Inspiration has failed me once again, so here’s some some stuff that happened.
878 Battle of Edington: Alfred the Great and his West Saxon army defeat Viking army of Guthrum the Old [earliest possible date]
1527 Spanish & German Imperial troops sack Rome; ending Renaissance
1529 Battle at Gogra: Mughal Emperor Babur beats Afghans and Bengals
1541 King Henry VIII orders a bible in English be placed in every church in England
1542 Francis Xavier reaches Old Goa, then capital of Portuguese India
1626 Dutch colonist Peter Minuit organizes the purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of goods, believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Lenape
1642 Ville Marie (Montreal) forms
1682 Louis XIV of France moves his court to Versailles
1733 1st international boxing match: Bob Whittaker beats Tito di Carni
1757 Battle of Prague: Frederick II of Prussia's forces defeat Austrian army
1794 Haiti, under Toussaint L'Ouverture, revolts against France
1835 James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald (price 1 cent).
1837 US blacksmith John Deere creates the first steel plough in Grand Detour, Illinois
1840 World's first adhesive postage stamp, the "Penny Black", is first used in Great Britain
1851 Dr John Gorrie patents a "refrigeration machine"
1853 1st major US rail disaster kills 46 (Norwalk, Connecticut)
1860 San Francisco Olympic Club, 1st US athletic club forms
1861 Arkansas & Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th states to secede from US
1864 Union Army General Sherman begins advance to Atlanta Georgia during the Atlanta Campaign (US Civil War)
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act: US Congress ceases Chinese immigration
1882 Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish are stabbed and killed during the Phoenix Park Murders in Dublin
1889 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris opens with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch
1903 Chicago White Sox commit 12 errors against Detroit Tigers
1906 "Temporary" permit to erect overhead wires on Market Street, San Francisco allows United Railroads to run electric streetcars
1906 Tsar Nicolas II of Russia claims right to legislate by decree and restricts the power of the Duma (Russian Parliament)
1910 George V becomes King of the United Kingdom upon the death of his father, Edward VII
1914 British House of Lords rejects women's suffrage
1915 Red Sox Babe Ruth pitching debut & 1st HR, loses to Yanks 4-3 in 15
1919 Paris Peace Conference disposes of German colonies; German East Africa is assigned to Britain and France, German South West Africa to South Africa
1929 New York to San Francisco footrace begins
1937 German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and 1 on the ground
1940 Pulitzer prize awarded to John Steinbeck for "The Grapes of Wrath"
1941 Joseph Stalin becomes Premier of the Soviet Union, replacing his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov
1941 At California's March Field, Bob Hope performs his first USO show
1942 Corregidor & Philippines surrender to Japanese Armies
1945 World War II: Axis Sally delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops (first was on December 11, 1941).
1946 Pulitzer prize awarded to Arthur M Schlesinger (Age of Jackson)"
1954 Roger Bannister of the UK becomes the 1st person to run a 4 minute mile, recording 3:59:4 at Iffley Road, Oxford
1955 West Germany joins NATO
1957 Last broadcast of "I Love Lucy" on CBS-TV
1957 Pulitzer prize awarded to John F. Kennedy (Profiles in Courage)
1960 US President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960
1962 1st nuclear warhead fired from Polaris submarine (Ethan Allen)
1962 Pathet Lao breaks cease fire and conquer Nam Tha Laos
1963 Pulitzer prize awarded to Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August)
1968 Street battle between students & troops in Paris, 1,000 injured
1969 Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark announces an amnesty for all offences associated with demonstrations since 5 October 1968, resulting in the release of, among others, Ian Paisley and Ronald Bunting
1970 Yuchiro Miura of Japan skis down Mt Everest
1974 Bundy victim Roberta Parks disappears from OSU, Corvallis, Ore
1974 West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigns amidst controversy over his aide Günter Guillaume's ties with the Stasi (East German secret service)
1975 Bundy victim Lynette Culver disappears from Pocatello, Idaho
1987 Gary Hart denies affair with model Donna Rice
1987 American televangelist Jim Bakker and Rich Dortch dismissed from Assemblies of God after revelations of an alleged rape of a church secretary
1990 Former president P. W. Botha quits South Africa's ruling National Party
1994 Channel tunnel linking England & France officially opens
1994 Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait sets fire to the couch on Tonight Show
1994 US House of Representatives passes the Federal Assault Weapons Ban
1994 Nelson Mandela and the ANC, finally confirmed winners in South Africa's first post apartheid election
1996 Guatemala's leftist guerrillas sign key accord with government of President Alvaro Arzu aimed at ending 35 years of civil war
1996 The body of former CIA director William Colby is found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he disappeared.
1997 The Bank of England is given independence from political control, the most significant change in the bank's 300-year history
2001 During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque
2002 Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is shot and killed by an animal rights activist
2002 Entrepreneur Elon Musk founds SpaceX
2004 TV sitcom "Friends" airs season finale in 10th and final season in US (52.5 million viewers)
2014 Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, releases a 57 minute video boasting about abducting schoolgirls in Nigeria
2017 84 abducted schoolgirls released in exchange for Boko Haram suspects in Nigeria
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