| 917 | | A Byzantine counter-offensive is routed by Syeon at Anchialus, Bulgaria. |
| 1619 | | The first group of twenty Africans is brought to Jamestown, Virginia. |
| 1667 | | John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve. |
| 1741 | | Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commisioned by Peter the Great of Russia to find land connecting Asia and North America, discovers America. |
| 1794 | | American General "Mad Anthony" Wayne defeats the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the area. |
| 1847 | | General Winfield Scott wins the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City. |
| 1904 | | Dublin's Abbey Theatre is founded, an outgrowth of the Irish Literary Theatre founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. |
| 1908 | | The American Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney, Australia, to a warm welcome. |
| 1913 | | 700 feet above Buc, France, parachutist Adolphe Pegond becomes the first person to jump from an airplane and land safely. |
| 1914 | | Russia wins an early victory over Germany at Gumbinnen. |
| 1940 | | After a previous machine gun attack failed, exiled Russian Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, with an alpine ax to the back of the head. |
| 1940 | | Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain. Also on this day, in a radio broadcast, Winston Churchill makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." |
| 1941 | | Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile. |
| 1944 | | United States and British forces close the pincers on German units in the Falaise-Argentan pocket in France. |
| 1971 | | The Cambodian military launches a series of operations against the Khmer Rouge. |
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