64 The Great Fire of Rome begins in merchant shops around the chariot stadium, Circus Maximus

532 Start of Dionysian Pascal Cycle.  (The festivals of Dionysus in Ancient Greece were the City Dionysia, the Anthesteria, the Lenaia, and the Rural Dionysia, which were held annually in honor of the wine god)

711 Muslim forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Umayyad Caliphate, defeat the Visigoth Kingdom led by their king Roderic in what is now southern Spain

1324 Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, arrives in Cairo on his way to Mecca, with a procession of 600,000 men, 12,000 slaves and 80 camels carrying 136 kg (300 pounds) of gold each

1510 38 Jews are burned at stake in Berlin, Prussia

1524 Peasants' War begins in Germany's Black Forest

1545 King Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose sinks at Portsmouth; 73 die.  There are several theories as to how the ship sank

1553 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey deposed as England's Queen after 9 days

1595 Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe while teaching in Graz, Austria

1692 5 more people are hanged for witchcraft (19 in all) in Salem, Massachusetts

1760 The formal request to found the later city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico is filed by its founders

1836 HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin arrives in Ascension Island

1843 Steamship SS Great Britain is launched, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world

1845 Fire in NYC destroys 1,000 homes and kills many

1848 First US women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, NY, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

1850 American cargo ship 'Elizabeth', returning from Italy, wrecks in a storm of coast of Fire Island, New York, killing 10, including journalist Margaret Fuller, her husband, and child

1860 1st railroad reaches Kansas

1867 US Congress passes 3rd Reconstruction Act over President Andrew Johnson's veto

1875 The Emma Abbott, a floating hospital for sick children, makes trial trip, NYC

1880 San Francisco Public Library starts lending books

1899 National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers forms

1912 A meteorite of estimated 190kg mass explodes over Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona, causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town

1923 WRC-AM in Washington, D.C. begins radio transmissions

1930 Richard E. Byrd, Laurence McKinley Gould, and their polar expedition team return to the United States following the first exploration of the interior of Antarctica

1939 Dr Roy P Scholz is the 1st surgeon to use fiberglass sutures.  This groundbreaking event took place in the medical field in Saint Louis, Missouri. It is a significant milestone that would revolutionize the way wounds were closed and treated

1940 Adolf Hitler orders Great Britain to surrender - they decline

1941 1st US Army flying school for black cadets dedicated (Tuskegee, Alabama)

1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC)

1944 1,200+ 8th US Air Force bombers bomb targets in SW Germany

1945 USS Cod saves 51 sailors from Dutch sub in only sub-to-sub rescue

1950 French/Vietnamese offensive against Viet Minh

1955 The Balclutha, the last of the windjammers, ties up at Pier 43 in San Francisco & becomes a floating museum

1957 1st rocket with nuclear warhead fired, Yucca Flat, Nevada

1966 Governor James Rhodes declares state of emergency in Cleveland (race riot)

1967 1st air conditioned NYC subway car (R-38 on the F line)

1969 Apollo 11 goes into Moon orbit

1975 Apollo and Soyuz linked in orbit for 2 days, separate

1977 Floods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, kill 76

1982 David S Dodge, the Acting President of the American University of Beirut, becomes 1st American hostage in Lebanon

1983 The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head in a CT is published.  Completed by Michael Vannier, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, St Louis and assistants

1984 1st female to captain a 747 across Atlantic (Lynn Rippelmeyer)

1985 Christa McAuliffe chosen as 1st school teacher to fly aboard the space shuttle

1990 Richard Nixon library opens in Yorba Linda, California

1994 1st sports (baseball) game ever cancelled at Seattle Kingdome (falling tiles)

2001 Michael Brunet discovers the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis in the Djurab Desert, Chad. One of the oldest known species in the human family tree, 6-7 million years ago years old

2009 The Wesley Impact: black spot the size of Earth discovered on Jupiter after unknown object crashed onto the planet

2017 Investigators using DNA identify 16 year-old James Byron Haakenson as a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, 41 years after his disappearance

2018 Airbus Beluga XL, painted to look like the whale, makes its first flight, landing in Toulouse-Blagnac, France

2018 Largest intact sarcophagus of its kind ever found (2000 years old) opened in Alexandria, contains 3 skeletons, not a curse as feared

2018 Russian ship Dmitri Donskoii, with possible cargo of gold coins is discovered in waters between South Korea and Japan where it sunk in 1905

2020 Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler criticizes federal policing of protesters in his city, calling it unconstitutional

2023 Scientists discover metals can self-heal, after observing metals cracking and fusing back together, paving way for future self-healing structures and vehicles