| | 1602 - The Dutch East India Company is established. |
| | 1739 - Nadir Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne. |
| | 1760 - The "Great Fire" of Boston destroys 349 buildings. |
| | 1815 - Napoleon enters Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. |
| | 1848 - Revolutions of 1848 in the German states: King Ludwig I of Bavaria abdicates. |
| | 1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. |
| | 1856 - Costa Rican troops rout Walker's soldiers. |
| | 1861 - An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, a city on western Argentina. |
| | 1883 - Signature of Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. |
| | 1899 - At Sing Sing prison, Martha M. Place becomes the first woman executed in an electric chair. |
| | 1913 - Sung Chiao-jen, a founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) (KMT), is wounded in an assassination attempt and dies 2 days later. |
| | 1914 - In New Haven, Connecticut, the first international figure skating championship takes place. |
| | 1916 - Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity. |
| | 1922 - The USS Langley is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier. |
| | 1933 - Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida's electric chair for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. |
| | 1942 - In Zgierz, Poland, 100 Poles are taken from a labor camp and shot by the Germans. |
| | 1942 - in Rohatyn, western Ukraine, on Friday, German SS murder 3000 Jews, including 600 Jewish children, annihalating 70 % of Rohatyn's Jewish ghetto. The entire action took one day, from early morning to five o'clock in the evening. All the dead were buried in a mass grave behind the railroad station in Rohatyn. |
| | 1942 - General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return". |
| | 1948 - With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC. |
| | 1952 - The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan. |
| | 1956 - Tunisia gains independence from France. |
| | 1964 - The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962. |
| | 1965 - In Naples, Italy, France Gall wins the tenth Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg singing "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" (Wax doll, bran doll). |
| | 1966 - The football World Cup is stolen from an exhibition at Central Hall, Westminster, London |
| | 1969 - In Gibraltar, John Lennon and Yoko Ono get married. |
| | 1974 - A failed kidnap attempt is made on Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London. |
| | 1985 - Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. |
| | 1986 - Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France. |
| | 1987 - The Food and Drug Administration approves anti-AIDS drug AZT. |
| | 1990 - Ferdinand Marcos's widow, Imelda Marcos, goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement, and racketeering. |
| | 1993 - A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes in Warrington, northwest England, killing two children. |
| | 1995 - Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killing 12 and wounding 1300 persons. |
| | 2000 - Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black Panther once known as H. Rap Brown, is captured after a gun battle that leaves a Georgia sheriff's deputy dead. |
| | 2003 - 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq. |
| | 2004 - Stephen Harper wins the leadership of the newly created Conservative Party of Canada, thus becoming the first leader in the party's history. |
| | 2005 - A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Fukuoka, Japan, its first major quake in over 100 years. One person is killed, hundreds are injured and evacuated. |
| | 2006 - Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia. |
| | 2006 - Over 150 Chadian soldiers are killed in eastern Chad by members of the rebel UFDC. The growing rebel movement seeks to overthrow Chadian president Idriss Deby. |