Events

• 314 - Pope Miltiades ends his reign as the Pope of Roman Catholicism by dying in power.
• 1158 - Vladislav II becomes King of Bohemia.
• 1569 - First recorded lottery in England.
• 1571 - Austrian nobility is granted freedom of religion.
• 1693 - Mt. Etna erupts in Sicily, Italy.
• 1759 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.
• 1779 - Ching-Thang Khomba crowned King of Manipur
• 1787 - William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
• 1794 - Robert Forsythe, a US Marshal was killed in Augusta, Georgia when trying to serve court papers, the first US Marshal to die in action.
• 1805 - Michigan Territory is created.
• 1861 - Alabama secedes from the United States.
• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Arkansas Post - General John McClernand and Admiral David Dixon Porter capture the Arkansas River for the Union.
• 1867 - Benito Juárez becomes Mexican president again.
• 1879 - Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• 1880 - Total solar eclipse blackens the sky of San Francisco one day after the funeral of Emperor Norton.
• 1902 - Popular Mechanics magazine was published for the first time.
• 1908 - Grand Canyon National Monument is created.
• 1912 - Lawrence textile strike begins in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
• 1917 - Kingsland Explosion Sabotage of munitions factory.
• 1919 - Romania annexes Transylvania.
• 1922 - First use of insulin to treat diabetes in a human patient.
• 1923 - Troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area to force Germany to pay its reparation payments.
• 1935 - Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
• 1942 - Japan declares war on the Netherlands and invades the Netherlands East Indies.
• 1942 - The Japanese capture Kuala Lumpur.
• 1943 - The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China.
• 1946 - Enver Hoxha declares the People's Republic of Albania with himself as dictator.
• 1949 - First recorded case of snowfall in Los Angeles, California.
• 1957 - The African Convention is founded in Dakar. And, Mass-Murder Jack Gilbert Graham Was executied via the Gas Chamber.
• 1962 - Eruption of the Huascaran volcano in Peru; 4,000 deaths.
• 1963 - Please Please Me is released in the United Kingdom by The Beatles, with Ask Me Why as the B-side. It would be the first Beatles' single to reach #1 (on most record charts) in the UK.
• 1963 - The Whisky a Go Go night club in Los Angeles, the first disco in the USA, is opened.
• 1964 - United States Surgeon General Dr. Luther Leonidas Terry, M.D., publishes a report saying that smoking may be hazardous to health. It is the first such statement ever made by the U.S. government.
• 1972 - East Pakistan renames itself Bangladesh.
• 1973 - The Open University, Britain's distance-learning university, awards its first degrees.
• 1974 - The world's first surviving set of sextuplets are born to Susan Rosenkowitz in Cape Town, South Africa.
• 1980 - Nigel Short, 14, is the youngest chess player to be awarded the degree of International Master.
• 1982 - A cold snap sends temperatures to record lows in dozens of cities throughout the Midwestern United States.
• 1986 - The Gateway Bridge, Brisbane in Queensland, Australia is officially opened.
• 1990 - 300,000 march in favor of Lithuanian independence.
• 1993 - Launch episode of WWE Raw which is still running
• 1994 - Irish Government announces the end of a 15-year broadcasting ban on the IRA and its political arm Sinn Féin
• 1996 - Haiti becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
• 1998 - Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria; over 100 people killed.
• 2001 - The Federal Trade Commission approves the merger of AOL and Time Warner to form AOL Time Warner.

Births