| 1285 | | Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair"). |
| 1503 | | Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands. |
| 1676 | | Bacon's Rebellion begins in the New World. |
| 1773 | | To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies. |
| 1774 | | Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France. |
| 1775 | | American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British. |
| 1794 | | Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded. |
| 1796 | | Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy. |
| 1840 | | Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri. |
| 1857 | | The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British. |
| 1863 | | General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville. |
| 1865 | | Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia. |
| 1869 | | The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah. |
| 1859 | | French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy. |
| 1872 | | Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president. |
| 1917 | | Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic. |
| 1924 | | J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. |
| 1928 | | WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming. |
| 1933 | | Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front. |
| 1940 | | German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line. |
| 1940 | | Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister. |
| 1941 | | England's House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs. |
| 1960 | | The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater. |
| 1994 | | Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first black president. |
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