502 – King Gundobad issues a new legal code (Lex Burgundionum) at Lyon that makes Gallo-Romans and Burgundians subject to the same laws.
1792 – King Gustav III of Sweden dies after being shot in the back at a midnight masquerade ball at Stockholm’s Royal Opera 13 days earlier. He is succeeded by Gustav IV Adolf.
1809 – King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicates after a coup d’état.
1865 – American Civil War: Federal forces under Major General Philip Sheridan move to flank Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee as the Appomattox Campaign begins.
1886 – John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta.
1945 – World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England.
1951 – Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. The trial began in New York Southern District federal court with Judge Irving R. Kaufman presiding over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union).
1957 – The New York, Ontario and Western Railway makes its final run, the first major U.S. railroad to be abandoned in its entirety.
1961 – The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections.
1974 – NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury.
1999 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark (10,006.78) for the first time, during the height of the dot-com bubble.
Births
1602 – John Lightfoot, English priest, scholar, and academic (d. 1675)
1790 – John Tyler, American lawyer and politician, 10th President of the United States (d. 1862)
1867 – Cy Young, American baseball player and manager (d. 1955)
1896 – Wilhelm Ackermann, German mathematician (d. 1962)
1916 – Eugene McCarthy, American poet and politician (d. 2005)
1945 – Walt Frazier, American basketball player and sportscaster
Deaths
1751 – Thomas Coram, English captain and philanthropist, founded Foundling Hospital (b. 1668)
1848 – John Jacob Astor, German-American businessman (b. 1763)
2016 – Patty Duke, American actress (b. 1946)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches