 1850 - The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.
• 1860 - Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna vote in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia.
• 1861 - The "Stars and Bars" is adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.
• 1868 - A court of impeachment is organized in the United States Senate to hear charges against President Andrew Johnson.
• 1868 - Mefistofele, an opera by Arrigo Boito premieres at La Scala.
• 1872 - George Westinghouse patents the air brake.
• 1894 - Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery becomes First Lord of the Treasury.
• 1904 - Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of the ball lightning formation.
• 1905 - Russian troops begin to retreat from Mukden, Manchuria after losing 100,000 troops in three days.
• 1907 - The second Duma opens in St. Petersburg, Russia and 40,000 demonstrators have to be dispersed by Russian troops.
• 1912 - Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, using them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.
• 1915 - World War I: The LZ 33, a zeppelin, is damaged by enemy fire and stranded south of Ostend.
• 1933 - Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.
• 1933 - In Germany, the Nazis win 44 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.
• 1936 - First flight of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft.
• 1940 - Members of Soviet politburo sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.
• 1943 - First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom.
• 1945 - World War II: The "Battle of the Ruhr" begins.
• 1946 - Winston Churchill uses the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.
• 1946 - Hungarian Communists and Social Democrats co-found the Left Bloc.
• 1949 - The Jharkhand Party is founded in India.
• 1958 - The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is established.
• 1958 - Explorer 2 spacecraft launches and fails to reach Earth orbit.
• 1960 - The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis originates when Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase.
• 1964 - Ceylon declares emergency crisis due to unrest.
• 1965 - March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence.
• 1966 - BOAC Flight 911 crashes on Mount Fuji, Japan, killing 124.
• 1970 - The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.
• 1970 - Dubnium atoms are first detected conclusively.
• 1973 - Donald DeFreeze, the future Symbionese Liberation Army leader, escapes from Vacaville Prison.
• 1974 - Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal.
• 1976 - The British pound falls below $2 USD for the first time.
• 1978 - The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg AFB in California.
• 1979 - Detection equipment picks up a gamma ray burst originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.
• 1979 - Voyager 1's closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.
• 1982 - Venera 14, a Soviet satellite arrives at the planet Venus.
• 1988 - Constitution of Turks and Caicos Islands is restored and revised.
• 1991 - Iraq releases all Gulf War prisoners.
• 1998 - NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water to support a human colony.
• 1999 - Paul Okalik is elected first Premier of Nunavut.
• 2001 - In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
• 2003 - In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.
• 2005 - The Burkinabé Party for Democracy and Socialism holds its first National Convention.

Births