393 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his eight-year-old son Honorius co-emperor.
971 – In China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han are soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song dynasty troops.
1368 – In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.
1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
1570 – James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such.
1719 – The Principality of Liechtenstein is created within the Holy Roman Empire.
1789 – Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.)
1795 – After an extraordinary charge across the frozen Zuiderzee, the French cavalry captured 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns, in a rare occurrence of a battle between ships and cavalry
Elizabeth Blackwell was a British-born physician, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
1870 – In Montana, U.S. cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what becomes known as the Marias Massacre.
1909 – RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, becomes the first ship to use the CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that kills six people. The Republic sinks the next day.
1941 – Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the US negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
1957 – American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the “Frisbee”.
1960 – The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean.
1973 – Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
1997 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State.
1998 – Netscape announces Mozilla, with the intention to release Communicator code as open source.
2002 – U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered.
2003 – A very weak signal from Pioneer 10 is detected for the last time, but no usable data can be extracted.
Births
1737 – John Hancock, first Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1793)
1832 – Édouard Manet, French painter (d. 1883)
1855 – John Browning, American weapons designer, founded the Browning Arms Company (d. 1926)
1916 – David Douglas Duncan, American photographer and journalist
1922 – Leon Golub, American painter and academic (d. 2004)
Deaths
1252 – Isabella, Queen of Armenia
1516 – Ferdinand II of Aragon (b. 1452)
1803 – Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer, founded Guinness (b. 1725)
1944 – Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter and illustrator (b. 1863)
1989 – Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1904)
2004 – Bob Keeshan, American television personality and producer (b. 1927)
2004 – Helmut Newton, German-Australian photographer (b. 1920)
2005 – Johnny Carson, American talk show host, television personality, and producer (b. 1925)
Click here to laugh again with this 1988 Johnny Carson monologue.
2007 – E. Howard Hunt, American CIA officer (b. 1918)