313 – The Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire, is posted in Nicomedia.
1381 – The Peasants’ Revolt led by Wat Tyler culminated in the burning of the Savoy Palace.
1514 – Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated.
1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the
1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia.
1955 – Mir mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR, is discovered.
1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1967 – residentU.S. P Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1971 – Vietnam War: The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers.
1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the farthest planet from the Sun at the time).
1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages.
1997 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Births
823 – Charles the Bald, Roman emperor (d. 877)
839 – Charles the Fat, Roman emperor (d. 888)
1865 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1939)
1894 – Jacques Henri Lartigue, French photographer and painter (d. 1986)
1905 – Xian Xinghai, Chinese composer (d. 1945)
1943 – Malcolm McDowell, English actor and producer
1944 – Ban Ki-moon, South Korean politician and diplomat, 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations
Deaths
1784 – Henry Middleton, American farmer and politician, 2nd President of the Continental Congress (b. 1717)
2008 – Tim Russert, American journalist and lawyer (b. 1950)
