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Events

456 - Magister militum Ricimer defeats the Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the western Roman Empire

1775 - Portland, Maine burned by the British

1780 - Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War

1781 - George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia

1793 - Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.

1793 - Battle of Wattignies

1813 - The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Leipzig.

1834 - Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt down

1841 - Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

1843 - Sir William Rowan Hamilton invents the concept of quaternions.

1859 - John Brown leads raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia

1869 - Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, discovered.

1869 - England's first residential college for women, Girton College, Cambridge, is founded.

 
 

1882 - The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.

1890 - Michael Collins born: Irish Patriot and Commander-in-Chief, Irish Free State Army.

1906 - The Partition of Bengal (India) occurred.

1906 - The Captain of Köpenick fools the city hall of Köpenick and several soldiers by impersonating a Prussian officer.

1912 - Bulgarian pilots Radul Milkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history.

1916 - Margaret Sanger founds Planned Parenthood by opening the first U.S. birth control clinic.

1923 - The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.

1934 - Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.

1940 - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. named first African American general in the United States Army

1940 - Warsaw Ghetto established

1946 - Ten war criminals of the Second World War, condemned in the Nuremberg trials hanged.

1949 - Nikos Zakhiariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.

1951 - The first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, is assassinated in Rawalpindi

 
 

1964 - People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon

1968 - United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked out of the USA's team for performing a Black Power salute during a medal ceremony.

1968 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.

1969 - United States - The "miracle" New York Mets win the World Series.

1970 - Anwar Sadat elected President of Egypt

1970 - Canada - In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act.

1972 - Rainbow, a British television programme for children, debuts.

1973 - Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1975 - The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.

1978 - Karol Józef Wojty?a becomes Pope John Paul II

1984 - Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1987 - Great Storm of 1987: hurricane force winds to hit much of the South of England killing 23 people.

1991 - Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 19 in Luby's Cafeteria.

1991 - Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.

1992 - Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson files a 1.4 million USD lawsuit against French tabloids for running topless photos taken of her on the French Riviera, including some of Texas millionaire John Bryan suckling on her toes.

1995 - The Million Man March occurs in Washington, DC.

1996 - 84 are killed and more than 180 injured as 47,000 soccer fans attempt to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Mateo Flores Stadium in Guatemala City.

2001 - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: U.S. warplanes mistakenly bomb International Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan.

2002 - Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated.

2003 - The Red Sox and Yankees face off in a historical ALCS game 7 at Yankee Stadium. The game ends in dramatic fashion with an Aaron Boone walk off home run.

 

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