| 1629 | | A Royal charter is granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
| 1743 | | First American town meeting is held at Boston's Faneuil Hall. |
| 1757 | | British Admiral John Byng is executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty. |
| 1794 | | Inventor Eli Whitney receives a patent for his cotton gin. |
| 1900 | | United States currency goes on the gold standard. |
| 1903 | | The Senate ratifies the Hay-Herran Treaty, guaranteeing the United states the right to build a canal in Panama. |
| 1912 | | An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempts to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome. |
| 1915 | | The British Navy sinks the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast. |
| 1918 | | An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies a peace treaty with the Central Powers. |
| 1923 | | President Warren G. Harding becomes the first U.S. President to file an income tax report. |
| 1936 | | Adolf Hitler tells a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself. |
| 1939 | | The Nazis dissolve the republic of Czechoslovakia. |
| 1943 | | The Germans reoccupy Kharkov in the Soviet Union. |
| 1947 | | The United States signs a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines. |
| 1951 | | U.N. forces recapture Seoul for the second time during the Korean War. |
| 1954 | | The Viet Minh launch an assault against the French Colonial Forces at Dien Bien Phu. |
| 1964 | | A Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. |
| 1967 | | John F. Kennedy's body is moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one in Arlington Cemetery. |
| 1978 | | An Israeli force of 22,000 invades south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases. |
| 1990 | | Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Congress. |
| 1991 | | The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, are set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence. |
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