• 1043 - Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.
• 1077 - The first Parliament of Friuli is created.
• 1559 - The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars.
• 1834 - The generals in the Greek War of Independence stand trial for treason.
• 1860 - The first successful Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.
• 1865 - American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
• 1882 - American Old West: Outlaw Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford for a $10,000 reward.
• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.
• 1895 - Trial of the libel case instigated by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his prosecution, conviction and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
• 1917 - Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from exile, marking the beginning of Bolshevik leadership in the Russian Revolution.
• 1922 - Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1929 - is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.
• 1936 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh II, the baby son of world-famous pilot Charles Lindbergh.
• 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
• 1946 - Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.
• 1948 - President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan which authorizes $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
• 1948 - In Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju massacre.
• 1948 - First run of the Texas Chief passenger train.
• 1953 - TV Guide is published for the first time.
• 1955 - The American Civil Liberties Union announces it'll defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.
• 1956 - Hudsonville-Standale Tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
• 1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech.
• 1969 - Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.
• 1973 - The first portable cell phone call takes place in New York City.
• 1974 - The Super Outbreak occurs, the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history. The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.
• 1975 - Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
• 1982 - Great Britain dispatches a naval task force to the south Atlantic to reclaim the disputed Falkland Islands from Argentina.
• 1996 - Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is arrested at his Montana cabin.
• 1996 - A United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board.
• 1997 - Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but 1 of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
• 2000 - United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.
• 2004 - Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
• 2007 - Conventional-Train World Speed Record: a French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line east of Paris sets an official new world speed record of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph).

Births