878 Battle of Edington: Alfred the Great and his West Saxon army defeat Viking army of Guthrum the Old

1527 Spanish and German Imperial troops sack Rome, ending the Renaissance. Charles III, Duke of Bourbon is killed in the assault removing any restraint for the victorious soldiers.

1529 Battle at Gogra: Mughal Emperor Babur beats Afghans and Bengals

1787 1st African American Masonic Lodge (African # 459) forms Prince Hall, Boston

1835 James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald (price 1 cent)

1837 US blacksmith John Deere creates the first steel plough in Grand Detour, Illinois

1840 World's first adhesive postage stamp, the "Penny Black", is first used in Great Britain

1851 American physician and inventor John Gorrie patents a "refrigeration machine" to make ice

1851 Linus Yale Jr. patents the Yale cylinder lock

1851 San Francisco Chamber of Commerce starts

1853 1st major US rail disaster kills 46 at Norwalk, Connecticut

1860 San Francisco Olympic Club, 1st US athletic club forms

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act: US Congress ceases Chinese immigration

1896 Samuel Pierpont Langley flies his unpiloted Number 5 aircraft using a catapult launch from a boat on the Potomac River, USA. The aircraft travels almost 3/4 of a mile - ten times further than any previous heavier-than-air flying machine.

1904 American Lung Association holds its 1st meeting

1906 "Temporary" permit to erect overhead wires on Market Street, San Francisco allows United Railroads to run electric streetcars

1919 Paris Peace Conference disposes of German colonies; German East Africa is assigned to Britain and France, German South West Africa to South Africa

1935 American poet Audrey Wurdemann is the youngest person at 24 to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "Bright Ambush"

1937 German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and 1 on the ground

1940 Pulitzer prize awarded to John Steinbeck for "The Grapes of Wrath"

1946 Pulitzer Prize for History awarded to American Arthur M. Schlesinger for "The Age of Jackson"

1955 West Germany joins NATO

1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography awarded to John F. Kennedy for "Profiles in Courage"

1960 US President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960

1962 1st nuclear warhead fired from Polaris submarine (Ethan Allen)

1963 Pulitzer prize awarded to American Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August)

1970 Yuchiro Miura of Japan skis down Mt Everest

1974 Bundy victim Roberta Parks disappears from OSU, Corvallis, Ore

1975 3 people die in tornado that strikes Omaha, Nebraska

1975 Bundy victim Lynette Culver disappears from Pocatello, Idaho

1976 An earthquake strikes Friuli in Northern Italy, causes 989 deaths and the destruction of entire villages

1985 17th NASA Space Shuttle Mission (51-B): Challenger 7 lands at Edwards AFB

1986 Donald E Pelotte becomes 1st native American Roman Catholic Bishop

1991 Space Shuttle STS 39 (Discovery 12) lands

1993 STS-55 (Columbia) lands

1996 The body of former CIA director William Colby is found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he disappeared.

2002 Entrepreneur Elon Musk founds SpaceX

Entrepreneur Elon Musk

2008 Chaiten Volcano erupts in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people.

2013 The US Senate passes a bill enabling taxing of online sales

2013 Wal-Mart becomes the largest company by revenue on the Fortune 500 list

2021 Armed police raid on drug traffickers kills 25 in cities deadliest ever, in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2023 Canadian province Alberta declares a state of emergency over unprecedented wildfires, more than 100, that have forced the evacuation of 25,000 people