1635 – Virginia Governor John Harvey accused of treason and removed from office

1770 – British Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, landed at Botany Bay in Australia

1789 – Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific

1818 – US President James Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on Great Lakes and Lake Champlain

1855 – First veterinary college in US incorporated in Boston

1881 – Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail in Lincoln, New Mexico

1914 – 181 died in coal mine collapse at Eccles, West Virginia

1919 – First jump with US Army Air Corps (rip-cord type) parachute (Les Irvin)

1924 – 119 died in coal mine disaster at Benwood, West Virginia (ten years to the day of the Eccles collapse)

1930 – First night organized baseball game played in Independence, Kansas

1937 – First commercial flight across Pacific operated by Pan Am

1940 – Glenn Miller recorded “Pennsylvania 6-5000”

1942 – “Word War II” titled so as a result of Gallup Poll

1942 – Nightly “dim-out” began along US East Coast

1944 – Exercise “Tiger” ended with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1949 – Former Philippine First Lady Aurora Quezon, 61, assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 others also killed

1952 – Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Supreme Commander of NATO

1956 – Cincinnati Reds outfielder Frank Robinson hit his 1st of 586 homeruns

1967 – Muhammad Ali refused induction into the army and stripped of his boxing title

1967 – The Douglas Aircraft Company behind schedule with deliveries of the DC-8 and DC-9 and close to bankruptcy agreed to merge with the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to form McDonnell Douglas

1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France

1972 – Courts awarded the 1968 Kentucky Derby prize money to second place winner due to the winner being given drugs before the race

1975 – John Lennon appeared on “Tonight” and Ringo Starr appeared on “Smother Brothers”

1986 – Soviet TV news program Vremya announced a nuclear accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station 2 days after the event

1988 – Aloha Airlines Flight 243 Boeing 737 roof tore off in flight.  Flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing died after being ejected from the airplane. Another 65 passengers and crew were injured.

1989 – Iran protested the sale of “Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie

1994 – Aldrich Ames, former CIA officer, and his wife Rosario pled guilty to spying for the Soviet Union and Russia

1996 – In Australia’s worst massacre in modern history, Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. This led to a compulsory gun buy back program and major changes to gun control laws.

2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist

2018 – Shaquem Griffin was the first one-handed person to be drafted into the NFL, for the Seattle Seahawks

2018 – World’s largest child sacrifice, 140 remains uncovered by archaeologists near Trujillo, Peru, dating back 550 years to Chimú civilization

2019 TV series “Game of Thrones: The Long Night” episode debuts with the longest battle ever screened (nearly 80 minutes), surpassing “Lord of the Rings” Battle of Helm’s Deep (44 minutes)

2019 – American diver Victor Vescovo maed the deepest dive ever to the bottom of the Mariana trench, the deepest oceanic trench on Earth at 10,927m (35,849ft), and finds a plastic bag

2019 – Disney says Marvel film “Avengers: Endgame” made estimated $1.2 billion worldwide, first film to make more than 1 billion on opening

2020 – US confirmed cases of COVID-19 pass 1 million, while death toll of 58,365 surpassed that of US soldiers killed in Vietnam War 

2020 – US Department of Defense released three declassified videos of possible UFOs from 2004 and 2015

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