910

The last major Viking army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward and Earl Aethelred.

1100

Henry I was crowned king of England.

1305

William Wallace, who led Scottish resistance to England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London for trial and execution.

1583

Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland for the British crown, the first English colony in North America and the beginning of the British Empire.

1716

Battle of Petrovaradin [Peterwardein]: Habsburgs under Eugene of Savoy defeat the Turks in a decisive victory.

1772

Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed a treaty creating the First Partition of Poland, depriving that country of approximately half of its population and almost one-third of its land.

1864

During the Battle of Mobile Bay, Union Admiral David Farragut sealed off the port of Mobile, Alabama, from Confederate blockade runners.

1914

In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light was installed; it featured red and green lights.

1926

In his last public stunt, American magician Harry Houdini stayed in an underwater airtight coffin for some 90 minutes; he bested rival magician Rahman Bey’s time of one hour.

1930

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio.

1936

American athlete Jesse Owens wins 200m in world record time (20.7s), his 3rd gold medal of the Berlin Olympics.

1957

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, a TV show in which performers lip-synched their latest songs and the teenage audience danced, began airing nationally.

1960

Upper Volta—now Burkina Faso (which means “Land of Incorruptible People”), a landlocked country in western Africa—proclaimed its independence.

1963

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in Moscow.

1964

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson put the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before Congress; it served as the principal constitutional authorization for the subsequent vast escalation of the United States’ military involvement in the Vietnam War.

1966

The Beatles release single “Yellow Submarine” with “Eleanor Rigby” in the UK.

1981

U.S. President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who were on strike.

2010

Thirty-three workers became trapped after a mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile collapsed, and the resulting rescue took 69 days, attracting international attention.

2011

Thai businesswoman and politician Yingluck Shinawatra was elected prime minister of Thailand, becoming the first woman to hold that post.

2019

Continued antigovernment protests and a general strike brought Hong Kong to a near standstill; among the demonstrators’ demands were universal suffrage and investigations into allegations of police brutality.