1504 – The Treaty of Lyon ends the Italian War, confirming French domination of northern Italy, while Spain receives the Kingdom of Naples.
1606 – Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for plotting against Parliament and King James.
1862 – Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.
1865 – American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.
1918 – A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five British warships.
1929 – The Soviet Union exiles Leon Trotsky.
1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.
1945 – US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.
1950 – President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the hydrogen bomb.
1953 – A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands and over 300 in the United Kingdom
1958 – The first successful American satellite detects the Van Allen radiation belt.
1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2: Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.
1966 – The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
1968 – Vietnam War: Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 14: Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.
2012 – The Toyota Corolla is known as the best-selling car of all time. Selling over 37.5 million units.
Births
1543 – Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japanese shogun (d. 1616)
1769 – André-Jacques Garnerin, French balloonist and the inventor of the frameless parachute (d. 1823)
1797 – Franz Schubert, Austrian pianist and composer (d. 1828)
1905 – John O’Hara, author, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 1970)
1923 – Norman Mailer, American journalist and author (d. 2007)
1925 – Benjamin Hooks, American minister, lawyer, and activist (d. 2010)
1937 – Philip Glass, American composer
Deaths
1632 – Jost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker and mathematician (b. 1552)
1856 – 11th Dalai Lama (b. 1838)
1956 – A. A. Milne, English author, poet, and playwright, created Winnie-the-Pooh (b. 1882)
