1565 – The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1567 – The infant James VI was crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.
1775 – Founding of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps: General George Washington appointed William Tudor as Judge Advocate of the Continental Army.
1818 – French physicist Augustin Fresnel submitted his prizewinning “Memoir on the Diffraction of Light”, which precisely accounted for the limited extent to which light spreads into shadows, and thereby demolished the oldest objection to the wave theory of light.
1836 – Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.
1858 – United States and Japan signed the Harris Treaty which opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities to trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, among a number of trading stipulations.
1864 – American Civil War: Confederate spy Belle Boyd was arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C.
1871 – The Connecticut Valley Railroad opened between Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Hartford, Connecticut in the United States.
1901 – Land lottery began in Oklahoma.
1914 – The Cape Cod Canal opened.
1920 – Construction of the Link River Dam began as part of the Klamath Reclamation Project.
1921 – Adolf Hitler became leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
1932 – Great Depression: In Washington, D.C., troops dispersed the last of the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans.
1948 – Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad: After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, opened in London.
1950 – Korean War: After four days, the No Gun Ri Massacre ended when the US Army 7th Cavalry Regiment was withdrawn.
1957 – The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.
1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
1959 – First United States Congress elections were held in Hawaii as a state of the Union.
1961 – Dick Clark premiered his summer stage show, the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.
1963 – Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” was released.
1965 – Vietnam War: The first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrived in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.
1965 – The Beatles film “Help!” premiered in London.
1966 – Bob Dylan was seriously injured when he crashed his motorcycle near Woodstock, NY.
1967 – Vietnam War: Off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal caught on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.
1968 – The Byrds left on their tour of South Africa without Gram Parsons. He had refused to set foot in a country where apartheid was official policy.
1971 – A security guard was stabbed to death at a Who concert in Forest Hills, NY.
1973 – $180,000 was stolen from Led Zeppelin’s deposit box at the Drake Hotel in New York City, NY.
1976 – In New York City, David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the “Son of Sam”) killed one person and seriously wounded another in the first of a series of attacks.
1978 – Kenny Loggins “Whenever I Call You Friend” was released.
1980 – David Bowie made his theatrical debut when he opened in the title role of “Elephant Man.”
1981 – A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watched the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
1987 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand signed the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (Eurotunnel).
1987 – Michigan’s governor announced an annual “Four Tops Day.”
1991 – The Metallica single “Enter Sandman” was released.
1996 – The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act was struck down by a U.S. federal court as too broad.
1998 – The first headlining tour for Matchbox 20 began in New Orleans, LA.
1998 – Miramax Films announced that they had purchased the rights to the Beatles’ movie “A Hard Day’s Night” with the intention of releasing a remastered version on the movie’s 35th anniversary.
2005 – Astronomers announced their discovery of the dwarf planet Eris.
2021 – The International Space Station temporarily spun out of control, moving the ISS 45 degrees out of attitude, following an engine malfunction of Russian module Nauka.[6]