1066 Harold Godwineson is crowned crowned King Harold II - King of England.
1540 Henry VIII of England marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage will last six months.
1861 The Governor of Maryland, Thomas Hicks, announces his opposition to the states's possible secession from the Union.
1904 Japanese railway authorities in Korea refuse to transport Russian troops.
1910 Union leaders ask President William H. Taft to investigate U.S. Steel's practices.
1912 New Mexico becomes the 47th U.S. state of the Union.
1918 Germany acknowledges Finland's independence.
1919 Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, dies at the age of 60 in his home at Sagamore Hill, New York.
1921 The U.S. Navy orders the sale of 125 flying boats to encourage commercial aviation.
1937 The United States bans the shipment of arms to war-torn Spain.
1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt asks Congress to support the Lend-lease Bill to help supply the Allies.
1945 Boeing B-29 bombers in the Pacific strike new blows on Tokyo and Nanking.
1946 Ho Chi Minh wins in the Vietnamese elections.
1958 Moscow announces a reduction in its armed forces by 300,000.
1967 Over 16,000 U.S. and 14,000 Vietnamese troops start their biggest attack on the Iron Triangle, northwest of Saigon.
1987 Astronomers report sighting a new galaxy 12 billion light years away.
2001 In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 Presidential elections more then five weeks after the election due to the disputed Florida ballots.
1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a scathing attack on King George III's reign over the colonies and a call for complete independence.
1792 The Ottomans sign a treaty with the Russians ending a five year war.
1793 Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in North America.
1861 Southern shellfire stops the Union supply ship Star of the West from entering Charleston Harbor on her way to Fort Sumter.
1861 Mississippi secedes from the Union.
1908 Count Zeppelin announces plans for his airship to carry 100 passengers.
1909 A Polar exploration team lead by Ernest Shackleton reaches 88 degrees, 23 minutes south longitude, 162 degrees east latitude. They are 97 nautical miles short of the South Pole, but the weather is too severe to continue.
1912 Colonel Theodore Roosevelt announces that he will run for president if asked.
1915 Pancho Villa signs a treaty with the United States, halting border conflicts.
1924 Ford Motor Co. stock is valued at nearly $1 billion.
1943 Soviet planes drop leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refuse.
1945 U.S. troops land on Luzon, in the Philippines, 107 miles from Manila.
1947 French General Leclerc breaks off all talks with Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.
1952 Jackie Robinson becomes the highest paid player in Brooklyn Dodger history.
1964 U.S. forces kill six Panamanian students protesting in the canal zone.
1974 Cambodian Government troops open a drive to avert insurgent attack on Phnom Penh.
1072 Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger take Palermo in Sicily.
1645 The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, is beheaded on Tower Hill, accused of acting as an enemy of the British Parliament.
1724 King Philip V shocks all of Europe when he abdicates his throne in favor of his eldest son, Louis.
1811 An uprising of over 400 slaves is put down in New Orleans. Sixty-six blacks are killed and their heads are strung up along the roads of the city.
1847 General Stephen Kearny and Commodore Robert Stockton retake Los Angeles in the last California battle of the Mexican War.
1861 Florida secedes from the Union.
1863 London's Underground begins operations.
1870 John D. Rockefeller and his brother William establish the Standard Oil Company of Ohio.
1899 Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo renounces the Treaty of Paris, which annexed the Philippines to the United States.
1901 The Automobile Club of America installs signs on major highways.
1903 Argentina bans the importation of American beef because of sanitation problems.
1911 Two German cruisers, the Emden and the Nurnberg, suppress a native revolt on island of Ponape in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific when they fire on the island and land troops.
1912 The World's first flying-boat airplane, designed by Glenn Curtiss, makes its maiden flight at Hammondsport.
1917 Germany is rebuked as the Entente officially rejects a proposal for peace talks and demands the return of occupied territories from Germany.
1918 In Washington, the House of Representatives passes legislation for women's suffrage.
1920 The Treaty of Versailles goes into effect.
1923 The United States withdraws its last troops from Germany.
1940 German planes attack 12 ships off the British coast; sinking 3 ships and killing 35 people.
1941 The Soviets and Germany agree on the East European borders and the exchange of industrial equipment.
1946 Chiang Kai-shek and the Yenan Communist forces halt fighting in China.
1964 Panama breaks ties with the U.S. and demands a revision of the canal treaty.
1984 The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations for the first time in 117 years.
1872 Russian Grand Duke Alexis goes on a gala buffalo hunting expedition with Gen. Phil Sheridan and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
1879 The British-Zulu War begins. British troops -- under Lieutenant General Frederic Augustus -- invade Zululand from the southern African republic of Natal.
1908 A wireless message is sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
1913 Kiel and Wilhelmshaven become submarine bases in Germany.
1915 The U.S. Congress establishes Rocky Mountain National Park.
1926 U.S. coal talks break down, leaving both sides bitter as the strike drags on into its fifth month.
1927 U.S. Secretary of State Kellogg claims that Mexican rebel Plutarco Calles is aiding communist plot in Nicaragua.
1932 Oliver Wendell Holmes retires from the Supreme Court at age 90.
1938 Austria recognizes the Franco government in Spain.
1940 Soviet bombers raid cities in Finland.
1943 Soviet forces raise the siege of Leningrad.
1952 The Viet Minh cut the supply lines to the French forces in Hoa Binh, Vietnam.
1962 The United States resumes aid to the Laotian regime.
1973 Yassar Arafat is re-elected as head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
1982 Peking protests the sale of U.S. planes to Taiwan.
1991 The U.S. Congress gives the green light to military action against Iraq in the Persian Gulf Crisis.
1547 Ivan IV crowns himself the new Czar of Russia in Assumption Cathedral in Moscow.
1786 The Council of Virginia guarantees religious freedom.
1847 John C. Fremont, the famed "Pathfinder" of Western exploration, is appointed governor of California.
1865 General William T. Sherman begins a march through the Carolinas.
1900 The U.S. Senate recognizes the Anglo-German Treaty of 1899 by which the UK renounced its rights to the Samoan Islands.
1909 One of Ernest Shackleton's polar exploration teams reaches the Magnetic South Pole.
1914 Maxim Gorky is authorized to return to Russia after an eight year exile for political dissidence.
1920 The League of Nations holds its first meeting in Paris.
1920 Allies lift the blockade on trade with Russia.
1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt asks for an extension of the Social Security Act to include more women and children.
1940 Hitler cancels an attack in the West due to bad weather and the capture of German attack plans in Belgium.
1942 Japan's advance into Burma begins.
1944 Eisenhower assumes supreme command of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe.
1944 The U.S. First and Third armies link up at Houffalize, effectively ending the Battle of the Bulge.
1956 The Egyptian government makes Islam the state religion.
1965 Eighteen are arrested in Mississippi for the murder of three civil rights workers.
1975 The Irish Republican Army calls an end to a 25-day cease fire in Belfast.
1979 The Shah leaves Iran.
1991 The Persian Gulf War begins. The massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq -- Operation Desert Storm -- ended on February 28, 1991, when President George Bush declared a cease-fire, and Iraq pledged to honor future coalition and U.N. peace terms.
1189 Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assemble the troops for the Third Crusade.
1648 In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly.
1785 Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot Indians sign the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.
1790 Joseph Guillotine proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person's head as painlessly as possible.
1793 The French King Louis XVI is guillotined for treason.
1910 Japan rejects the American proposal to neutralize ownership of the Manchurian Railway.
1919 The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms.
1921 J.D. Rockefeller pledges $1 million for the relief of Europe's destitute.
1930 An international arms control meeting opens in London.
1933 The League of Nations rejects Japanese terms for settlement with China.
1941 The United States lifts the ban on arms to the Soviet Union.
1942 In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source.
1943 A Nazi daylight air raid kills 34 in a London school. When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed, but soon they faced a frightening new threat.
1951 Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea after a 12-hour attack.
1958 The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries.
1964 Carl T. Rowan is named the director of the United States Information Agency (USIA).
1968 In Vietnam, the Siege of Khe Sanh begins as North Vietnamese units surround U.S. Marines based on the hilltop headquarters.
1974 The U.S. Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1976 Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger meet to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
1977 President Carter urges 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.
1993 Congressman Mike Espy of Mississippi is confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture.
1689 England's "Bloodless Revolution" reaches its climax when parliament invites William and Mary to become joint sovereigns.
1807 President Thomas Jefferson exposes a plot by Aaron Burr to form a new republic in the Southwest.
1813 During the War of 1812, British forces under Henry Proctor defeat a U.S. contingent planning an attack on Fort Detroit.
1824 A British force is wiped out by an Asante army under Osei Bonsu on the African Gold Coast. This is the first defeat for a colonial power.
1863 In an attempt to out flank Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, General Ambrose Burnside leads his army on a march to north Fredericksburg, but foul weather bogs his army down in what will become known as "Mud March."
1879 Eighty-two British soldiers hold off attacks by 4,000 Zulu warriors at the Battle of Rorke's Drift in South Africa.
1905 Russian troops fire on civilians beginning Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.
1912 Second Monte Carlo auto race begins.
1913 Turkey consents to the Balkan peace terms and gives up Adrianople.
1930 Admiral Richard Byrd charts a vast area of Antarctica.
1932 Government troops crush a Communist uprising in Northern Spain.
1939 A Nazi order erases the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.
1943 Axis forces pull out of Tripoli for Tunisia, destroying bases as they leave.
1944 U.S. troops under Major General John P. Lucas make an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome.
1971 Communist forces shell Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the first time.
1979 Abu Hassan, the alleged planner of the 1972 Munich raid, is killed by a bomb in Beirut.
1982 President Ronald Reagan formally links progress in arms control to Soviet repression in Poland.
41 Shortly after declaring himself a god, Caligula is assassinated by two Praetorian tribunes.
1458 Matthias Corvinus, the son of John Hunyadi, is elected king of Hungary.
1639 Representatives from three Connecticut towns band together to write the Fundamental Orders, the first constitution in the New World.
1722 Czar Peter the Great caps his reforms in Russia with the "Table of Rank" which decrees a commoner can climb on merit to the highest positions.
1848 Gold is discovered by James Wilson Marshall at his partner Johann August Sutter's sawmill on the South Fork of the American River, near Coloma, California.
1903 U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and British Ambassador Herbert create a joint commission to establish the Alaskan border.
1911 U.S. Cavalry is sent to preserve the neutrality of the Rio Grande during the Mexican Civil War.
1915 The German cruiser Blücher is sunk by a British squadron in the Battle of Dogger Bank.
1927 British expeditionary force of 12,000 is sent to China to protect concessions at Shanghai.
1931 The League of Nations rebukes Poland for the mistreatment of a German minority in Upper Silesia.
1945 A German attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest is finally halted by the Soviets.
1946 The UN establishes the International Atomic Energy Commission.
1951 Indian leader Nehru demands that the UN name Peking as an aggressor in Korea.
1965 Winston Churchill dies from a cerebral thrombosis at the age of 90.
1980 In a rebuff to the Soviets, the U.S. announces intentions to sell arms to China.
1982 A draft of Air Force history reports that the U.S. secretly sprayed herbicides on Laos during the Vietnam War.
1787 Small farmers in Springfield, Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays, revolt against tax laws. Federal troops break up the protesters of what becomes known as Shay's Rebellion.
1846 The dreaded Corn Laws, which taxed imported oats, wheat and barley, are repealed by the British Parliament.
1904 Two-hundred coal miners are trapped in their Pennsylvania mine after an explosion.
1915 Alexander Graham Bell in New York and Thomas Watson in San Francisco make a record telephone transmission.
1918 Austria and Germany reject U.S. peace proposals.
1919 The League of Nations plan is adopted by the Allies.
1929 Members of the New York Stock Exchange ask for an additional 275 seats.
1930 New York police rout a Communist rally at the Town Hall.
1943 The last German airfield in Stalingrad is captured by the Red Army.
1949 Axis Sally, who broadcasted Nazi propaganda to U.S. troops in Europe, stands trial in the United States for war crimes.
1951 The U.S. Eighth Army in Korea launches Operation Thunderbolt, a counter attack to push the Chinese Army north of the Han River.
1955 Columbia University scientists develop an atomic clock that is accurate to within one second in 300 years.
1956 Khrushchev says that he believes that Eisenhower is sincere in his efforts to abolish war.
1959 American Airlines begins its first coast-to-coast flight service on a Boeing 707.
1972 Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to U.S. Congress, announces candidacy for president.
1972 Nixon airs the eight-point peace plan for Vietnam, asking for POW release in return for withdrawal.
1984 President Reagan endorses the development of the first U.S. permanently-manned space station.