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Events

336 - Saint Mark elected Catholic Pope.

350 - General Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans, proclaims himself Emperor.

474 - Leo II briefly becomes Byzantine emperor

532 - Nika riots in Constantinople fail.

1486 - King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.

1520 - King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats the Swedes at Lake Asunde.

1535 - Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1670 - Henry Morgan captures Panama.

1701 - Frederick I becomes King of Prussia.

1778 - James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".

1788 - The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia landed in Botany Bay creating the first Australian Penal Colony

1861 - American Civil War - Georgia joins South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama in secession from the United States.

1871 - Wilhelm I of Germany becomes the first German Emperor.

 
 

1884 - Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK.

1886 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England.

1896 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.

1911 - Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.

1912 - British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, had preceded them by just over a month.

1915 - Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

1916 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.

1919 - World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.

1919 - Bentley Motors Limited is founded.

1939 - Louis Armstrong records Jeepers Creepers.

1943 - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

1944 - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

1944 - Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad.

 
 

1945 - Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army

1958 - Willie O'Ree, the first African American National Hockey League player, make his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins.

1964 - Plans are revealed for the World Trade Center in New York City.

1964 - The Beatles appear on the Billboard magazine charts for the first time.

1967 - Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler," is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life in prison.

1975 - The Jeffersons debuts on CBS.

1977 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious "legionnaire's disease."

1977 - Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83.

1978 - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.

1983 - The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe Olympic medals to his family.

1990 - Former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother Peggy McMartin Buckey are acquitted in a Los Angeles, California court of 52 child molestation charges.

1990 - Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.

1991 - Eastern Air Lines shuts down after 62 years citing financial problems.

1993 - For the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is officially observed in all 50 United States states.

1995 -In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old.

1997 - In north west Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other.

1997 - Boerge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.

1998 - Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair story on his website The Drudge Report.

2001 - NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt dies during a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway.

2002 - A Canadian Pacific Railway train carrying anhydrous ammonia derails outside of Minot, North Dakota, killing one man and calling into question the maintenance of CP track and the policy of voice-tracking used by Clear Channel Communications.

2005 - A U.N. World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan begins.

 

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