1380 Battle on Kulikovo: Moscow's great monarch Dimitri defeats the Mongols beginning the decline of the Tatars

1504 Michelangelo's statue of David is unveiled in Florence

1522 Spanish navigator Juan de Elcano returns to Seville after a 3 year voyage, completing 1st circumnavigation of the globe (expedition began under Ferdinand Magellan)

1565 1st permanent European settlement in the US founded at St. Augustine, Florida

1628 Dutch privateer Piet Heyn captures Spanish silver fleet in the Bay of Matanzas, Cuba

1664 Dutch surrender colony of New Netherlands (including New York) to 300 English soldiers

1727 A barn fire during a puppet show in the village of Burwell in Cambridgeshire, England kills 78 people, many of whom are children.

1755 Battle of Lake George in the Province of New York: British army beats French

1756 Kittanning Expedition:s 30-40 Lenape Indians killed by Pennsylvania Provincial troops during French and Indian War

1760 French army surrenders Montreal to British Commander General Jeffrey Amherst

1771 Mission San Gabriel Arcángel founded in California (just east of modern downtown LA)

1858 Abraham Lincoln supposedly says in a speech "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time"

1868 New York Athletic Club forms

1892 1st appearance of "Pledge of Allegiance" (Youth's Companion)

1900 6,000 killed when a hurricane & tidal wave strikes Galveston, Texas

1915 Association of Negro Life & History founded in the US (now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History)

1916 US President Woodrow Wilson signs the Emergency Revenue Act, doubling the rate of income tax and adding inheritance and munitions profits tax

1920 US Air Mail service begins (NYC to San Francisco)

1930 1st appearance of comic strip "Blondie"

1930 American inventor Richard Gurley Drew creates Scotch tape

1934 Luxury passenger ship Morro Castle bound for New Jersey catches fire, 133 die

1943 Italy surrenders to Allies in WWII

1951 Japan signs peace treaty with 48 countries in San Francisco

1952 Ernest Hemingway's novel "The Old Man and the Sea" published

1954 SE Asia Treaty Org (SEATO) forms to stop communist spread in SE Asia

1965 Hurricane Betsy kills 75 in Louisiana & Florida

1968 Saundra Williams wins 1st Miss Black America pageant

1971 John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts opens in Washington, D.C.

1974 American motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel attempts to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho but fails, escaping with minor injuries

1985 "USA Weekend's" 1st issue, appears in 255 newspapers

1990 Ellis Island Historical Site opens on Ellis Island NYC

1994 Last US, British & French troops leave West Berlin

1996 American children's program "Blue's Clues" debuts on Nickelodeon cable channel

2016 Giraffe DNA study published in "Current Biology" reveals there are 4 species not just 1, as previously assumed

2022 Queen Elizabeth II dies at Balmoral Castle after ruling for 70 years, as the UK's longest-serving monarch. Her eldest son inherits the throne as King Charles III