49 BC Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering "alea iacta est" (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war and his appointment as Roman dictator for life
- 69 Roman Emperor Galba adopts Marcus Piso Licinianus as Caesar
- 236 Fabian begins his reign as Catholic Pope
381 Roman Emperor Theodosius I issues an edict ordering all churches to be surrendered to bishops of the Catholic faith as he sees it
402 Theodosius II, aged just nine months, is proclaimed co-Augustus with his father Eastern Roman Emperor Arcadius - then the youngest to hold an imperial title
- 532 Constantinople chariot racing green and blue supporters due to be executed escape, prompting Nika revolt
- 738 Commemoration of a new ceremonial ballcourt at the significant Maya city of Copán under reign of one of its most important rulers 18 Rabbit (modern Honduras)
- 1072 Robert Guiscard's Norman force conquers Palermo
- 1356 German Emperor Charles I promulgates the 'Golden Bull', to regulate the election of a new king - the most important constitutional document of the Holy Roman Empire
Order of the Golden Fleece
1430 Catholic Order of the Golden Fleece is founded in Bruges in celebration of the prosperous and wealthy domains of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy
- 1475 Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui
- 1514 Complutensian New Testament in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek & Latin finished
- 1550 1st sitting of "Vurige Chamber" in Paris
- 1616 English diplomat Thomas Roe presents Mughal Emperor Jahangir with a English coach at the imperial court at Ajmer - considered an inadequate gift
Charles I Flees London
1642 King Charles I and family flee London for Hampton Court fearing for their lives, not to return for 7 years
Royal African Company
1663 King Charles II affirms a new charter for the Royal African Company granting it a monopoly over trade along the west coast of Africa in "redwood, elephants' teeth, negroes, slaves, hides, wax, guinea grains, or other commodities of those countries"
- 1731 Charles Farnese becomes Duke of Parma and Piacenza
Common Sense
1776 "Common Sense" pamphlet by Thomas Paine is published advocating American independence
- 1799 Friedrich von Schiller's play "Die Piccolomini" premieres in Weimar
- 1806 Dutch forces in Capetown surrender to the British
- 1808 Herman Daendels succeeds Albertus Wiese as Governor-General of Dutch-East Indies
- 1811 Louisiana slaves rebel in 2 parishes
- 1833 Felix Mendelssohn's cantata "Die erste Walpurgisnacht" premieres in Berlin, Germany
- 1839 First tea from leaves of indigenous plants of Assam, India, arrives in the United Kingdom [date approximate] [1]
1840 Uniform Penny Post mail system starts throughout the United Kingdom an idea championed by Rowland Hill to increase the volume of mail and its availability to poorer classes
- 1853 Charles Reade's play "Gold" premieres in London
- 1861 Florida secedes from the Union (US Civil War)
- 1861 Fort Jackson & Fort Philip are taken over by LA state troops (US Civil War)
- 1861 US forts & property seized by Mississippi
- 1862 Battle of Big Sandy River, Kentucky (Middle Creek)
- 1862 Romney expedition, Confederate Army military expedition begins in Romney, West Virginia (US Civil War)
- 1863 First underground railway opens in London
- 1863 General McClernand's Union troops surround Fort Hindman, Arkansas
- 1863 January uprising begins in Poland
- 1870 Georgia legislature reconvenes after Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that elected African Americans who had been expelled had the right to hold office and were reinstated
Standard Oil Formed
1870 Standard Oil Company created by John D. Rockefeller (30%), his brother and other business partners. Then controlled about 10% of world oil.
- 1878 US Senate proposes female suffrage
- 1883 Fire at uninsured Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin kills 71. General Tom Thumb of P. T. Barnum fame, escapes unhurt
- 1889 Ivory Coast declared a protectorate of France
- 1890 Edward Macdowell's symphonic poem "Lancelot & Elaine" premieres in Boston
Sapientiae Christianae
1890 Pope Leo XIII publishes encyclical Sapientiae Christianae on the duties of Christians as citizens
- 1897 Henrik Ibsen's play "John Gabriel Borkman" premieres in Helsingfors
- 1897 Ukrainian bacteriologist Wademar Haffkine performs the first human trial for a vaccine for the plague on himself during the Bombay epidemic
- 1897 Vincent d'Indy's orchestral piece "Istar" premieres in Amsterdam and Brussels
Second Boer War
1900 British generals Frederick Roberts and Herbert Kitchener reach Cape Town during the Second Boer War
- 1901 Oil discovered at Spindletop, Beaumont, marking the start of the Texas oil boom (gusher age)
- 1902 Although it has professed neutrality in the Boer War, German Chancellor von Bulow joins others in attacking British actions in South Africa
- 1902 Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock's "Te Deum" premieres in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 1906 The British and French begin consultations on military and naval issues
- 1910 1st international air meet in US held, in LA
- 1910 Lunt-Fontanne Theater (Globe) opens at 205 W 46th St NYC
- 1911 First photo in the US taken from an airplane, San Diego
- 1911 Honduras signs treaty turning over customs to US (not ratified)
- 1911 Trumper scored double cricket ton v South Africa, goes on to get 214
- 1912 Caillaux government in France resigns
- 1912 World's first flying boat's maiden flight (Glenn Curtiss in NY)
- 1914 1st edition of Hague's Post under SF van Oss, published
- 1914 Norwegian speed skater Oscar Mathisen skates world 500m record in 43.7s in Oslo, Norway
- 1914 Yuan Shih-k'ai, president of the new Chinese republic, dissolves parliament and prepares a constitution of his own design: he will set himself up as dictator, preparatory to an attempt to make himself emperor
US Engineers Murdered
1916 In retaliation for President Woodrow Wilson's recognition of Mexico's Carranza government, members of Pancho Villa's revolutionary army take 17 US mining engineers from a train and shoot 16 of them in cold blood
- 1916 Russian offensive in Caucasus
Silent Sentinels
1917 Suffragettes, the "Silent Sentinels," first protest outside the White House in Washington, D.C., led by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party (NWP)
Allies Respond to Wilson's Terms
1917 The Allied Governments respond to US President Woodrow Wilson's December 1916 note, giving their terms for ending the war
- 1920 Inauguration of the League of Nations held in Paris
- 1920 Montreal's Newsy Lalonde scores 6 goals as Canadiens beat Toronto St. Patricks, 14-7 at Mount Royal Arena, Montreal; combined 21 goals an NHL record
- 1920 Silver reaches a record high of $1.37 per ounce
- 1923 Last US troops leave Rhineland (Germany)
- 1923 Lithuania seizes & annexes country of Memel
- 1925 Allies refuse to evacuate the Cologne area of Germany as agreed
- 1925 Miriam (Ma) Ferguson sworn in as Governor of Texasr, 2nd US woman governor, 1st ever elected
- 1927 Fritz Lang's silent film "Metropolis" premieres in Berlin
- 1928 George Gershwin, Sigmund Romberg and P. G. Wodehouse's musical "Rosalie" premieres in New York
Street Scene
1929 Elmer Rice's stage drama "Street Scene" opens at the Playhouse Theatre, NYC; runs for 601 performances, winning a Pulitzer Prize
The Adventures of Tintin
1929 First edition of The Adventures of Tintin is published by Hergé in Le Petit Vingtième and continues until Hergé's death in June 1993 (not published during WWII)
- 1930 Mordovian Autonomous Region in RSFSR constituted
- 1930 New Zealand's 1st game of Test cricket is held in Christchurch, NZ. Englishman Maurice Allom takes a Test hat-trick.
- 1932 "Mickey Mouse" & "Silly Symphony" comics syndicated
- 1932 "Pete the Tramp" cartoon strip by C D Russell debuts
- 1938 Eduard van Beinum debuts as conductor of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 1938 Jean Anouilh's play "La Sauvage" premieres in Paris
- 1938 Paul Vincent Carroll's "White Seed" premieres in NYC
- 1941 Joseph Kesselring's "Arsenic & Old Lace" premieres in NYC
- 1941 Nazi Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart begins registration of Jews
- 1941 World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura.
- 1942 Japan invades North Celebes, Dutch East Indies
FDR's First Wartime Trip
1943 First US President to visit a foreign country in wartime - FDR leaves for Casablanca, Morocco
- 1943 Soviet offensive against German 6th and 4th Armies near Stalingrad
- 1944 1st mobile electric power plant delivered in Philadelphia
- 1944 British troops conquer Maungdaw, Burma
- 1945 LA Railway (with 5 streetcar lines) forced to close
- 1945 No one is elected to baseball's Hall of Fame
- 1946 UN General Assembly meets for the first time in London
- 1946 US Army bounces 1st radar signal off the Moon from Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey
- 1947 British stop ships Independence & In-Gathering from landing in Israel
- 1947 Greek steamer "Himara" strikes a wartime mine in Saronic Gulf south of Athens with loss of 392 of 637 aboard
- 1949 1st Jewish family show "Goldbergs" premieres on CBS
Roddenberry Joins the LAPD
1949 Gene Roddenberry applies for a position with the Los Angeles Police Department
- 1949 RCA introduces 45 RPM record
- 1951 First jet passenger trip is made
- 1951 Maurice Richard scores his 16th career hat trick in the Montreal Canadiens' 3-0 win over NY Rangers to bring his career total to 274 goals; passes Howie Morenz as NHL's #2 all-time leading goal scorer
- 1951 UN headquarters opens in Manhattan NY
- 1952 Cargo ship SS Flying Enterprise sinks in the English Channel after weeks of trying to salvage it
- 1952 Jean Anouilh's play "La valse des toréadors" (The Waltz of the Toreadors) premieres at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées in Paris
- 1954 A Comet jet airliner crashes in the Mediterranean; 35 people are missing
- 1954 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to W H Auden
- 1955 "Ordet", directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, starring Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, is released
Heartbreak Hotel
1956 Elvis Presley records single "Heartbreak Hotel", written by Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden, at RCA Studios in Nashville, Tennessee
Commissioner's Bing Crosby Decision
1957 Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick rules Bing Crosby can keep token stock in Detroit Tigers, even though he owns part of Pittsburgh Pirates
Great Balls of Fire
1958 "Great Balls of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis reaches #1 on the UK pop chart
- 1960 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Delmore Schwartz
- 1962 Eruptions on Mount Huascaran in Peru destroy 7 villages & kill 3,500
- 1964 Battles between Muslims & Hindus in Calcutta
- 1964 Panama severs diplomatic relations with US
- 1964 US version of "That Was The Week That Was" premieres
- 1964 Vee-Jay Records releases "Introducing the Beatles", the first Beatles album released in the US
- 1965 Bollingen Prize for Poetry awarded to Horace Gregory [1]
- 1965 WKBD TV channel 50 in Detroit, Michigan (IND) begins broadcasting
- 1966 India & Pakistan sign Tashkent Declaration peace accord
- 1966 The Georgia House of Representatives votes 184-12 to deny Julian Bond his seat as a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War
- 1967 Lester Maddox inaugurated as Governor of Georgia
- 1967 PBS (the National Educational TV) begins as a 70 station network
Brooke Takes US Senate Seat
1967 Republican Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts takes his seat as the first African American popularly elected to the US Senate
- 1968 US Surveyor 7 lands near lunar crater Tycho
- 1969 Pirate Radio Station Free Derby begins operation by Northern Ireland
- 1969 Sweden is the 1st Western country to recognize North Vietnam
- 1969 USSR's Venera 6 launched for parachute landing on Venus
- 1970 Preview Center opens at Walt Disney World, Florida - first building to open
- 1971 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Richard Wilbur
Suzuki on Science
1971 Canadian scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki begins his broadcasting career as host of CBC TV program "Suzuki on Science" [1]
- 1971 Irish Republican Army (IRA) carry out a 'punishment attack', tarring and feathering 4 men accused of criminal activities in Belfast
- 1972 Geoge Harrison and Friends' triple live album set "The Concert for Bangladesh" released in UK
- 1973 First biennial exhibition of American contemporary art in its current format opens at the Whitney Museum, now one of the world's leading art shows [1]
- 1973 For the first time graduates studying from home with 'the Open University' receive their degrees
- 1973 Gas tank on Staten Island explodes, 40 die
- 1977 20th hat trick in Islander history - Bobby Nystrom
- 1977 Steve Allen's "Meeting Of The Minds", a round table talk-show in which he interviews figures from history debuts on PBS
- 1978 Soyuz 27 launches, carrying 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station
Winter of Discontent
1979 The Sun paper headline is 'Crisis? What Crisis?' as UK Prime Minister James Callaghan denies that the country is in chaos during the 'Winter of Discontent' strike wave
- 1980 Last broadcast of "The Rockford Files" on NBC
- 1981 El Salvador guerrilla group FMLN opens "general offensive"
- 1981 John Severin sets 100-mi unicycle speed record, 9 h 21 m
- 1982 -17°F (27.2°C) in Braemar Grampian (equals UK record)
- 1982 NBC's premiere of TV film "Will: G. Gordon Liddy", based on the Watergate conspirator, participant and convict
1982 NFC Championship, Candlestick Park, SF: San Francisco 49ers defeat Dallas Cowboys 28-27; "The Catch," an iconic moment in NFL history, Dwight Clark makes a fingertip touchdown catch from Joe Montana with 58 seconds remaining; SF goes on to win the Super Bowl
- 1982 Petra Schneider swims world record 1500 m freestyle (15:43.31)
- 1983 NY Supreme Court issues a preliminary injunction barring NY Yankees from playing season-opening series against Tigers in Denver
- 1984 Argentine ex-president and general Reynaldo Bignone arrested
- 1984 Bulgarian Tupolev 134 crashes at Sofia airport in Bulgaria, 50 die
- 1984 Clara Peller first asks, "Where's the beef?" in a commercial for Wendy's hamburger chain
- 1984 Conductor Eugene Ormandy leads his last concert, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall, NYC
- 1984 US re-establishes full diplomatic relations with Vatican after almost 117 years
Ortega Takes Power
1985 Daniel Ortega inaugurated as President of Nicaragua for the first time
Wilkens 1st to 1,000 Games
1985 Lenny Wilkens becomes first to coach in 1,000 NBA games when his Seattle SuperSonics defeat the Golden State Warriors, 89-86
Abdul-Jabbar's 34,000th Point
1986 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Los Angeles Lakers scores his 34,000th career point during 124-102 win over Indiana Pacers; only NBA player to reach the milestone at that time, holds career record until 2023
- 1986 NASA's STS-61-C mission scrubbed T -9m because of bad weather at Florida's Kennedy Space Center
- 1986 South Pacific island nation of Palau signs Compact of Free Association with US
Gretzky Leading Scorer
1989 LA Kings center Wayne Gretzky becomes NHL’s all-time leading scorer in combined regular season and playoff points; 4 assists in 5-4 home win over Edmonton brings his total to 2,011, 1 more than Gordie Howe
1990 China lifts martial law, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989
- 1990 NCAA approves random drug testing for college football players
- 1991 Japan ends routine fingerprinting of all adult ethnic Koreans
- 1991 US Congress begins debate on Persian Gulf crisis
- 1993 Maiden flight of Ultrair (Houston to LA)
- 1994 Trial of Lorena Bobbitt who cut off her husband's penis, begins
- 1994 Ukraine says it will give up world's 3rd largest nuclear arsenal
- 1994 Uzbekistan & Kazakhstan agrees to abolish trade tariffs
The Late Late Show
1995 "The Late Late Show" with Tom Snyder premieres on CBS at 12:30 AM; hosts the program until 1999
- 1996 Boston guard Dana Barros sinks a 3-point field goal in his 89th straight game, during the Celtics' 113-104 win over Sacramento Kings; NBA record streak ends in next game when he goes 0 from 9
- 1996 Israel frees hundreds of Palestinian prisoners
- 1996 Jimmy Johnson announced as new coach of NFL's Miami Dolphins
- 1996 King Hussein of Jordan visits Israel
- 1997 "Rehearsal" closes at Criterion Theater NYC
- 1997 4,000th episode of "Entertainment Tonight"
- 1997 Dow Corning provides $295 billion to settle breast implant suits
- 1997 First Comet of 1997 Discovered: Comet 1997 A1
- 1997 Italy's new 1,000 lire coin shows divided Germany on map
- 1998 Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan wins his 600th NBA game with a 111-84 victory at the Houston Rockets
- 1998 Vancouver Canucks veteran center Mark Messier becomes the 6th player in NHL history to record 1,000 assists in a 2-2 tie against the Florida Panthers at General Motors Place
- 2000 America Online (AOL) announces it will buy Time Warner for $165 billion [1]
- 2001 A large piece of the chalk cliff at Beachy Head collapses into the sea, near East Sussex, England
- 2001 The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will not be designated as a national monument, the White House announces; a move environmentalist groups had been pressing for to prevent oil drilling
- 2003 NBA announces Charlotte, N.C. is awarded an NBA expansion franchise to be known as the Charlotte Bobcats and start play in 2004-05; eventually changes to the Charlotte Hornets for the 2014-15 season
- 2005 A mudslide occurs in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more, and closing Highway 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days
- 2011 Ballon d'Or: Barcelona forward Lionel Messi wins second straight award from teammates Andrés Iniesta and Xavi; Brazilian forward Marta wins women's award for 5th consecutive year
- 2011 Ian McKellen officially confirms that he will reprise the role of Gandalf in "The Hobbit" film adaptations
- 2013 81 people are killed and 120 are wounded by a twin bombing in Quetta, Pakistan
- 2015 57 people are killed after an oil tanker collided with a passenger coach outside of Karachi, Pakistan
- 2015 72 people are killed & 169 hospitalized after a mass poisoning of beer with crocodile bile at a funeral in Mozambique
- 2017 Multiple bombings across Afghanistan kill at least 64, including 11 UAE diplomats at the governor's estate in Kandahar
Bezos Net Worth Passes $100B
2018 Jeff Bezos becomes the second man worth over $100 billion as his wealth hits $106 billion due to a rise in Amazon's share price
- 2019 13-year-old Jayme Closs escapes her kidnapper after 3 months in captivity in Wisconsin
- 2019 Canadian astronomers report fast radio bursts (FRBs) of probable extragalactic origin, one repeating six times at the CHIME observatory, British Columbia
- 2019 Lady Gaga apologises for working with R. Kelly in light of docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly"
- 2019 Oceans warming faster than previous thought due to fossil fuel burning, according to data published in journal "Science"
- 2019 Opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi proclaimed winner in Democratic Republic of the Congo presidency elections in a disputed result
- 2019 Philip Glass' Symphony No. 12 (Lodger), based loosely on David Bowie's 1979 album "Lodger" premieres with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by John Adams, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California
- 2021 America records more than 3,000 deaths a day for the first time reaching 3,249, passing 375,000 deaths in total a day later
- 2022 Crytocurrency Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, now one of the world's richest billionaires, with net worth of $96 billion according to Bloomberg
Maya Angelou Quarter
2022 The US Mint issues quarter coins commemorating poet Maya Angelou, first black woman to be depicted [1]
- 2022 US reports 1.34 million new COVID-19 infections, a global record, with Omicron variant accounting for an estimated 95% of cases [1]
Spare
2023 Prince Harry's memoir "Spare" goes on sale worldwide revealing controversial details of his upbringing and falling out with the British royal family [1]
Chris Christie Drops Out
2024 Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie bows out of the US Presidential race
- 2024 Kawhi Leonard signs a $153 million extension with the Los Angeles Clippers over the next three years
- 2024 State of emergency declared in Papa New Guinea after 16 people die in violent riots and looting during a police strike [1]
Mr Bates vs The Post Office
2024 UK PM Rishi Sunak says he will overturn and compensate hundreds of postmasters prosecuted due to faulty Horizon IT system publicized in "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" [1]
- 2024 US Secretary of the Navy announces that a future destroyer will be named in honor of Charles J. French, known as 'the Human Tugboat' for heroic actions in the South Pacific in 1942 [1]
- 2025 Climate scientists report that 2024 is Earth's hottest year on record and the first year to pass the symbolic 1.5 °C temperature limit agreed upon at the Paris Climate Accord in 2015 [1]
- 2025 NASA confirms 2024 the world's warmest year on record, topping the previous high set in 2023 [1]
- 2025 Singing drummer Ringo Starr releases his 21st solo album "Look Up"; his second country music tinged collection is produced by T-Bone Burnet and features guests Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle
Trump Gets No-Penalty
2025 US President-elect Donald Trump is sentenced by a federal NY court to no punishment after being convicted (May 2024) of falsifying business records in a hush money case [1]
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