618 Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty's rule over China

860 Rus Vikings attack Constantinople

1155 Pope Adrian IV crowns Frederick I Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor at St Peter's Basilica, Rome

1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature

1542 Crown of Ireland Act 1542 passed by the Parliament of Ireland, gives English King Henry VIII the title "King of Ireland"

1580 States of Utrecht, the Low Countries, forbid Catholic worship

1583 Richard Martin of London takes out first life insurance policy, on William Gibbons; premium was £383

1682 English Quaker William Penn founds Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania Colony

1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti; considered the first European to reach the island

1778 British Redcoats evacuate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and head for New York

1812 War of 1812 begins as the US declares war against Britain

1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon Bonaparte and France defeated by British forces under Duke of Wellington and Prussian troops under Field Marshall von Blücher

1822 Part of US-Canadian boundary determined

1847 American photographer Thomas Martin Easterly takes the earliest known photograph of lightning using the daguerreotype process in St. Louis, Missouri

1872 Woman's Suffrage Convention held at Mercantile Liberty Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1873 Susan B. Anthony fined $100 ($2,200 in 2020 value) for voting for US President in Rochester, New York; she refused to pay and no further action against her was taken

1879 W. H. Richardson, an African-American inventor, patents the children's carriage (Patent no. 405599)

1892 Brothers Edward and Robert Jordan plant 1st Macadamia nuts in Oahu, Hawaii

1898 Steel Pier, 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, New Jersey

1900 Empress Dowager Cixi orders I-Ho-Chuan (Boxers) to kill all foreigners

1909 American educator Nannie Helen Burroughs forms National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington D.C

1912 The Chicago national Republican Convention splits between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; after Taft is nominated, Roosevelt and progressive elements of the Party form the Progressive Party (also known as the 'Bull Moose Party')

1928 American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (as a passenger), landing at Burry Port, Wales

1930 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute science museum held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1934 US Highway planning surveys nationwide authorized

1940 Winston Churchill gives his "this was their finest hour" speech to the House of Commons urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France

1942 Bernard W. Robinson, becomes 1st African American ensign in US Navy

1948 American Library Association adopts Library Bill of Rights

1948 National Security Council authorizes covert operations for 1st time

1959 1st telecast transmitted from England to US

1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital's director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane

1963 3,000 Black-Americans boycott Boston public school to protest de facto segregation

1968 Supreme Court bans racial discrimination in sale and rental of housing

1973 Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev visits the US and President Nixon

1977 Space Shuttle test model "Enterprise" carries a crew aloft for 1st time, it was fixed to a modified Boeing 747

1979 US President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapons

1981 The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California

1981 Vaccine to prevent hoof & mouth disease announced

1982 Voting Rights Act of 1965 extended by Senate by 85-8 vote

1983 Space shuttle Challenger 2 launches the first American woman into space, astronaut Sally Ride

1991 Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, arrives in US

1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts

2006 The first Kazakhstan space satellite, KazSat is launched

2014 King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates the Spanish throne to make way for his son Felipe VI

2016 Soyuz capsule returns to Earth 1st British International Space Station astronaut Tim Peake, Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Timothy Kopra after 186 days

2018 US President Trump orders US military to set up sixth branch of the military - a space force

2019 China has been forcefully harvesting organs from marginalized groups in prison camps on a significant scale according to International Tribunal in London

2020 World record for greatest duration for a single lighting flash of 17.1 seconds during thunderstorm over Uruguay and Argentina according to World Meteorological Organization

2022 Flooding in Bangladesh and nearby Indian states leave four million stranded and without electricity, with at least 41 dead as monsoon floods become more frequent and extreme

2023 Submersible vessel Titan, exploring wreck of the RMS Titanic implodes in the North Atlantic Ocean killing 5 occupants