• 324 - Battle of Adrianople Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium.
• 987 - Hugh Capet is crowned King of France, the first of the Capetian dynasty which ruled France till the French Revolution in 1792.
• 1250 - Louis IX of France is captured by Baibars' Mamluk army at the Battle of Fariskur while he's in Egypt conducting the Seventh Crusade; he later has to ransom himself.
• 1608 - Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain.
• 1754 - French and Indian War: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French forces.
• 1767 - Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.
• 1767 - Norway's oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, is founded (first edition published this date).
• 1775 - American Revolutionary War: George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• 1778 - American Revolutionary War: British forces massacre 360 men, women and children in the Wyoming Valley massacre.
• 1778 - Prussia declares war on Austria.
• 1819 - The first savings bank in the United States (The Bank of Savings in New York City) opens.
• 1839 - The first state normal school in the United States, the forerunner to today's Framingham State College, opens in Lexington, Massachusetts with 3 students.
• 1844 - The last pair of Great Auks is killed.
• 1848 - Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands) by Peter von Scholten.
• 1849 - The French entered Rome in order to restore Pope Pius IX to power. This would prove a major obstacle to Italian unification.
• 1852 - Congress establishes the United States's 2nd mint in San Francisco, California.
• 1863 - U.S. Civil War: The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg culminates with Pickett's Charge.
• 1866 - Austro-Prussian War is decided at the Battle of Königgratz, resulting in Prussia taking over as the prominent German nation from Austria.
• 1884 - Dow Jones published its 1st stock average.
• 1886 - The New York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand.
• 1890 - Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.
• 1898 - Spanish fleet, led by Pascual Cervera y Topete, destroyed by the U.S. Navy in Santiago, Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
• 1938 - World speed record for a steam railway locomotive is set in England, by the Mallard, which reaches a speed of 126 mph.(203 km/h)
• 1944 - World War II: Minsk was liberated from Nazi control by Soviet troops during Operation Bagration.
• 1952 - Puerto Rico's Constitution is approved by the Congress of the United States.
• 1962 - The Algerian War of Independence against the French ends.
• 1969 - The worst disaster in the history of rocketry occurs when the Soviet rocket N-1 explodes and subsequently destroys its launchpad. The explosion is due to a small, loose bolt that was accidentally sucked into a fuel pump.
• 1970 - A British Dan-Air De Havilland Comet chartered jetliner crashes into mountains north of Barcelona, Spain killing 113 people.
• 1976 - Israeli commandos rescue 105 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda during Operation Yonatan.
• 1977 - The Senegalese Republican Movement (MRS) is founded.
• 1979 - US President Jimmy Carter signs the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
• 1986 - US President Ronald Reagan presides over the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.
• 1988 - United States Navy warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
• 1988 - The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, providing the second connection between the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus.
• 1989 - Fitzgerald Inquiry released in Queensland.
• 1994 - The deadliest day in Texas traffic history, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Forty six people were killed in crashes.
• 1996 - Stone of Destiny returned to Scotland.
• 2001 - A Vladivostok Avia Tupolev TU-154 jetliner crashes on approach to landing at Irkutsk, Russia killing 145 people.
• 2004 - Official opening of Bangkok's subway system.
• 2005 - The national law legalizing same-sex marriage takes effect in Spain.
• 2006 - Asteroid labeled as 2004 XP14 flies 432,308 km (268,624 miles) by Earth.
• 2007 - Ghana introduces new Ghanaian cedi currency.

Births