1429 – Joan of Arc arrived to relieve the Siege of Orléans.
1624 – French king Louis XIII named Cardinal Richelieu chief minister of France.
1760 – French forces commenced the siege of Quebec which was held by the British.
1770 – James Cook arrived in Australia at Botany Bay, which he named.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: British and French ships clashed in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique.
1826 – The galaxy Centaurus A or NGC 5128 was discovered by James Dunlop.
1852 – Roget’s Thesaurus, created by Peter Roget, was released to the public.
1861 – Maryland in the American Civil War: Maryland’s House of Delegates voted not to secede from the Union.
1862 – American Civil War: The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces under David Farragut.
1864 – Theta Xi fraternity was founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the only fraternity to be founded during the American Civil War.
1927 – Construction of Spirit of St Louis (the monoplane which Charles Lindburgh used to fly across the Atlantic) was completed.
1942 – Jews were forced to wear a Jewish Star in Netherlands & Vichy-France.
1944 – World War II: New Zealand-born SOE agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo’s most wanted person, parachuted back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group.
1945 – World War II: Airdrops of food began over German-occupied regions of the Netherlands.
1945 – World War II: HMS Goodall (K479) was torpedoed by U-286 outside the Kola Inlet, becoming the last Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the European theatre of World War II.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler married his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designated Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both committed suicide the following day.
1945 – Dachau concentration camp was liberated by United States troops.
1945 – The Italian commune of Fornovo di Taro was liberated from German forces by Brazilian forces.
1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened and indicted former Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders for war crimes.
1953 – The first U.S. experimental 3D television broadcast showed an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV.
1961 – ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” debuted.
1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title.
1967 – Aretha Franklin released her single “Respect” (written by Otis Redding); Billboard Song of the Year, 1967.
1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
1970 – Vietnam War: United States and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia to hunt Viet Cong.
1974 – Watergate scandal: United States President Richard Nixon announced the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal.
1975 – Vietnam War: Operation Frequent Wind: The U.S. began to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon before an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war came to an end.
1975 – Vietnam War: The North Vietnamese army completed its capture of all parts of South Vietnamese-held Trường Sa Islands.
1982 – American mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski murdered pharmacist Paul Hoffman by beating him with a tire iron.
1986 – A fire at the Central library of the City of Los Angeles Public Library damaged or destroyed 400,000 books and other items.
1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise became the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.
1986 – Chernobyl disaster: American and European spy satellites captured the ruins of the 4th Reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant.
1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.
1991 – “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” single was released by Alan Jackson (ASCAP Award Country Song of the Year, 1992; Billboard Song of the Year, 1991).
1992 – Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people were killed and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.
1992 – Country singer Doug Stone, 35, underwent quadruple bypass surgery.
1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 entered into force which outlawed the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.
2004 – The final Oldsmobile was built in Lansing, Michigan, ending 107 years of vehicle production.
2011 – The Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton took place at Westminster Abbey in London.
2015 – A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox set the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.
2018 – Animated series “The Simpsons” surpassed 635-episode count of “Gunsmoke”‘; highest number of episodes of any series on TV.
2020 – World record for the longest single lightning flash of 477miles across US states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, according to World Meteorological Organization.
2021 – Brazil’s official COVID-19 death toll passed 400,000, with daily fatalities at 3,000, down from 4,000.
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