1066 – In the Battle of Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.
1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1656 – Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
1773 – Just before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company’s tea ships are set ablaze at the Annapolis, MD seaport.
1884 – George Eastman receives a U.S. Government patent on his new paper-strip photographic film.
1926 – Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, is published.
1943 – Prisoners at the Nazi Sobibór extermination camp in Poland revolt, killing 11 SS guards. About 300 of the 600 prisoners escape; about 50 of these survive the end of the war.
1944 – Linked to a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Field Marshal Erwin Rommelis forced to commit suicide.
1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when a U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot flies over the island of Cuba and takes photographs of Soviet SS-4 Sandal missiles being installed and erected in Cuba.
1964 – Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence.
1968 – Jim Hines is the first man to break the ten-second barrier in the 100-meter sprint in the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City with a time of 9.95 seconds.
1979 – The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, demands “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people,” and draws 100,000 people.
1981 – Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt one week after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.
1984 – Baby Fae receives a heart transplant from a baboon.
1994 – Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin, and Foreign Minister of Israel Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
2021 – Artwork by Banksy that was half shredded on purchase in 2018 is sold for $25.4 million.
Births
1641 – Joachim Tielke German instrument maker (d. 1719)
1644 – William Penn, businessman, founder of Pennsylvania (d. 1718)
1882 – Éamon de Valera, Irish republican politician, President of Ireland, born in New York City (d. 1975)
1890 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, general, politician, 34th President of the United States (d. 1969)
1894 – e. e. cummings, poet and playwright (d. 1962)
1916 – C. Everett Koop, admiral and surgeon, 13th United States Surgeon General (d. 2013)
1939 – Ralph Lauren, fashion designer, founded the Ralph Lauren Corp.
1973 – George Floyd, murdered while in police custody in Minneapolis (d. 2020)
1978 – Usher, singer and actor
Deaths
1066 – Harold II, last crowned Anglo-Saxon King of England, dies at the Battle of Hastings, aged about 44
1318 – Edward Bruce, Irish king (b. 1280)
1831 – Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer and educator (b. 1761)
1977 – Bing Crosby, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1903)
1990 – Leonard Bernstein, American pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1918)
