180 – Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
1048 – Damasus II is elected pope.
1203 – The Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos flees from his capital into exile.
1402 – Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumes the throne over the Ming Dynasty of China.
1429 – Hundred Years' War: Charles VII of France is crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc
1453 – Battle of Castillon: The last battle of Hundred Years' War, the French under Jean Bureau defeat the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who is killed in the battle in Gascony.
1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered.
1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.
1771 – Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
1791 – Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
1794 – The sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne are executed 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.
1861 – Congress approves the use of paper money.
1867 – Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the first dental school in the U.S. that is affiliated with a university.
1899 – NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.
1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York.
1917 – King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.
1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five lives are lost.
1932 – Altona Bloody Sunday: A riot between the Nazi Party paramilitary forces, the SS and SA, and the German Communist Party ensues.
1933 – After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.
1936 – Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion led by Gen. Francisco Franco against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.
1938 – Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, for a return flight to California, but lost his bearings in the clouds, he said, and flew the "wrong way" to Ireland. He became an instant celebrity known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.
1944 – Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war explode in Port Chicago, California, killing 320.
1944 – World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.
1945 – World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.
1948 – The South Korean constitution is proclaimed.
1953 – The largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event results from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44.
1955 – Arco, Idaho, a town of 1,300 people, became the first community in the world to receive all its light and power from atomic energy.
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1962 – Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.
1968 – A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
1973 – King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts dock with each other in orbit 140 miles above Earth for historic handshakes marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
1976 – East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.
1976 – The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the the games because of New Zealand's participation. Contrary to rulings by other international sports organizations, the IOC had declined to exclude New Zealand because of their participation in South African sporting events during apartheid.
1979 – Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida.
1980 – Ronald Reagan formally accepts the Republican nomination for president.
1981 – The opening of the Humber Bridge by Queen Elizabeth II in England, United Kingdom.
1981 – A structural failure leads to the collapse of two suspended walkways at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.
1984 – The United States Congress enacts the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 to encourage a uniform minimum drinking age of 21. The United States is one of only four developed countries in the world that has a nationwide drinking age of over 18, with the other three being South Korea (19), Iceland (20), and Japan (20).
1985 – Founding of the EUREKA Network by former head of states François Mitterrand (France) and Helmut Kohl (Germany).
1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
1989 – Holy See–Poland relations are restored.
1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board.
1996 – The Community of Portuguese Language Countries is founded.
1998 – Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by a 7.0 Mw undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for, several thousand injured, and thousands more homeless.
1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash.
2006 – Pangandaran earthquake and tsunami: A 7.7 Mw earthquake under the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java, killing 668 people, and leaving more than 9,000 injured.
2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashes into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the Congonhas-São Paulo Airport runway, killing 199 people.
2009 – Two suicide bombers detonate themselves at two separate hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.
2012 – The Boy Scouts of America announced a policy of banning homosexuals from membership would remain in effect. The restriction was removed in 2013.
2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed, including dozens of children.
2014 – A French regional train on the Pau-Bayonne line crashes into a high-speed train near the town of Denguin, resulting in at least 25 injuries.
2015 – At least 120 people are killed and 130 injured by a suicide bombing in Diyala Province, Iraq.
Saints' Days and Holy Days
Traditional Western
Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, Confessor. Double.
Contemporary Western
Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran
Eastern Orthodox
Saints
Great martyr Marina (Margaret of Antioch in Pisidia) (4th c.)
Venerable Irenarchus, Abbot of Solovki (1628)
Saint Leonides of Ustnedumsk in Vologda, abbot (1654)
Martyrs Speratus and Veronica and companions, Scillum, near Carthage (180)
Saint Euphrasius of Ionopolis, bishop
St. Timothy, fool-for-Christ of Svyatogorsk near Pskov (1563)
Slaying of Bishop John (Bulin) of Pechersk (Pskov Caves) (1941)
New Martyrs: Priests Ismael Rozhdestvensky and Michael Rozhdestvensky
Martyrs: Romanovs
Other commemorations
Translation of the Relics of St. Lazarus, monk of Mt. Galerius near Ephesus (1054)
Glorification (1997) of St. Gabriel of Pskov-Eleazar Monastery (Pskov)
and Seven Lakes Monastery (Kazan) (1915).
Glorification (1997) of St. Gabriel of Pskov-Eleazar Monastery (Pskov)
and Seven Lakes Monastery (Kazan) (1915).