1489 - The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice.
1590 - Battle of Ivry: Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots defeat the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne during the French Wars of Religion.
1647 - Thirty Years' War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm.
1757 - On-board the HMS Monarch, Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad for neglecting his duty.
1794 - Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin.
1889 - German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his "Navigable Balloon"
1900 - The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.
1903 - The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty.
1910 - Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vented to atmosphere.
1915 - World War I: Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden is abandoned and scuttled by her crew.
1926 - A train in Costa Rica falls into the Río Virilla, killing 248 and injuring 93.
1939 - German troops fully occupy the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.
1942 - John Bumstead and Orvan Hess became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.
1951 - Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul.
1964 - A jury in Dallas, Texas find Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of John F. Kennedy.
1967 - The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
1978 - The Israeli Defense Force invades and occupies southern Lebanon, in Operation Litani.
1979 - In China, a Hawker Siddeley Trident crashes into a factory near Beijing, killing at least 200.
1980 - In Poland, a plane crashes during an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team.
1984 - Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.
1994 - Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released.
1995 - Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.
1997 - The Chinese city of Chongqing (formerly Chunking) is upgraded to a centrally administered municipality.
1998 - An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
2005 - Cedar Revolution, where over one and a million Lebanese went into the streets of Beirut to demonstrate against the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, and against the government, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
