Events

• 30 BC - Cleopatra commits suicide after her lover, Mark Antony's defeat at the battle of Actium.
• 1099 - First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon - Crusaders under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon defeat Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah. Considered the last engagement of the First Crusade.
• 1121 - Battle of Didgori: The Georgian army under King David the Builder won a decisive victory over the famous Seljuk commander Ilghazi.
• 1164 - Battle of Harim: Nur ad-Din defeats the Crusader armies of the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch.
• 1281 - The fleet of Qubilai Khan is destroyed by a typhoon while approaching Japan.
• 1323 - Treaty of Nöteborg - Sweden and Novgorod (Russia) regulates the border for the first time.
• 1332 - Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor - Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar routed by Edward Balliol.
• 1480 - Battle of Otranto - Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam.
• 1499 - First act of the Battle of Zonchio between Venetian and Ottoman fleets.
• 1676 - Praying Indian John Alderman shot and killed Metacomet the Wampanoag war chief, ending King Philip's War.
• 1687 - Charles of Lorraine defeats the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohács.
• 1793 - The Rhône department was created when the former département of Rhône-et-Loire was split into two departments: Rhône and Loire (Lêre).
• 1806 - Santiago de Liniers re-takes the city of Buenos Aires after the first British invasion.
• 1833 - Chicago was founded.
• 1851 - Isaac Singer granted a patent for his sewing machine.
• 1877 - Asaph Hall discovers Deimos.
• 1883 - The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
• 1898 - Armistice ends the Spanish-American War.
• 1898 - The Hawaiian flag is lowered from Iolani Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the American flag to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawai`i to the United States.
• 1908 - First Model T Ford built.
• 1914 - World War I - Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary; British Empire countries automatically included.
• 1925 - The first cast of Alpha Psi Omega, drawn from The Masquers of Fairmont College, West Virginia, was initiated.
• 1943 - Alleged date of the first Philadelphia Experiment test on United States Navy ship USS Eldridge.
• 1944 - Waffen SS troops massacre more than 500 civil people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema.
• 1944 - Alençon liberated by General Leclerc, the first city in France to be liberated from the Nazis by French forces.
• 1952 - The Night of the Murdered Poets - Thirteen most prominent Jewish intellectuals were murdered in Moscow.
• 1953 - Nuclear testing: The Soviet atomic bomb project proceeded with the detonation of Joe 4, the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon.
• 1960 - Echo I, the first communications satellite, launched
• 1964 - South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to its racist policy.
• 1964 - Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers escapes from Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, England.
• 1969 - Battle of the Bogside, Catholic community of Derry engage in two-day battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary
• 1972 - The last American combat ground troops leave Vietnam.
• 1977 - The first free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
• 1978 - Japan and the People's Republic of China sign the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People's Republic of China.
• 1980 - Signing of the Montevideo Treaty, which established the Latin American Integration Association.
• 1981 - The IBM Personal Computer is released.
• 1982 - Mexico announces it's unable to pay its enormous external debt, marking the beginning of a debt crisis that spread to all of Latin America and the Third World.
• 1985 - Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Mount Ogura in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520. It is the worst single-plane air disaster.
• 1990 - Sue, the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, is discovered near Faith, South Dakota.
• 1992 - Canada, Mexico, and the United States announce completion of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
• 1994 - Major League Baseball players go on strike. The work stoppage forces the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
• 2000 - The Oscar class submarine K-141 Kursk of the Russian Navy exploded and sank in the Barents Sea during a military exercise.
• 2004 - New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey comes out publicly as a gay man.
• 2005 - Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, is fatally shot by a sniper at his home.
• 2005 - An F2 tornado strikes the coal mining town of Wright, Wyoming, destroying nearly 100 homes and killing two people.
• 2005 - Civil unrest provoked in the Maldives
• 2005 - An F1 tornado strikes Glen Cove, New York, a rare event on Long Island
• 2007 - Bulk carrier M/V New Flame collides with oil tanker Torm Gertrud at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar, ending up partially submerged.

Births