1861 - The Canellas meteorite, an 859-gram chondrite-type meteorite, strikes the earth near Barcelona, Spain.
1863 - American Civil War: The Battle of Jackson takes place.
1868 - Japanese Boshin War: end of the Battle of Utsunomiya Castle, former Shogunate forces withdraw northward to Aizu by way of Nikkō.
1870 - The first game of rugby in New Zealand is played in Nelson between Nelson College and the Nelson Rugby Football Club.
1879 - The first group of 463 Indian indentured labourers arrive in Fiji aboard the Leonidas.
1889 - The children's charity the NSPCC is launched in London.
1913 - New York Governor William Sulzer approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100 million donation from John D. Rockefeller.
1925 - Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway is published.
1927 - Cap Arcona is launched at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg.
1927 - The University of Chicago's local collegiate organization, Phi Sigma, becomes incorporated under Illinois law as Eta Sigma Phi, the National Honorary Classical Fraternity.
1929 - Wilfred Rhodes takes his 4000th first-class wicket during a performance of 9 for 39 at Leyton.
1931 - Ådalen shootings: five people are killed in Ådalen, Sweden, as soldiers open fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.
1935 - The Philippines ratifies an independence agreement.
1935 - Northamptonshire County Cricket Club gains (over Somerset at Taunton by 48 runs) what proved to be their last victory for 99 matches, a record in the County Championship. Their next Championship win was not until May 29, 1939.
1939 - Lina Medina becomes the world's youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five.
1940 - World War II: Rotterdam is bombed by the German Luftwaffe.
1940 - World War II: The Netherlands surrenders to Germany.
1943 - Sinking of the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur off the coast of Queensland, by a Japanese submarine.
1948 - Israel is declared to be an independent state and a provisional government is established. Immediately after the declaration, Israel is attacked by the neighboring Arab states, triggering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
1955 - Cold War: Eight communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defense treaty called the Warsaw Pact.
1961 - American civil rights movement: The Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protesters are beaten by an angry mob.
1961 - Stirling Moss wins the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix.
1970 - The Red Army Faction is established in Germany.
1978 - First round of the presidential elections in Upper Volta.
1988 - Carrollton bus collision: a drunk driver going the wrong way on Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Kentucky, United States hits a converted school bus carrying a church youth group. The crash and ensuing fire kill 27.
1995 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, proclaims six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
2002 - Ten members of the Darwin-based Network Against Prohibition invade the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory of Australia.
2004 - The Constitutional Court of South Korea overturns the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun.
2004 - The marriage of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark and Mary Donaldson takes place in Copenhagen.
2005 - The former USS America (CV-66), a decommissioned supercarrier of the United States Navy, is deliberately sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after four weeks of live-fire exercises. She is the largest ship ever to be disposed of as a target in a military exercise.
