| 1346 | | Charles IV of Luxembourg is elected Holy Roman Emperor. |
| 1509 | | Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon. |
| 1770 | | Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef. |
| 1798 | | Napoleon Bonaparte takes the island of Malta. |
| 1861 | | Union forces under General George B. McClellen repulse a Confederate force at Rich Mountain in western Virginia. |
| 1865 | | Major General Henry W. Halleck finds documents and archives of the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia. This discovery will lead to the publication of the official war records. |
| 1895 | | Charles E. Duryea receives the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile. |
| 1903 | | King Alexander and Queen Draga of Belgrade are assassinated by members of the Serbia army. |
| 1915 | | British troops take Cameroon in Africa. |
| 1930 | | William Beebe, of the New York Zoological Society, dives to a record-setting depth of 1,426 feet off the coast of Bermuda, in a diving chamber called a bathysphere. |
| 1934 | | The Disarmament Conference in Geneva ends in failure. |
| 1940 | | The Italian Air Force bombs the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean. |
| 1943 | | The Italian island of Pantelleria surrenders after a heavy air bombardment. |
| 1944 | | U.S. carrier-based planes attack Japanese airfields on Guam , Rota, Saipan and Tinian islands, preparing for the invasion of Saipan. |
| 1963 | | Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is arrested in Florida for trying to integrate restaurants. |
| 1967 | | Israel and Syria accept a U. N. cease-fire. |
| 1987 | | Margaret Thatcher wins her third consecutive term as Prime Minister. |
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