307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
627 – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan.
1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1561 – The city of San Cristóbal, Táchira (Venezuela) is founded by Juan de Maldonado.
1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
1822 – The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following an attempted rebellion, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
1854 – In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. The treaty also provided protection for American merchant seamen wrecked in Japanese waters.
History
1866 – The Spanish Navy bombs the harbor of Valparaíso, Chile.
1877 – The family with samurai antecedents that responded to the Saigō army in Ōita Nakatsu, rebels.
1885 – The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
1889 – In Paris, the Eiffel Tower Eiffel Tower is dedicated in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.
History
1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces.
1901 – The
1901 Black Sea earthquake, also known in Bulgaria as Balchik earthquake, was a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the Black Sea.
1903 – Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft.
1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1909 – Construction of the ill fated RMS
Titanic begins.
1910 – Six North Staffordshire Pottery towns federate to form modern Stoke-on-Trent.
1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
1930 – The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years.
1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
1945 – World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 – A coup d'état in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castelo Branco.
1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson addresses the nation to announce that he will not seek re-election.
1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
1973 – The Mississippi River reached peak flood levels near the city of St. Louis, Missouri. The flood lasted for seventy-seven days, nearly six million acres of land south of St. Louis was swallowed by the Mississippi, one billion dollars’ worth of damage was done, and thirty-three people were killed.
1976 – The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that
Karen Ann Quinlan, who was in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. Quinlan, who remained unconscious, died in 1985.
1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).
1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York.
1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England.
1990 – Approximately 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
1991 – Georgian independence referendum, 1991: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – The USS
Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1994 – The journal
Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete
Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995 – Major League Baseball players are sent back to work after the longest strike in baseball history ends. Because of the strike, the 1994 World Series was cancelled; it was the first time baseball did not crown a champion in 89 years.
History
1995 – Mexican-American singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Texas by the founder of her fan club.
1998 – Netscape released Mozilla source code under an open source license.
2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
Saints' Days and Holy Days
Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran
John Donne (Anglican Communion, Lutheran)
Righteous Joseph the Fair (the All-Comely), son of Jacob, Patriarch (c. 1700 BC)
Saint Acacius the Confessor, Bishop of Melitene in Pisidia (251)
Saint Hypatius the Wonderworker, Bishop of Gangra (326)
Theophilos the Martyr, and those with him, in Crete
Martyrs Menander and Sabinus, and another 38 martyrs, in Hermopolis of Egypt,
under Julian the Apostate (c. 361-363)
Saint Apollonius (Apollo) of the Thebaid, ascetic (4th c.)
Hieromartyrs Abdas, Bishop of Hormizd-Ardashir, and the Deacon Benjamin,
of Persia (c. 424)
Saint Hypatius, Abbot of Rufinus in Chalcedon (446)
Venerable Blaise of Amorium and Mount Athos (c. 909)
Venerable Stephen the Wonderworker, ascetic
Pre-Schism Western Saints
Saint Balbina of Rome (c. 130)
Martyrs Theodulus, Anesius, Felix, Cornelia and Companions, in North Africa
Saint Renovatus, Abbot of Cauliana in Lusitania, then Bishop of Merida in Spain
for twenty-two years (c. 633)
Saint Aldo, Abbot of Hasnon Abbey in Belgium (8th c.)
Saint Guy (Guido) (1046)
Post-Schism Orthodox Saints
Saint Hypatius the Healer, of the Kiev Caves (14th c.)
Saint Ivan I of Moscow (John I Daniilovich Kalita), Prince of Moscow
from 1325 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1328 (1340)
Saint Jonah, Metropolitan of Kiev, Moscow, and all Russia (1461)
Saint Philaret, Abbot of Glinsk Hermitage (1841)
Saint Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of Siberia and Alaska (1879)
Saint Arseny Richynsky the Physician of Volyn, New Confessor
and Wonderworker (1956)
New Martyrs and Confessors
New Hieromartyr John Blyumovich, Priest (1938)
Appearance of the Iveron Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, on Mt. Athos
("Panagia Portaitissa" or "Gate-Keeper") (late 10th c.)
Repose of Archbishop Averky (Taushev) of Syracuse and Holy Trinity Monastery (1976)
Repose of Archimandrite Thaddeus (Strabulovich) of Vitovnica Monastery
(Tadej Štrbulović), Serbia (2003)
