AD 53 – The Roman emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.
AD 68 – The Roman emperor Nero commits suicide, after quoting Homer’s Iliad, thus ending the Julio-Claudian dynasty and starting the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors.
721 – Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.
1311 – Duccio’s Maestà Altarpiece, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, is unveiled and installed in Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.
1523 – French Parliament fines Simon de Colines for publishing the Biblical commentary Commentarii initiatorr in quatuor Evangelia by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples.
1650 – The Harvard Corporation, the more powerful of the two administrative boards of Harvard, is established. It is the first legal corporation in the Americas.
1667 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet begins. It lasts for five days and results in the worst ever defeat of the Royal Navy.
1732 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U.S. state of Georgia.
1762 – British forces begin the Siege of Havana and capture the city during the Seven Years’ War.
1856 – Five hundred Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa for the Mormon Trail.
1915 – William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States’ handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
1930 – A Chicago Tribune reporter, Jake Lingle, is killed during rush hour at the Illinois Central train station by Leo Vincent Brothers, allegedly over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone.
1934 – Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen.
1953 – The Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence kills 94 people in Massachusetts.
1954 – McCarthyism: Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
1957 – First ascent of Broad Peak by Fritz Wintersteller, Marcus Schmuck, Kurt Diemberger, and Hermann Buhl.
1959 – The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.
1965 – The civilian Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Phan Huy Quát, resigns after being unable to work with a junta led by Nguyễn Cao Kỳ.
1965 – Vietnam War: The Viet Cong commences combat with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the Battle of Đồng Xoài, one of the largest battles in the war.
1967 – Six-Day War: Israel captures the Golan Heights from Syria.
1968 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1972 – Severe rainfall causes a dam in the Black Hills of South Dakota to burst, creating a flood that kills 238 people and causes $160 million in damage.
1973 – In horse racing, Secretariat wins the U.S. Triple Crown.
1978 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opens its priesthood to “all worthy men”, ending a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men.
1979 – The Ghost Train fire at Luna Park Sydney (Australia) kills seven.
1999 – Kosovo War: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty.
Births
1672 – Peter the Great (Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov),Tsar of Russia (1682-1725)
1961 – Michael J. Fox, Canadian actor
Deaths
1870 – Charles Dickens, English writer
1927 – Victoria Woodhull, American woman’s suffrage leader and first woman to be nominated for US presidency
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com
Wikipedia and other internet searches