1111 – Henry V is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
1870 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1919 – Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra.
1958 – American Van Cliburn wins the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
Births
1519 – Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-French wife of Henry II of France
1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, planned the Gunpowder Plot (d. 1606)
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826)
1852 – Frank Winfield Woolworth, American businessman, founded the F. W. Woolworth Company (d. 1919)
1866 – Butch Cassidy, American criminal (d. 1908)
1906 – Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
1931 – Dan Gurney, American race car driver and engineer
1939 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013)
1949 – Christopher Hitchens, English-American essayist, literary critic, and journalist (d. 2011)
Deaths
799 – Paul the Deacon, Italian monk and historian (b. 720)
814 – Krum, Bulgarian ruler
1592 – Bartolomeo Ammannati, Italian architect and sculptor (b. 1511)
1612 – Sasaki Kojirō, Japanese samurai (b. 1585)
2015 – Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, and illustrator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1927)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches