• 306 - Maxentius is proclaimed Roman Emperor.
• 312 - Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman Emperor.
• 1061 - Empress Agnes, acting as Regent for her son, brings about the election of Bishop Cadalus, the antipope Honorius II
• 1516 - Battle of Yaunis Khan: Turkish forces under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha defeat the Mameluks near Gaza.
• 1531 - Battle of Amba Sel: Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi again defeats the army of Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia. The southern part of Ethiopia falls under Imam Ahmad's control.
• 1538 - The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established.
• 1628 - The Siege of La Rochelle, which had been ongoing for 14 months, ends with Huguenot surrender
• 1636 - A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.
• 1664 - The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, later to be known as the Royal Marines, is established.
• 1775 - American Revolutionary War A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.
• 1776 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of White Plains - British Army forces arrive at White Plains, attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Americans.
• 1834 - The Battle of Pinjarra occurs in the Swan River Colony in present-day Pinjarra, Western Australia. Between 14 and 40 Aborigines are killed by British colonists.
• 1848 - The first railroad in Spain - between Barcelona and Mataró - is opened.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Fair Oaks ends - Union Army forces under General Ulysses S. Grant withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond, Virginia.
• 1886 - In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.
• 1891 - The Mino-Owari Earthquake, the largest earthquake in Japan's history, strikes Gifu Prefecture.
• 1893 - Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, premiered in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.
• 1918 - World War I: Czechoslovakia is granted its independence from Austria-Hungary.
• 1918 - The German fleet is immobilized when sailors mutiny en masse and disobey an order to leave port five times; 1,000 would ultimately be arrested.
• 1918 - New Polish government in Western Galicia (Central Europe) is established.
• 1919 - The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
• 1922 - March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.
• 1936 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary.
• 1940 - World War II: Italy invades Greece through Albania. This was the selected anniversary of Greece's entry into World War II. It is celebrated in Greece as Okhi Day (Όχι=No) Day.
• 1941 - Holocaust in Kaunas, Lithuania: German SS forces arrange the massacre of more than 9,000 Jews of the Kaunas ghetto. After the victims assembled on the Demokratu square at 6 am to be shot they're buried in gigantic ditches.
• 1942 - The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.
• 1942 - Holocaust: 2,000 Jewish children and 6,000 Jewish adults from Cracow are deported by Germans to Belzec death camp.
• 1942 - Holocaust: SS directive orders all Jewish children's mittens and stockings to be sent from the death camps to the SS families.
• 1948 - Swiss chemist Paul Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.
• 1954 - The modern Kingdom of the Netherlands is re-founded as a federal monarchy.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he'd ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
• 1964 - Vietnam War: U.S. officials deny any involvement in bombing North Vietnam.
• 1965 - Nostra Aetate, the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions" of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI; it absolves the Jews of the alleged killing of Jesus, reversing Innocent III's declaration from 760 years ago. In short, Pope Paul VI announces that the ecumenical council has decided that Jews are not collectively responsible for the killing of Christ.
• 1970 - The land speed record set by Gary Gabelich in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas.
• 1971 - Britain launches its first (and as of 2007, only) satellite, Prospero, into low Earth orbit atop a Black Arrow carrier rocket.
• 1982 - Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) wins elections, leading to first Socialist government in Spain after death of Franco. Felipe Gonzalez becomes Prime Minister-elect.
• 1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
• 1985 - Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and makes peace overtures to the United States; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.
• 1986 - The centennial of the Statue of Liberty's dedication is re-celebrated in New York Harbor.
• 1998 - An Air China (Mainland China) jetliner is hijacked by disgruntled pilot Yuan Bin and flown to Taiwan.
• 2005 - Plame affair: Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame case. Libby resigns later that day.
• 2006 - Funeral service for the peace of the executed at Bykivnia forest, outside of Kiev, Ukraine, with reburial of 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s.

Births