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Events

1328 - Philip VI is crowned King of France.

1647 - First recorded execution of a witch in the American colonies.

1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1813 - War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.

1849 - The Great Hall of Euston station, London opened.

1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian Unification.

1883 - Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.

1895 - Oscar Wilde is sent to prison for sodomy.

1896 - The F4-strength St. Louis-East St. Louis Tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri and East Saint Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and incurring $2.9 billion in damages (1997USD).

1901 - In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.

1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.

1907 - A Bubonic plague outbreak begins in San Francisco, California.

1919 - The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.

 
 

1919 - Charles Strite patents the pop-up toaster.

1923 - The first 24 hours of Le Mans race ends.

1924 - The Music Corporation of America (MCA) is founded.

1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model As.

1930 - The 1,046 feet (319 meters) tall Chrysler Building in New York (tallest man-made structure at the time) opens to the public.

1932 - The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens.

1933 - New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1933 - The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

1933 - The Century of Progress World's Fair opens in Chicago, Illinois.

1935 - New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in the case A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).

1936 - The RMS Queen Mary begins her maiden voyage.

1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.

1939 - DC Comics publishes its second superhero in Detective Comics #27; he is Batman, one of the most topical comic book superheroes of all time.

 
 

1940 - World War II: 97 out of 99 members of a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are massacred while trying to surrender at Dunkirk. The German commander, Captain Fritz Knoechlein, is eventually hanged for war crimes.

1941 - World War II: U.S. President Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".

1941 - World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing 2,300 men.

1942 - World War II: Operation Anthropoid - assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.

1960 - In Turkey, a military coup removed President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.

1963 - Folk music singer Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, which features "Blowin' in the Wind" and several other of his best-known songs.

1964 - Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies in office.

1965 - Vietnam War: United States warships begin bombardments of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam for the first time.

1968 - Future U.S. president George W. Bush enlists in the Texas Air National Guard.

1974 - Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.

1980 - The Gwangju Massacre: airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.

1987 - FC Porto wins the European Cup, defeating Bayern München by 2-1 in Prater Stadion in Wien.

1995 - In Charlottesville, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

1996 - First Chechnya War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire in the war.

1997 - The F5-strength Jarrell Tornado slams into the small town of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.

1998 - Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.

1999 - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milo?evi? and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

2006 - An earthquake hits Java, killing upwards of 5,000.

 

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