| 1204 | | The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople. |
| 1606 | | England adopts the Union Jack as its flag. |
| 1770 | | Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts. |
| 1782 | | The British navy wins its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica. |
| 1811 | | The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington. |
| 1861 | | Fort Sumter is shelled by Confederacy, starting America's Civil War. |
| 1864 | | Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort Pillow, in Tennessee. |
| 1877 | | The first catcher's mask is used in a baseball game. |
| 1911 | | Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes. |
| 1916 | | American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parrel, Mexico. |
| 1927 | | The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women. |
| 1944 | | The U.S. Twentieth Air Force is activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan. |
| 1945 | | President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Spring, Georgia. Harry S. Truman becomes president. |
| 1954 | | Bill Haley records "Rock Around the Clock." |
| 1955 | | Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery of a polio vaccine is announced. |
| 1961 | | Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man to orbit the Earth. |
| 1963 | | Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. |
| 1966 | | Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American major league umpire. |
| 1983 | | Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago. |
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