| | 533 - Byzantine general Belisarius defeats the Vandals, commanded by King Gelimer, at the Battle of Ticameron. |
| | 687 - St. Sergius I becomes Pope. |
| | 1167 - Sicilian chancellor Stephen du Perche moves the royal court to Messina to prevent a rebellion. |
| | 1256 - Hulagu Khan captures and destroys the Hashshashin stronghold at Alamut in present-day Iran as part of the Mongol offensive on Islamic southwest Asia. |
| | 1791 - The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia legislature. |
| | 1818 - Irwin County, Georgia is created. |
| | 1891 - James Naismith introduces the first version of basketball, with thirteen rules, a peach basket nailed to either end of his school's gymnasium, and two teams of nine players. |
| | 1913 - Nicaragua becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. |
| | 1939 - Gone with the Wind premieres in Atlanta, Georgia. |
| | 1941 - Annihilation of Jews in Kharkiv, Ukraine: in the proximity of the Rogan works, 8 km away from Kharkiv, in "Drobitsky Ravine" (Drobitsky Yar), over 15 000 Jews were shot, at -15 degrees C below zero. |
| | 1945 - Occupation of Japan: General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as state religion of Japan. |
| | 1960 - King Baudouin of Belgium marries Fabiola Fernanda María de las Victorias Antonia Adelaida de Mora y Aragón in Brussels. |
| | 1960 - Richard Paul Pavlick is arrested for attempting to blow up and assassinate the 35th U.S. President, John F. Kennedy only four days earlier. |
| | 1961 - In Jerusalem, Adolph Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization. |
| | 1965 - Gemini program: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieved the first space rendezvous with Gemini 7. |
| | 1965 - The film The Sound of Music is released. |
| | 1970 - Illinois State Constitution is adopted at a special election. |
| | 1976 - Samoa becomes a member of the UN. |
| | 1992 - American rapper, Dr. Dre, releases his highly influential debut album, The Chronic. The Chronic is often labelled as the first ever G-Funk album. |
| | 1993 - History of Northern Ireland: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. |
| | 1994 - The web browser Netscape Navigator 1.0 is released. |
| | 1994 - Palau becomes a member of the UN. |
| | 1995 - The European Communities Court of Justice hands down the "Bosman ruling", giving EU footballers the right to a free transfer at the end of their contracts, with the provision that they are transferring from one UEFA Federation to another. |
| | 1997 - A chartered Tupolev TU-154 from Tajikistan crashes in the desert near Sharja, United Arab Emirates airport killing 85. |
| | 2002 - The digital radio station BBC7 is launched by the comedian Paul Merton. |
| | 2005 - The 43rd known Mersenne prime is discovered by Dr. Curtis Cooper & Dr. Steven Boone of USA, participants of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search distributed computing project. The prime number is 2nd largest known prime and has more than nine million digits. |
| | 2005 - Latvia edits its constitution to ban equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians. |
| | 2005 - Argentina's president Néstor Kirchner announces the early repayment of its external debt to the IMF. |
| | 2006 - First flight of the F-35 Lightning II |