64

Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero.

1195

The Almohads were victorious over the forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos.

1290

King Edward I orders expulsion of Jews from England, this edict will remain in place for 350 years.

1801

HMS Investigator sets off on a voyage to determine if New Holland (Australia) is one island or two, under command of Matthew Flinders, with botanist Robert Brown and artists Ferdinand Bauer and William Westall aboard.

1811

English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who was best known for Vanity Fair (1847–48) and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), was born in India.

1817

The English novelist Jane Austen, who wrote such classics as Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), died in Winchester, Hampshire, at age 41.

1864

US President Abraham Lincoln asks for 500,000 volunteers for military service.

1914

Gandhi leaves South Africa after successfully leading campaigns of Passive Resistance.

1918

French General Ferdinand Foch launched a counterstrike that forced the Germans into a hasty retreat during the Second Battle of the Marne, the last large German offensive of World War I.

1921

Babe Ruth achieves 139 home runs with a MLB record 575 feet hit to become the all-time home run leader in Major League Baseball, taking the title from Roger Connor.

1921

John Glenn—the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in 1962—was born.

1925

The first volume of Mein Kampf, the political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler that became the bible of Nazism in Germany’s Third Reich, was published this day in 1925, and two years later the second volume appeared.

1927

American baseball player Ty Cobb collected his 4,000th career hit.

1940

FDR nominated for unprecedented third term.

1944

Allied forces captured the French town of Saint-Lô, a vital communications centre, during World War II.

1947

Harry S. Truman signs second Presidential Succession Act.

1969

Senator Ted Kennedy drives car off bridge at Chappaquiddick Island.

1976

For her performance in the uneven parallel bars at the Olympic Games in Montreal, Nadia Comăneci of Romania became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event.

1995

Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” is published.

2012

Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People’s Army.

2013

Detroit submitted a claim for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the largest such filing for a U.S. city ever; the city officially emerged from bankruptcy the following year.