Events Pre-1600 380 – Edict of Thessalonica: Emperor Theodosius I and his co-emperors Gratian and Valentinian II declare their wish that all Roman citizens convert to Nicene Christianity. 425 – The University of Constantinople is founded by Emperor Theodosius II at the urging of his wife Aelia Eudocia. 907 – Abaoji, chieftain of the Yila tribe, is named khagan of the Khitans. 1560 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed by England and the Lords of the Congregation of Scotland, establishing the terms under which English armed forces were to be permitted in Scotland in order to expel occupying French troops. 1594 – Henry IV is crowned King of France.
1601–1900 1617 – Sweden and the Tsardom of Russia sign the Treaty of Stolbovo, ending the Ingrian War and shutting Russia out of the Baltic Sea. 1626 – Yuan Chonghuan is appointed Governor of Liaodong, after leading the Chinese into a great victory against the Manchurians under Nurhaci. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in North Carolina breaks up a Loyalist militia. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: The House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America. 1801 – Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. 1809 – Action of 27 February 1809: Captain Bernard Dubourdieu captures HMS Proserpine. 1812 – Argentine War of Independence: Manuel Belgrano raises the Flag of Argentina in the city of Rosario for the first time. 1812 – Poet Lord Byron gives his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. 1844 – The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti. 1859 – United States representative Daniel Sickles, after learning of an affair between his wife and United States Attorney Philip Barton Key II, murders him in Washington, D.C. 1860 – Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that plays an important role in his election to the Presidency. 1864 – American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. 1870 – The current flag of Japan is first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships. 1881 – First Boer War: The Battle of Majuba Hill takes place. 1898 – King George I of Greece survives an assassination attempt. 1900 – Second Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronjé at the Battle of Paardeberg. 1900 – The British Labour Party is founded. 1900 – Fußball-Club Bayern München is founded.
1901–present 1902 – Second Boer War: Australian soldiers Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock are executed in Pretoria after being convicted of war crimes. 1916 – Ocean liner SS Maloja strikes a mine near Dover and sinks with the loss of 155 lives. 1921 – The International Working Union of Socialist Parties is founded in Vienna. 1922 – A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett. 1932 – The Mäntsälä rebellion begins when members of the far-right Lapua Movement start shooting at the social democrats' event in Mäntsälä, Finland.Iltalehti Teema Historia: Lapuan liike, Alma Media, 2015, pp. 4–7. (in Finnish) 1933 – Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch Communist claims responsibility. 1939 – United States labor law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. that the National Labor Relations Board has no authority to force an employer to rehire workers who engage in sit-down strikes. 1940 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14. 1942 – World War II: Operation Biting launches its overnight raid on the German coastal radar station at Bruneval to retrieve a Würzburg installation. 1942 – World War II: During the Battle of the Java Sea, an Allied strike force is defeated by a Japanese task force in the Java Sea in the Dutch East Indies. 1943 – The Smith Mine #3 in Bearcreek, Montana, explodes, killing 74 men. 1943 – The Holocaust: In Berlin, the Gestapo arrest 1,800 Jewish men with German wives, leading to the Rosenstrasse protest. 1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified. 1961 – The first congress of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation is inaugurated. 1962 – Vietnam War: Two dissident Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots bomb the Independence Palace in Saigon in a failed attempt to assassinate South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm. 1963 – The Dominican Republic receives its first democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, since the end of the dictatorship led by Rafael Trujillo. 1964 – The Government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over. 1971 – Doctors in the first Dutch abortion clinic (the Mildredhuis in Arnhem) start performing artificially-induced abortions. 1973 – The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee in protest of the federal government. 1976 – The former Spanish territory of Western Sahara, under the auspices of the Polisario Front declares independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. 1988 – Sumgait pogrom: The Armenian community in Sumgait, Azerbaijan is targeted in a violent pogrom. 1991 – Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated". 2001 – Loganair Flight 670A crashes while attempting to make a water landing in the Firth of Forth in Scotland. 2002 – Ryanair Flight 296 catches fire at London Stansted Airport causing minor injuries. 2002 – Godhra train burning: A Muslim mob torches a train returning from Ayodhya, killing 59 Hindu pilgrims. 2004 – A bombing of a SuperFerry by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines' worst terrorist attack kills more than 100 passengers. 2004 – Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is sentenced to death for masterminding the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack. 2007 – Chinese stock bubble of 2007: The Shanghai Stock Exchange falls 9%, the largest daily fall in ten years, following speculation about a crackdown on illegal share offerings and trading, and fears about accelerating inflation. 2008 – Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari escapes from a detention center in Singapore, hiding in Johor, Malaysia until he was recaptured over a year later. 2010 – An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale strikes central parts of Chile leaving over 500 victims, and thousands injured. The quake triggers a tsunami which strikes Hawaii shortly after. 2013 – A shooting takes place at a factory in Menznau, Switzerland, in which five people (including the perpetrator) are killed and five others injured. 2015 – Russian politician Boris Nemtsov is assassinated in Moscow while out walking with his girlfriend. 2019 – Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder downs Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman's Mig-21 in an aerial dogfight and captures him after conducting airstrikes in Jammu and Kashmir.
Births Pre-1600 272 – Constantine the Great, Roman emperor (died 337) 1343 – Alberto d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara (died 1393) 1427 – Ruprecht, Archbishop of Cologne (died 1480) 1500 – João de Castro, Portuguese nobleman and fourth viceroy of Portuguese India (died 1548) 1535 – Min Phalaung, Burmese monarch (died 1593) 1567 – William Alabaster, English poet (died 1640) 1572 – Francis II, Duke of Lorraine (died 1632) 1575 – John Adolf, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (died 1616)
1601–1900 1622 – Carel Fabritius, Dutch painter (died 1654) 1630 – Roche Braziliano, Dutch pirate (died 1671) 1659 – William Sherard, English botanist (died 1728) 1667 – Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłł, Prussian-Lithuanian wife of Charles III Philip, Elector Palatine (died 1695) 1689 – Pietro Gnocchi, Italian composer, director, historian, and geographer (died 1775) 1703 – Lord Sidney Beauclerk, English politician (died 1744) 1711 – Constantine Mavrocordatos, Ottoman ruler (died 1769) 1724 – Frederick Michael, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken (died 1767) 1732 – Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de Boisgelin, French cardinal (died 1804) 1746 – Louis-Jérôme Gohier, French politician, French Minister of Justice (died 1830) 1748 – Anders Sparrman, Swedish physician and activist (died 1820) 1767 – Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, French lawyer and politician, 24th Prime Minister of France (died 1855) 1779 – Thomas Hazlehurst, English businessman, founded Hazlehurst & Sons (died 1842) 1789 – Manuel Rodríguez Erdoíza, Chilean lawyer and politician, Chilean Minister of National Defense (died 1818) 1795 – José Antonio Navarro, American merchant and politician (died 1871) 1799 – Edward Belcher, British naval officer, hydrographer, and explorer (died 1877) 1799 – Frederick Catherwood, British artist, architect and explorer (died 1854) 1807 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet and educator (died 1882) 1809 – Jean-Charles Cornay, French missionary and saint (died 1837) 1816 – William Nicholson, English-Australian politician, 3rd Premier of Victoria (died 1865) 1847 – Ellen Terry, English actress (died 1928) 1848 – Hubert Parry, English composer and historian (died 1918) 1859 – Bertha Pappenheim, Austrian-German activist and author (died 1936) 1863 – Joaquín Sorolla, Spanish painter (died 1923) 1863 – George Herbert Mead, American sociologist and philosopher (died 1930) 1864 – Eemil Nestor Setälä, Finnish linguist and politician, Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs (died 1935) 1867 – Irving Fisher, American economist and statistician (died 1947) 1867 – Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Swedish composer and critic (died 1942) 1869 – Alice Hamilton, American physician and academic (died 1970) 1872 – Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, Romanian politician, Prime Minister of Romania (died 1950) 1875 – Vladimir Filatov, Russian-Ukrainian ophthalmologist and surgeon (died 1956) 1877 – Adela Verne, English pianist and composer (died 1952) 1877 – Joseph Grinnell, American zoologist and biologist (died 1939) 1878 – Alvan T. Fuller, American businessman and politician, 50th Governor of Massachusetts (died 1958) 1880 – Xenophon Kasdaglis, Greek-Egyptian tennis player (died 1943) 1881 – Sveinn Björnsson, Danish-Icelandic lawyer and politician, 1st President of Iceland (died 1952) 1881 – L. E. J. Brouwer, Dutch mathematician, philosopher, and academic (died 1966) 1886 – Hugo Black, American captain, lawyer, politician, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (died 1971) 1887 – Pyotr Nesterov, Russian captain, pilot, and engineer (died 1914) 1888 – Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and psychologist (died 1974) 1888 – Lotte Lehmann, German-American soprano and actress (died 1976) 1888 – Stephen McKenna, English novelist (died 1967) 1890 – Mabel Keaton Staupers, American nurse and advocate (died 1989) 1891 – David Sarnoff, American businessman, founded RCA (died 1971) 1892 – William Demarest, American actor (died 1983) 1895 – Miyagiyama Fukumatsu, Japanese sumo wrestler (died 1943) 1897 – Marian Anderson, American singer (died 1993) 1899 – Charles Best, American-Canadian physiologist and biochemist, co-discovered insulin (died 1978)
1901–present 1901 – Marino Marini, Italian sculptor and academic (died 1980) 1901 – Kotama Okada, Japanese religious leader (died 1974) 1902 – Lúcio Costa, French-Brazilian architect and engineer, designed Gustavo Capanema Palace (died 1998) 1902 – Gene Sarazen, American golfer and sportscaster (died 1999) 1902 – John Steinbeck, American journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1968) 1903 – Reginald Gardiner, English-American actor and singer (died 1980) 1903 – Hans Rohrbach, German mathematician (died 1993)