1258 – Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
1566 – St Augustine, Florida founded
1633 – Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun
1693 – College of William & Mary opens in Virginia
1832 – First appearance of cholera in London
1837 – Riot in New York due to a combination of poverty and increase in the cost of flour
1924 – The tomb of King Tutankhamun tomb opened
1935 – Bruno Hauptmann found guilty of kidnap and murder of Lindbergh infant
1945 – USSR captures Budapest, after 49-day battle with Germany; 159,000 die
1959 – Barbie doll goes on sale
1968 – US sends 10,500 additional soldiers to Vietnam
1973 – US dollar devalues 10%
1974 – Dissident Nobel writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn expelled from USSR
1990 – US, Britain and France give Germany OK to reunify
1997 – Discovery captures Hubble Space Telescope
2008 – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes an historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.
Birthdays
1743 – Joseph Banks, English botanist and naturalist (d. 1820)
1923 – Chuck Yeager, US test pilot (first man to break sound barrier)
1942 – Peter Tork, American musician and actor (The Monkees)
Death
1542 – Catherine Howard, queen of England/5th wife of Henry VIII, beheaded
1883 – Wilhelm Richard Wagner, composer, dies at 69
1952 – Alfred Einstein, German/US musicologist, dies at 71
2002 – Waylon Jennings, American musician (b. 1937)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, wikipedia.com, NYTimes.com and internet searches