1523Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos become the first Lutheran martyrs, burned at the stake by Roman Catholic authorities in Brussels.
1543Having been defeated in the Battle of Solway Moss in the previous year, the Scots conclude the peace Treaty of Greenwich with the Kingdom of England. In it, they also agree to a marriage between the infant Queen Mary and Prince Edward, son of Henry VIII.
1766François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded before his body is burnt on a pyre along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France.
1770Lexell's Comet is seen closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of .
1782Raid on Lunenburg: American privateers attack the British settlement of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
1819Johann Georg Tralles discovers the Great Comet of 1819 (C/1819 N1). It is the first comet analyzed using polarimetry, by François Arago.
1823The five Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica declare independence from the First Mexican Empire after being annexed the year prior.
1837A system of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths is established in England and Wales.
1841Thomas Lempriere and James Clark Ross carve a marker on the Isle of the Dead in Van Diemen's Land to measure tidal variations, one of the earliest surviving benchmarks for sea level rise.
1855Signing of the Quinault Treaty: The Quinault and the Quileute cede their land to the United States.
1862The Russian State Library is founded as the Library of the Moscow Public Museum.
1862Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, second daughter of Queen Victoria, marries Prince Louis of Hesse, the future Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse.
1862American Civil War: The Battle of Malvern Hill takes place. It is the last of the Seven Days Battles, part of George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign.
1863Slavery is abolished in the Dutch colony of Surinam, a date subsequently celebrated as Ketikoti in independent Suriname.
1867The British North America Act takes effect as the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotiajoin into confederation to create the modern nation of Canada. John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada. This date is commemorated annually in Canada as Canada Day, a national holiday.
1898Spanish–American War: The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
1901The French government enacts its anti-clerical legislation Law of Association prohibiting the formation of new monastic orders without governmental approval.
1903Start of first Tour de France bicycle race.
1908SOS is adopted as the international distress signal.
1911Germany dispatches the gunboat to Morocco, sparking the Agadir Crisis.
1915World War I: Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the then-named German Deutsches Heers Fliegertruppe army air service achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronized machine-gun armed fighter plane, the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker.
1916World War I: First day on the Somme: On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.
1917World War I: Russia launches the "Kerensky offensive" against Austria-Hungary to capture Galicia, its final offensive of the war.
1917Chinese General Zhang Xun seizes control of Beijing and restores the monarchy, installing Puyi, last emperor of the Qing dynasty, to the throne. The restoration is reversed just shy of two weeks later, when Republican troops regain control of the capital.
1921The Chinese Communist Party is founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), who seized power in Russia after the 1917 October Revolution, and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International.
1922The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 begins in the United States.
1924The National War Memorial for the Dominion of Newfoundland is inaugurated by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig in St. John's, Newfoundland. The date commemorates the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where at Beaumont-Hamel, 86 percent of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was wiped out.
1931United Airlines begins service (as Boeing Air Transport).
1931Wiley Post and Harold Gatty become the first people to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engined monoplane aircraft (a Lockheed Vega).
1932Australia's national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is formed.
1935In Regina, Saskatchewan, police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ambush strikers participating in the On-to-Ottawa Trek.
1942World War II: start of the First Battle of El Alamein.
1942The Australian Federal Government becomes the sole collector of income tax in Australia as State Income Tax is abolished.
1943The City of Tokyo and the Prefecture of Tokyo are both replaced by the Tokyo Metropolis.
1946Crossroads Able is the first postwar nuclear weapon test.
1947The Philippine Air Force is established.
1948Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Quaid-i-Azam) inaugurates Pakistan's central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan.
1949The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin royal family.
1957The International Geophysical Year begins.
1958The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.
1958Flooding of Canada's Saint Lawrence Seaway begins.
1959Specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units (e.g. inch, mile and ounce) are adopted after agreement between the US, the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.
1960The Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) gains its independence from Italy. Concurrently, it unites as scheduled with the five-day-old State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic.
1963ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail.
1963The British Government admits that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Sovietagent.
1966The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto.
1966The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (first known as the 2nd Artillery Corps) is founded.
1967Merger Treaty: The European Community is formally created out of a merger between the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.
1980"O Canada" officially becomes the national anthem of Canada.
1983A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea crashes into the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea-Bissau, killing all 23 people on board.
1983The Ministry of State Security is established as China's principal intelligence agency
1984The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA.
1987The American radio station WFAN in New York City is launched as the world's first all-sports radio station.
1991The Finnish operator Radiolinja is launched as the world's first GSM network.
1997China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule. The handover ceremony is attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Charles, Prince of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
1997Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on STS-94, a re-flight of the prematurely-ended STS-83 mission with the same crew.
1999The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Elizabeth II on the day that legislative powers are officially transferred from the old Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh. In Wales, the powers of the Welsh Secretary are transferred to the National Assembly.
2002The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
2002Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757, collide in mid-air over Überlingen, southern Germany, killing all 71 on board both planes.
2003Over 500,000 people protest against efforts to pass anti-sedition legislation in Hong Kong.
2004Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini–Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC.
2006The Qinghai–Tibet railway first operates in China.
2007Smoking bans in the United Kingdom culminate in a prohibition on smoking in all public indoor spaces in England.
2008Riots erupt in Mongolia in response to allegations of fraud surrounding the 2008 legislative elections.
2020The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement replaces NAFTA.
2024At the centennial ceremony of the Dominion of Newfoundland National War Memorial, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission allows an unprecedented second Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment soldier is entombed in the memorial at this ceremony.
Nacimientos (261)
1311Liu Bowen, Chinese military strategist, statesman and poet (died 1375)