46 BC Julius Caesar dedicates a temple to his mythical ancestor Venus Genetrix in accordance with a vow he made at the Battle of Pharsalus

1371 A small Ottoman force makes a devastating surprise night raid on the Serbian camp by the Maritsa River, killing thousands of drunken soldiers, including Serbian King Vukašin Mrnjavčević and his brother, Despot Jovan Uglješa

1396 Ottoman Sultan Bajezid I beheads hundreds of crusaders after the Battle of Nicopolis

1509 Storm surge causes the second Cosmas and Damian flood in East Friesland and the Netherlands destroying dykes and devastating coastal towns

1580 Francis Drake completes his circumnavigation of the world, sailing into Plymouth, England aboard the Golden Hind

1665 Height of the Great Plague of London as 7,165 people die throughout the previous week

1680 Tax revolt in Gorinchem, Netherlands, is caused by a tax on cereal

1687 The Acropolis in Athens is attacked by the Venetian army in an attempt to eject the Turks, damaging the Parthenon

1733 France, Spain, and Sardinia sign an anti-German covenant

1738 Scottish philosopher David Hume enters into a contract to publish the first two volumes of his seminal work "A Treatise of Human Nature" with John Noon in London

1772 New Jersey passes bill requiring a license to practise medicine

1777 British General William Howe occupies Philadelphia during American Revolution

1783 Fayette County, Pennsylvania is created

1789 Edmund Randolph becomes the 1st US Attorney General

1789 Thomas Jefferson appointed 1st US Secretary of State; John Jay becomes 1st US Chief Justice

1824 Hawaiian high chiefess Kapiolani defies Pele (Hawaiian volcano goddess) and the priests of the fire goddess and lives, winning the cause of Christianity

1872 The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) was established in New York City

1887 Emile Berliner patents the Gramophone, the mechanical predecessor to the electric record player

1890 US stops minting $1 & $3 gold coin & 3 cent piece

1914 Federal Trade Commission formed to regulate interstate commerce in the US

1918 Meuse-Argonne Offensive begins, the largest and most costly offensive of World War I with more than 1 million American soldiers participating

1925 Italian sub "Sebastiano Veniero" lost off Sicily with 54 dead

1934 British ocean liner RMS Queen Mary is launched; "wins" Blue Riband for fastest passenger crossing of Atlantic, 1936 & 1938-52; retired in 1967, permanently moored and converted to a hotel in Long Beach, California

1946 1st edition of The Adventures of Tintin published by Hergé in Le journal de Tintin, continues until June 1993

1950 Because of forest fire in British Columbia, blue moon appears in England

1950 UN troops in Korean War recapture South Korean capital of Seoul

1954 Japanese ferry boat Toya Maru sinks in Strait of Tsugaru during a typhoon, 1,153 people die

1955 NY Stock Exchange worst price decline since 1929

1959 Typhoon Vera, hits Japanese island of Honshu, causing the deaths of 4,580 people with 658 missing

1960 1st of 4 TV debates Nixon & Kennedy took place (Chicago)

1966 US Coast Guard Cutter, "Staten Island", 1st icebreaker to enter San Francisco Bay

1968 St Louis Cards' Bob Gibson's 13th shutout ends with 1.12 ERA

1970 The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, California, burning 175,425 acres

1973 Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic (Washington, D.C. to Paris) in record-breaking time (3h 33m)

1978 The Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC) clerks go on strike, halting more than 2/3s of rail service

1983 Soviet military officer Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war by judging a supposed missile attack from the US to be an error

1984 Britain & China initial agreement return Hong Kong to China in 1997

1984 Philadelphia Phill’s Juan Samuel sets record for steals by a rookie with his 72^nd

1986 Antonin Scalia, sworn in as US Supreme Court Justice

1986 William Hubbs Rehnquist, sworn in as Chief Justice of Supreme Court

1988 NYC's Rockefeller Center declared a national landmark

1988 US space shuttle STS-26 launched

1989 Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze calls for total destruction of Soviet & US chemical weapons

1990 Motion Picture Association of America creates new NC-17 rating

1991 2 year experimental Biosphere 2 in Oracle Arizona begins

1992 Japanese comet hunter Tsuruhiko Kiuchi rediscovers Comet Swift-Tuttle, the first time it has been spotted since 1862

1993 Seattle's Randy Johnson joins 300-strikeout club

1995 "George" magazine premieres, published by John F. Kennedy Jr

1996 Space Shuttle STS 79 (Atlantis 17), lands

2002 Overcrowded Senegalese ferry MV Joola capsizes off the coast of Gambia killing more than 1,000

2006 Colombian drug lord Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela is sentenced to 30 years in US prison after pleading guilty to cocaine conspiracy charges

2009 Typhoon Ketsana hits the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, causing 956 deaths and damage of $6.2 billion

2014 43 students from Ayotzinapa Teachers College go missing (and presumed murdered) in Iguala on their way to a protest - one of Mexico's worst human rights cases

2017 Saudi Arabia announces it is overturning its ban on women driving - last country in the world to do so

2017 World's second-largest gem-quality diamond, the "Lesedi La Rona", sells for $53m

2022 Edward Snowden, former US intelligence contractor who exposed NSA surveillance program granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin

2022 Gunman opens fire on a school in Izhevsk, Udmert Republic in central Russia, killing 17 people including 11 children and injuring 24

2022 NASA's DART mission successfully crashes into the Dimorphos asteroid in the first planetary defense test

2023 The speaker of Canada's House of Commons resigns after inviting a man who fought with a Nazi military unit to attend a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy